Within the past 24 hours, Google has implemented significant changes to its Street View service which ties in to the now mature Google Maps. Street View will now cover over 95% of Britain’s roads; a huge increase on the coverage available when Street View went live back in March 2009.

Originally covering 25 cities, and around 40,000 roads in the UK, this amazing system now shows interactive images of almost 250,000 UK streets and roads. Google Street View now provides an unprecedented level of imaging and mapping of the UK and these services are also available around much of the globe.

The hype surrounding these advancements has been overshadowed in recent months by calls for it to be shutdown. Some people regard it as an invasion of privacy, intruding in people’s personal lives and some even think it could be exploited by criminals.

However, Google has responded positively saying that it will help businesses; people can embed these services onto their web pages for free, helping prospective customers to find them more easily. With automatic face and number plate blurring, Google has gone a long way to protect the privacy of the public.

Using the latest technology, Google are able to capture thousands of separate images using Google Cars (and where needed, Google Tricycles!). With sets of cameras capturing groups of images at different points down roads, they create panoramic views. Combined with sophisticated software, they achieve the illusion of being able to walk down the streets and roads of the UK, right in your web browser.

A question does however spring to mind – why have they chosen to release the newly mapped areas all at once, rather than incrementally? To give us all Google fever – their viral approach to marketing features and services (pun intended!). So go ahead and take a look, see if you can find your road on Google Street View!

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