If you are like me, you spend a lot of down time poking around Google Maps, looking at the Street View, trying to imagine yourself somewhere else. I would like to go back to Europe, for example, and I find myself looking, perhaps too often, checking out the Street View in Norway or, more recently, Thailand and South Korea.
That’s right, Thailand and South Korea. I was surprised to see them show up on Street View as well, but I loved it. I remember thinking of how exciting it was (because I am a nerd. This whole post should have had that disclaimer) to have the Twin Cities on Street View. I think everyone was fairly intrigued by it, mostly trying to see if they could find their cars or their friends (before Google introduced face blurring technology). I still am intrigued by it, and enjoy seeing all these new places. I wanted to see if there were any other areas that I might have missed, and I noticed a trend among the additions to Google Street View.
It started with a bunch of American Cities (Minneapolis was in rollout 4), and was that way until 2008, almost a year after the feature was released, Google went international… to France and a small part of Italy, showing the Tour de France route. They worked their way through parts of Europe, before venturing to Australia, New Zealand and Japan through the rest of the year and into 2009
In 2009, a new wave of Street Viewing began. Google started looking at some tourist attractions (Disney Land Paris) but also hiking and biking trails in California. Two months later, they added a pair of race tracks. The next month, they added a handful of stadiums in Japan. And when I say that, I mean you can actually walk around some of these stadiums. I just Street Viewed the grounds of the Sapporo Dome.
The pedestrian Street View really started to take off. Many landmarks across Europe, as well as more theme parks in the US were mapped. Ahead of the 2010 Winter Olympics, then Google Maps went ahead and mapped the various venues for the Games… including the actual ski runs.
Later that year, with the World Cup headed for South Africa, Google made it’s first foray into South Africa… including all the stadiums used to host games. Not only did they cover the grounds of the stadiums of South Africa, but they started going inside the stadium, “walking the field”. They also started spending more time in depth at museums in South Africa, while mapping many of the cities that hosted the games.
When they made their first foray into Germany, they hit tourist attractions first, but also hit a handful of soccer stadiums. Much of 2011 was dedicated to bringing art and museums (including the National Museum of Iraq, which blows my mind) to the masses. They have continued to expand their reach across the world. Some of the most recent additions were Poland and the Ukraine, in particular, the host cities for the Euro tournament. The most recent addition was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
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