Are you a business owner?
If you are a business owner in any of these locations, joining the program is easy. Simply hire a Trusted Photographer or Agency in your area to take pictures of your business. Using Street View technology, the photographer will then create panoramic images from the photo shoot and upload them into Google. These images will be available automatically to anyone who searches for your business on Google.com, Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile and on your Google+ page or Places for Business listing. If a local photographer isn’t yet available in your neighborhood, let us know and we’ll do our best to find a photographer for you.
Photographers can also sign up...
And whether you’re a professional photographer or photography agency we’d love to have you on board! We are actively recruiting more Trusted Photographers and Agencies to help us bring imagery of local businesses online for millions across the globe to see. Please visit our website for Trusted Photographers and Trusted Agencies to learn more and sign up.
Posted by Deborah Schenker, Program Manager, Google Business Photos
Tour the 9/11 Memorial
The 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site is a moving tribute to those who lost their lives in the attacks on New York City, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA. Panoramic images of the North and South pools allow you to see victims’ names engraved along the edges of the pools. If you aren’t able to visit lower Manhattan to pay your respects in person, let Street View be your guide to this important and moving memorial.
Explore Central Park
It’s hard to find a more beloved piece of the city than Central Park. In partnership with the Central Park Conservancy, our Street View crew went all around park collecting 360-degree imagery of its trails, paths, and plazas, to bring views of both famous and little-known areas of the park to your browser or mobile phone.
As a lifelong New Yorker, I’ve seen the city change a lot over the years. This collection showcases some of what has changed -- but also what hasn’t: in spite of the challenges, New York City continues to be a symbol of the American dream, an inspiration to people around the globe and an ongoing source of pride for New Yorkers like me.
Mapping with Google is a self-paced, online course developed to help you better navigate the world around you by improving your use of the new Google Maps, Maps Engine Lite, and Google Earth. All registrants will receive an invitation to preview the new Google Maps.
Through a combination of video and text lessons, activities, and projects, you’ll learn to do much more than look up directions or find your house from outer space. Tell a story of your favorite locations with rich 3D imagery, or plot sights to see on your upcoming trip and share with your travel buddies. During the course, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from Google experts and collaborate with a worldwide community of participants, via Google+ Hangouts and a course forum.
Mapping with Google will be offered from June 10 - June 24, and you can choose whether to explore the features of Google Maps, Google Earth, or both. In addition, you’ll have the option to complete a project, applying the skills you’ve learned to earn a certificate. Visit g.co/mappingcourse to learn more and register today.
The world is a big place, we like to think that you can make it a bit more manageable and adventurous with Google’s mapping tools.
What if we told you that during your lifetime, Google could create millions of custom maps...each one just for you?
In the past, such a notion would have been unbelievable: a map was just a map, and you got the same one for New York City, whether you were searching for the Empire State Building or the coffee shop down the street. What if, instead, you had a map that’s unique to you, always adapting to the task you want to perform right this minute?
This is what you will have with the introduction of the new Google Maps – a mapping experience that helps you find places you never would have thought to search for.
The new Google Maps is full-screen and fully interactive
Every click draws a new map highlighting the things that matter most Like a friend drawing you a map to her favorite restaurant, with only the roads and landmarks you need to get there, the new Google Maps instantly changes to highlight information that matters most.
And the more you interact with the map, the better it gets. When you set your Home and Work locations, star favorite places, write reviews and share with friends, Google Maps will build even more useful maps with recommendations for places you might enjoy.
The map is tailored to you and gets better with use
Easier to find the best local places In addition to a customized map, we’ve also made it easier to uncover the best local gems. Search results are labeled directly on the map with brief place descriptions and icons that highlight business categories and other useful information – like restaurants that are recommended by your Google+ friends. Info cards provide helpful information such as business hours, and ratings and reviews so you can quickly decide where to eat, drink and play.
Search results appear labeled right on the map
Amazing imagery for exploring the world Of course, no map would be complete without amazing images for exploring the world. The new carousel gathers all Google Maps imagery in one spot enabling you to fly through cities, walk canyon trails, climb mountains, and even swim the oceans. And on a WebGL-enabled browser, like Google Chrome, the carousel is also where you'll find the Earth view which directly integrates the beautiful 3D experience from Google Earth into the new maps.
Earth view brings full 3D to the browser
There’s so much more to discover, including smarter directions and tours generated from user-submitted photos. It’s the biggest change we’ve made to Google Maps since we launched eight years ago. In case you didn’t catch all of that, here’s a quick tour
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The quest to build the perfect map will never be over, but we’re excited about the steps we’re taking towards building the next generation of maps. Please visit this page to request an invite and we hope you have fun with the new Google Maps.
Happy exploring,
Bernhard Seefeld, Google Maps Product Management Director & Yatin Chawathe, Google Maps Engineering Director
The images were collected as part of an ongoing joint mission between the USGS and NASA called Landsat. Their satellites have been observing earth from space since the 1970s—with all of the images sent back to Earth and archived on USGS tape drives that look something like this example (courtesy of the USGS).
We started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.
As the final step, we worked with the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, recipients of a Google Focused Research Award, to convert these annual Earth images into a seamless, browsable HTML5 animation. Check it out on the Google’s Timelapse website.
Much like the iconic image of Earth from the Apollo 17 mission—which had a profound effect on many of us—this time-lapse map is not only fascinating to explore, but we also hope it can inform the global community’s thinking about how we live on our planet and the policies that will guide us in the future. A special thanks to all our partners who helped us to make this happen.
Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google Earth Engine & Earth Outreach
The mathematical problem posed an interesting challenge: find a route through Kaliningrad—which was once separated by the Pregel River—by crossing each of the seven bridges in town. The catch? One could only cross each bridge exactly once.
This sketch shows the town’s original seven bridges in green (Source: Wikipedia)
In 1735, Leonhard Euler, one of the most prolific mathematicians of all time and our recent Doodle subject, concluded that there was no solution to the problem because it was impossible to find a route that would cross each bridge only once. This famous problem and Leonhard Euler’s non-resolution paved the way for important discoveries in the field of mathematics including graph theory and topology.
Fast forward 278 years to today where we still rely on Euler’s findings to calculate optimal driving routes for our Street View cars. We use sophisticated algorithms, based on graph theory, to determine the best route through a city or town—helping us capture all the images we need in the shortest amount of time. Though these algorithms are complex, in simple terms, it's equivalent to solving the problem of drawing a house without lifting your pen and never going over the same segment twice. Like this:
(Source: Vincent Furnon, Google Operations Research Team)
While the bridges of Königsberg may be one of Kaliningrad’s most famous landmarks, you can also explore other parts of this historic town with Street View—including the oldest building in the city, the Juditten Church, which was built before 1288, and King’s Gate, one of the city’s original six gates built during the 19th century.
Today, it’s traditional for newly married couples to hang engraved padlocks on one of the original seven bridges of Königsberg - View Larger Map
In other words, leave the mathematics to the mathematicians and just enjoy the scenery with Street View!
Posted by Daniele Rizzetto, Operations Manager, Street View
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