Google Street View Arrives In Antarctica

Google has extended its popular Street View mapping service to cover all seven continents, incorporating new images from Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica.

Among the new additions are spectacular shots of Chinstrap penguins on Half Moon Island in Antarctica and views of the famous Copacabana beach in Brazil. As the service grows, Google expects more people to use it as an educational resource as well as a mapping tool.

“We often consider Street View to be the last zoom layer on the map, and a way to show you what a place looks like as if you were there in person – whether you’re checking out a coffee shop across town or planning a vacation across the globe,” wrote Brian McClendon, vice president of engineering for Google Earth and Maps, on the Google blog.

“We hope this new imagery will help people in Ireland, Brazil, and even the penguins of Antarctica to navigate nearby, as well as enable people around the world to learn more about these areas.”

Google’s new Street View images can also be viewed using a supported smartphone.

Street View growth

Google Street View launched in May 2007, with the aim of enabling people to explore street-level imagery in five cities in the US. Since then the site has grown to include 360-degree panoramic views of towns and country roads in counties around the world, allowing users to explore neighbourhoods and find landmarks from afar.

Over the last six months, however, Street View has become embroiled in a privacy controversy that threatens to tarnish Google’s reputation in the long term. On 14 May, Google admitted that its Street View cars had unwittingly collected more than 600GB of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks around the world, provoking outrage from governments and privacy advocates.

Google is currently subject to ongoing investigations by Scotland Yard, the US Federal Trade Commission and European regulators. However, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) examined samples of the data collected by Google in July, and concluded that it was free of any “meaningful personal details”.

Back on British roads

This resulted in the return of Street View to UK roads in August – minus their Wi-Fi antennas. Street View cars are also back in action in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. But not all countries have welcomed Street View back with open arms. In September, for example, Czech data protection authorities rejected an application by Google to collect personal data for its mapping service.

“We have in place robust procedures to protect privacy,” a Google spokesperson told eWEEK Europe at the time. “We’ll continue to engage in constructive dialogue with the DPA to answer any other questions they have.”

Meanwhile, Google’s South Korean headquarters were raided in August by police looking for evidence of illegally stored data, seizing hard drives and related documents. The company has had to deny reports that it was experimenting with spy drones or UAVs, typically used by special forces or the police. The service is also being probed by Spanish authorities, following a complaint filed in June by private internet watchdog Apedanica.