Google Street View - Development

Development

Google Street View was introduced in the United States on May 25, 2007 and, until November 26, 2008, featured camera icon markers, each representing at least one major city or area (such as a park), and usually the other nearby cities, towns, suburbs, and parks. Many areas that had coverage were not represented by icons.

• On May 12, 2008, Google announced that it was testing face-blurring technology on its photos of the busy streets of Manhattan. The technology uses a computer algorithm to search Google's image database for faces and blurs them, according to John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps.
• On April 16, 2008, Street View was fully integrated into Google Earth 4.3.
• On July 2, 2008, Street View was introduced in France and Italy, providing the first service outside the United States and the debut of Google's new 4th Generation Cameras.
• On August 4, 2008, 28 icons of major metropolitan areas of both Australia and Japan were added.
• On December 1, 2008, New Zealand was added to Google Street View. Faces were blurred upon recommendation by the New Zealand Privacy Commission.
• Two other features included in the June 10, 2008, update were a mask of the "Google Car" and the application of face-blurring technology on all photos.
• On November 26, 2008, the Street View button and all the camera icons were removed. Instead of clicking the "Street View" button, this is now accessed using the "pegman" button in the left hand corner. When the "pegman" icon is dragged over the map blue polylines appear where Street View is available and a small window will show the current Street View. If this is dropped on the map the Street View opens and takes over the whole map window.
• On April 9, 2009, Street View became available with a full-screen option.
• On June 5, 2009, Smart Navigation was introduced which allows users to navigate around the panoramas by double-clicking with their cursor on any place or object they want to see.
• On January 14, 2012, users of versions lower than Google Earth 6.0 are blocked from seeing Street View content. This is done to promote version 6.
• In November 2012, Google invited users to contribute panoramas of their own using gadgets with Android 4.2. Google highlights user-contributed panoramas with blue circle icons on Maps. The company also created a website to highlight places in the world where you can find them.