Over the last few years, Google Maps’ Street View service has helped Kiwis plan out routes to new locations, search for real estate online, and pick out visually memorable meeting spots. But you can also use Street View to travel virtually around the world. Global adventurers once shared their photos of far-away destinations with jealous friends, but now with Street View, those friends can walk around the same foreign lands and see famous tourist destinations like they were right there.
Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
We have some good news today for New Zealand’s virtual explorers. We have added hundreds and hundreds of new sites around the world for you to explore, ranging from temples in Taiwan, castles in Ireland, French chateaus, and snowy slopes in North American mountain ranges. You can walk around Italy’s iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa and try to find angles where it looks perfectly straight. Or you can lounge around the poolside at Monaco’s Monte Carlo Bay Resort. For years we have had the streets of Amsterdam on Street View, but now you can also enjoy an all-out full-out recreation of The Netherlands in Nagasaki, Japan at the Huis Ten Bosch Theme Park.
Taiwan Confucius Temple, Tainan, Taiwan
Since most of these partner program collections are not on public streets, Google works closely with the location owners to collect the imagery. And with Street View cars being too big and bulky, we use our Street View Trike, a three-wheeled contraption with a mounted Street View camera and a specially decorated box containing image-collecting gadgetry. Learn more about the trike here.
Stay tuned for even more imagery launches in coming months. And all the virtual tourists shouldn’t forget that you can also travel the world’s top art museums in our Google Art Project — and even the Moon!
Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager, Google Maps, Australia
