What is Google Street View?
Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramic views from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 originally only for a few cities in the United States, but has expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide.
Street View allows users to see parts of the world through 360-degree street-level imagery. The views are captured by cameras mounted on vehicles that drive along streets to photograph the surrounding area. The images are then stitched together to create panoramic views from different positions along each street. As users navigate around in Street View, they can view business storefronts, homes, landmarks, and even natural features in high detail.
In addition to exploring destinations users may want to visit, Street View serves many other purposes. It can be used to view one's own home or surroundings for familiarity. Real estate agents also often display Street View imagery of listings to give buyers a better sense of the property and neighborhood. Urban planners may use it to assess infrastructure and land use. Street View also has capabilities to go off-road, allowing users to explore rural regions, parks, sports venues, museums, and more.
As the technology has continued advancing, Google has added more interactive features to Street View, including the ability to view different times of day and weather conditions. There is also a historical view to see how places have changed over time. And Google offers an app called Street View Studio for businesses to create their own 360-degree virtual tours to showcase on Google.