Google has pushed out an update to the Street View imagery for cities in the UK and the Netherlands and some other new areas in countries which had coverage. Here’s a screenshot showing the new countries covered:
As you can see, cities in England, Ireland, Scotland and the Neth erlands are new. A little checking shows that Spain has two new cities: Oviedo and Zaragoza.
You can see the new coverage in either Google Maps, or by turning on the Street View layer in Google Earth. Read about using Street View in Google Earth.
Thanks for the tip from GEB reader Noel M. See also report by Blogoscoped.
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
There are new icons for French (Strasbourg, Calais, Dijon, Valénciennes, Amiens, Nantes, Le Havre, Montpellier, Limoges…) and Italian cities (Torino, Genoa, Cagliari, Bari, Naples, Reggio di Calabria, Bologna, Perugia, Udine, Parma…).
Metropolitan areas in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Seville were extended as well.
There are some major uncovered areas in central Edinburgh at the moment, but I suppose they’ll get to them eventually. It’s weird seeing a place I was visiting only last week – makes me wonder why I went!
If you look on Lawnmarket (Royal Mile, near Bank St.), you can see another car behind you with what appears to be a camera rig on top. If that’s another Google Street View car… not as funky as the VWs in America, I suppose. http://bit.ly/zfK36
It looks to me as though some other countries got updates as well. There are areas in France with far more coverage than previously and there are several smaller cities in Italy that weren’t covered previously either. The western half of Paris (west of La Defense) and the area around Brest are two good examples in France. Italian city examples would be Bologna, Perugia, and Catania.
Also, I think the US coverage has increased. Missouri and Wisconsin are much more fleshed out, as are Washington and possibly Oregon. Columbia, MO would be an example there.
In England it seems that the license plates are not blured. For example: http://tinyurl.com/dk5umw
Lucky bastards. I wounder will Serbia ever get any of the cool features in GE. Aahhh…
Peter, the system is not perfect and it misses some licence plates, but the majority have been blurred.
It even works on cars on billboards! :p
Launch of Street View in the UK caused a 40% upsurge in traffic on Google Maps, plus the predictable novelty and privacy complaints – see this BBC news item
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7954596.stm
Around 25% of the UK population is now covered on SV, mainly the largest urban areas. But Scunthorpe is included, which is odd for those who know the place, and, even more oddly, there is now extensive SV coverage in very rural areas north of Aberdeen still obscured by cloud in GE imagery.
At times, SV stutters and freezes in GE, which may be due to low bandwidth in the UK, and nothing to do with SV itself.
The Dakotas and Minnesota got a big streetview update. A number of principal highways have imagery (e.g. I-29 from Fargo south to SD); several towns have their first passes through (Huron and Mitchell SD for examples), and some towns that just had 1 pass through or no coverage (e.g. Lisbon ND, Valley City ND, Moorhead MN) before have full coverage now.
The picture of the car i mentioned was taken offline by google. Like many others. Seems that the db had to be cleaned up. 🙂
One thing I’m curious about is this quote from the Press Association: “The firm added US Google Maps posted an 84% increase in visits as British web users began checking out places in America.” Why would they just now be checking out America? Have the British not had access to Street View for America as well as other SV locations all along? I hate to expose my ignorance, but it never occurred to me Street View wasn’t available to anyone with access to Google Maps. And if it has been available, why the sudden interest in American locations?
@Claudia64: Most likely the version of Maps for the UK (at maps.google.co.uk) did not have the Street View tab enabled since there weren’t Street Views available for the UK.
Claudia 64: in addition to Frank,s explanation about the lack of the tab – although of course a GE user in the UK had the SV layer – the launch of SV in the UK was coupled with the first extensive publicity in the media, and there remains a high level of interest in all things to do with the US.
The UK version of the Google maps page also shows where there is SV coverage in nearby mainland Europe (see screen shot above) which might also have got people looking at SV in places like Amsterdam and Paris.
could any one tell me why on google earth the birds eye few of my town is pics from at least 8-9 years ago?
Just a heads up Frank, the Google van is around Cheltenham right now, http://www.bullsworld.net/2009/05/28/google-steetview-reaches-cheltenham-uk/
I saw your camera car a couple of months ago in weston super mare when can we expect streetview available?