Google Adds Street View to Mobile Devices

22 September 2008, 2:40pm

Google has consistently touted Street View’s ability to help find addresses or plan entire trips, and has been steadily upgrading its Google Maps for mobile applications since 2007. They added free ‘walking’ directions and the ability to find street-view imagery on a mobile device. Google presented Street View on an Android mobile phone in May and it is now available for BlackBerry phones and several others.

The improvements to Google Maps incorporate greater accuracy with cell tower geolocation. The latest version of Google Maps for Mobile (GMM), announced on Wednesday, also added Street View business reviews, as well as walking directions, both features currently available on the desktop version. Google said the new version is faster too. According to the company’s Mobile Blog, the benefit of Street View is that a user can see a photo or another image of the location, such as a restaurant storefront.

Michael Siliski, the service’s product manager, wrote in a recent blog post that GMM could be used to see the image of a storefront after finding the store through a Google search on a handset. “You can also launch Street View from any address where we have photography, or simply by clicking on the map and selecting ‘Street View’,” he wrote. “You can browse Street View overlaid on the map or in full screen, rotate your view to see more of your surroundings, and move along the street.”

The new features seamlessly functions on BlackBerry’s with colour screens and on mobile devices with Java abilities. However, visiting the Google site with an iPhone produces this message: “Sorry, Google Maps does not work on your Apple iPhone.”

The latest announcement is in addition to earlier news of an upgrade to Google’s mobile My Location feature, first launched in November 2007, which provides greater accuracy in determining a mobile user’s location. Google uses data about a mobile user’s location from cell towers, and the information was not always precise - sometimes off by as much as 1000 metres.

Street View is currently available only for selected locations in the US, France, Italy, Australia and Japan. The service involves camera-equipped Google cars driving around mainly urban areas, photographing the views that a driver or walker would see as they travel down the street.

Google is expected to launch Street View in the UK by the end of the year, although a specific date has not yet been announced. Google’s vehicles have been spotted photographing parts of the country, and the Information Commissioner has given an all-clear signal to the service, despite protests by privacy campaigners.

Source: Abhijeet Kashyap in eBrandz Technology news

Google Mobile

Read the full news item at eBrandz

Geo: International