Monday, 12 October 2009

A bonus batch of Street View imagery


Yesterday we announced that Street View imagery is now available for more than 11 cities across Canada, as well as in the Czech Republic. It is always exciting to bring Street View to a new country and hear from all the folks who have been eagerly awaiting it -- the news proved so popular that global traffic to Street View doubled yesterday and there were 28 million views of Canadian images yesterday (nearly as many views as Canadians!). You can see what all our partners had to say and see pictures from the launch event on the @GoogleCanada Twitter account.

But another priority is to refresh and extend our coverage in places we've already been. Now that you've hopefully had the chance to explore some of the stunning new images, we also wanted to point out some updates to the United States and Japan that got a little lost in yesterday's new country excitement. We added new high-resolution imagery in several areas across the US, and have launched several special destinations in Japan through the Street View Partner Program.

We've updated our coverage in New York City, bringing you newer and more high-quality imagery. You can see the newly restored Guggenheim Museum, or take a look at the unique architecture of the Flatiron Building. I'm a big baseball fan, so I'm especially excited that we have the brand-new Yankee Stadium featured in Street View, just in time for the playoffs (go Yankees!):

We've also expanded our coverage around the Washington, DC metropolitan region, which is where I grew up. Now I can take a trip down memory lane by checking out the park where my dad taught me to play catch or wandering the streets of Old Town Alexandria. DC also has a new baseball stadium for the Nationals, which you can now see in Street View:

You'll also find updates here in San Francisco:

There are areas of new imagery across California, Colorado, Texas, Pennsylvania, DC, Florida, and New York. Not all areas in these places have been updated, but we're still hard at work.

In Japan, with our Street View Partner Program, we've been able to add images of 10 popular tourist destinations and special attractions, such as the Sapporo Maruyama Zoo:

For a really global experience, tour around Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Japan modeled as a Dutch village: