The Long-Awaited Street View Update of August 09

Wednesday, 19th August 2009 by

Yesterday Google finally announced the launch of some fantastic new Street View imagery, covering Portugal, Switzerland and Taiwan. This means we can now use Street View to see some great previously featured sights, such as the current title holder of “world’s tallest completed building”, Taipei 101.1

As part of the same announcement, imagery was unveiled of some slightly less traditional locations, including Laguna Seca Raceway, and Thunderhill Raceway Park, where the Street View car actually raced round the tracks.2

The remaining locations to receive imagery yesterday were even more unusual, San Diego State University and Legoland California. Both of these are fully pedestrianised, and the imagery was captured using the widely publicised Street View Trike.

Using the trike, Google captured some excellent images of Legoland California, many of which we’ve been linking to on our Twitter page – but there’s still lots to be found.

On the other hand, the imagery captured of San Diego State University is slightly less interesting. You might think that it would help entice students to the admittedly utterly picturesque California campus, but as far as we’re concerned, this looks like the most boring University campus in the world.

Why does nobody wave at the camera? Why is it that nobody chases the bike? Why do none of the students flash any naked body parts at the lenses? Naturally, not all students conform to the rowdy stereotypes we have in the UK, but why does nobody really react to the camera at all?

You might guess that they were all instructed not to react in advance, but even the people on guided tours don’t look very interested in the passing camera trike.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that the private properties mentioned here have been brought to your screens through the Street View Partner Program, which allows property managers to request that Google record images of their properties.

What other private places would you like to be able to take virtual tours of?

  1. Taipei 101 was previously featured on this site post completion in 2008 and under construction in 2006

  2. The Laguna Seca imagery was partially launched by accident earlier this year.