Google Map now covers 10 million miles in Street View
- Admin
- Dec 17, 2019
- 2 min read
11/16
Google Street View now has miles enough to cover the world 400 times.
Google Street View — Google’s project of photographing the planet for building Google Map and Google Earth — is not a stranger to our generation. However, on December 13, 2019, Google revealed how much of the world it has photographed for the first time.
By relying on satellite imagery and on-ground photography, Google Maps makes it easier to locate a location. According to a report from CENT, Google announces that 10 million miles of Street View imagery and 36 million square miles of Google Earth imagery are covered in Google Maps.
The number of Google Earth is especially impressive: Google says it now cover 98 percent of the world’s places where people live. And the Street View imagery of 10 million miles puts Google miles ahead of rivals including Apple, which has just begun to include similar street-level images in Apple Maps this year with the launch of iOS 13.
“Image is at the core of all we do,” said Ethan Russell, product manager at Google Maps, to CNET. “We think of it as the foundation of the entire mapmaking process.”
Google also explained its collecting map imagery. The company uses Street View cars equipped with 360-degree cameras to take photos from various angles while it’s being driven, and it also uses a technique called photogrammetry to stitch images together to create a map of an area.
Another feature called Live View is pointed out by Google. This tool uses augmented reality by overlaying digital graphics on top of real-world images to upgrade walking directions on the app. Live View is designed to solve the problem of “blue dot,” the feeling of getting out of a subway station, looking down at the blue dot on the Maps app and spinning in circles to find your directions. It can uses your phone's camera to show the arrows that tell you where to go.
Google Maps has always been focused on how to get to and from places. That includes staying updated on the exterior of a particular building, or knowing the topography of a certain region. This is perhaps why Google needs footage that travels the world 400 times, to accomplish a digital map that is used by over 1 billion people per month.
Sources
Comments