Google Maps underwent a major redesign today and the new street view is pretty fantastic. Now users can drag a little human figure named "Pegman" over any streets that light up blue and get a preview of Street View for that location. When Pegman lands, the whole map view turns into a Street View viewer and there's a button to expand that view to take up the whole horizontal length of your browser.
These are very welcome changes that really help take advantage of the eye candy that is Street View in Google Maps. There's a whole lot of changes that were made today, all with the long-term fight for map users and their ad-viewing eyeballs in mind we're sure. Today's changes are great, though.
Map search is a heated competition between Google, Microsoft, MapQuest (now with OpenID, by the way) and a handful of other consumer market competitors. That competition goes on in both features like this and in image quality.
Why invest time and resources into making map search interfaces better? Because someday this is expected to be a very commercialized part of search. Once this kind of experience becomes widely available on touch-screen mobile devices, expect to see ads all over and even more innovation come to online mapping.
Comments
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It looks a lot like the version that's on the iPhone now. Very cool, very slick. It's not a stretch to imagine all the amazing things you'll be able to do with geotagging, etc in the near future.
Posted by: Mark Schoneveld | November 25, 2008 2:44 PM
Man, Google's Street View continues to amaze me. First, we get it on our computers, then the iPhone, and now they improve it even more... not really looking forward to seeing ads on the maps, but I don't doubt it's coming
Posted by: John | November 25, 2008 2:47 PM
This is what I like most about Google. Really impressive!
Bye!
Posted by: Make money business | November 26, 2008 3:51 AM
Nice, although there doesn't seem to be anything blue in London
Posted by: Jim Hawkins
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November 26, 2008 5:14 AM
Cool! Now, I can't wait untill they get the UK Street View Data Online!
htp://streetviewgallery.corank.com
Posted by: Mapper99 | November 26, 2008 6:07 AM
Looks like some good changes. In times past, I never really liked google's mapping system.
Posted by: Soap Nuts Natural Laundry Detergent | November 26, 2008 9:20 PM
i dont like the new changes in google street is very hard to see what places have street view
Posted by: me | November 27, 2008 5:11 AM
Redesigns are fine, but it’s unfortunate they aren’t the changes for which concerned parents are actually asking. They are, however, asking that images of children and areas where they congregate be taken down from Street View. Internet predators already abuse applications like MySpace and Facebook, let’s not give them another tool to reach our kids. Especially one that provides 360 degree views of our neighborhoods, where kids can be memorialized in association with a physical address
Posted by: Stacie Rumenap | December 1, 2008 12:09 PM
PATENT REQUEST:-) "SYSTEM AND METHOD OF GEOGRAPHIC AND LINGUISTIC ORIENTATION TO FACILITATE THE NAVIGATION IN THE INTERNET"
* Published -- with international search report
* Copyright © 2000 - Patent Pending 8 march 2000: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/ia.jsp?ia=IB2001/000339
* It's more of 5 years global internet antecipation.
Posted by: Carlos Lagemann | December 3, 2008 10:49 AM
The new changed to Street View make it much harder to determine which streets have a street view. You all know we used to be able to just click the Street View button and everywhere it was available turned blue. Now, you have to enable it and hope for the best.
Unless I am missing something in the configuration or use of the product.
It's a little better but they dropped an important nugget of functionality that they shouldn't have in my opinion.
Posted by: Anony Mous | December 10, 2008 1:40 PM