Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Indoors Street View Goes Live

Google has added the first interior Street Views of businesses to Google Maps.



Select businesses in the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand have volunteered to pose for the Google photographers. However, at the moment, the interior Street Views aren't implemented very well with Google Maps. Unless you have a direct link to the interior view it is very hard to find the available inside views of business.

The business Street View panoramas are not linked via arrows from the outdoors Street View. The only way to discover that an inside view exists is through the business page on Google Places. Even then it is a little difficult. You have to click on the photograph of the business that includes a little pegman icon.

The initial photograph however is usually an exterior view which links to an exterior view on Google Maps Street View, with again no way to access the interior view. So what you need to do is find the photograph with the little pegman icon and then press on the arrow to find an interior view. Then you can click on the photograph and you will be taken to the interior Street View on Google Maps.

Not exactly easy. I'm not sure why Google hasn't just added arrows from the exterior Street View to the interior view. I guess that will come eventually.



If you want to do a little on-line window shopping Google has put up a site showcasing the added businesses called Business Photos from Google.

Via: Google LatLong

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Google Maps is cool but there is the new thing coming out called City Maps. They are currently beta testing so go sign up and check out all that it can do! http://citymaps.com