News on the Google Street View UK Launch

Thursday, 19th March 2009 by

Since the discovery last night that Street View had been launched in the UK, things have been developing at tremendous speed! The entire web seems to be talking about Street View, and Twitter mentions are happening so fast that we can barely keep up. In total 25 UK cities have received coverage:

  • England: Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, York
  • Northern Ireland: Belfast
  • Scotland: Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow
  • Wales: Cardiff, Swansea.

The BBC claims that 22,369 miles of roads have been imaged in the UK alone, which has taken a year to complete. Interestingly Google appear to have already begun the next stage of the process, as camera cars have been spotted in the last few days in more rural locations, as well as countries that still have no coverage at all.

However The Guardian claims that the biggest challenge in the project was was actually the British weather last summer - as the cars' cameras are rendered useless by rain and snow.1

We've been posting loads of things onto our Twitter feed already, but here's a roundup of some of the best ones seen... so far!

Here's the best available view of Anthony Gormley's awesome Angel of the North in Tyneside:

Qantas managed to get themselves some bonus coverage for their sky advertising stunt in Liverpool:

Twitter users all over the country have been finding themselves:

Here's a couple of Londoners who might not want to be seen in public after this. The one wearing antlers is apparently comforting the other guy, who appears to be puking into a pint glass... Classy.

Also in London, many famous pieces of art have been captured, alongside this rather poignant piece by UK super-graffiti-artist Banksy:

In Cardiff a couple has had their happy day recorded for the world to see, and a van man on his lunch makes his feeling known:

In Bristol the car has captured a nasty looking bike crash in progress:

Also, Google have announced that hidden somewhere in the UK imagery is the stripy-jumpered Wally - of Where's Wally? fame! I imagine there will be vast competition to be the person that finds him!

Our very own Rob Witherow submitted this in an attempt to take the crown of Ultimate Google Street View Sightseer, but somehow we think the real Wally will be slightly more... 3-dimensional!

Street View launched in the US in May 2007 and is already available in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain and Italy. The Netherlands version of the service also launched yesterday, bringing the total number of countries covered to nine, and where some images have already started being removed! Presumably as the guys at Google use sites like this one as filters to spot any dodgy imagery...

Thanks to Stuey, Rob Maddison and the whole of Twitter!

  1. For those of you unfamiliar with UK weather; rain and snow are both common during our summer months. ↩︎

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Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.