InsideGoogle

Google Maps Spreading Across The Globe

Google has updated Google Maps to include satellite images from many countries around the world.

I will now attempt to complete this post entirely with quotes from the many articles and posts on this topic:

Google Maps now supports Europe and other parts of the world too, albeit in little detail. [M]y hometown Aachen, Germany, works well. Maps now supports Australia and includes Satellite pictures of most cities (including Adelaide). I hope this is a precursor to including map information for Australia. Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch points out that you can now get satellite close-ups for European cities. He gives examples of Rome, Athens and Barcelona. I tried to check out our house in Ireland, but it’s still a big, green, scary blob with squares. High Resolution Footage of Australia has Arrived. I could pick my own house out pretty easily!

Here’s detailed views of Rome, Athens and Barcelona. Here’s a global view that shows the world at low detail. Here’s a section of Italy with better detail, but still no resolution of things like streets. But other areas have greater detail. Clearly a rollout of better maps has happened and may continue to. And we’re sure it’s not in reaction to MSN releasing aerial coverage in its own mapping product for the US earlier today. Looking for high detail maps? Gary found it easier to search for cities to get them, rather than to zoom in.

Google Maps now has satellite imaging for the UK. Unfortunately, it’s not very good. There’s two basic problems. The first is scale - the satellite imaging is not to the same scale as the maps. Horizontally they’re fine but vertically the images appear to have been shrunk - sure, you see more on the screen but it makes everything look out of proportion. The quality of the imaging varies across the country - there are ‘pockets’ of high quality imaging in places like London and Manchester, which is up to the same standard as the US imaging and much better than that of Multimap. Unfortunately all of their Yorkshire mapping is low quality, so while you can get up close and personal with the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, Bradford is just a dull blur. Make of that what you will.

Google adds satellite images to UK maps from Netimperative covers the recent addition of satellite imagery to Google Maps UK. How far you can can zoom in? Like with US satellite imagery, it depends on the specific location. For example, here’s the London Eye (I’ve zoomed-in as far as possible). However, this is the highest level of detail available for the Stonehenge area. Danny’s house, about two miles away, can’t be seen. Neither can the 20,000 people who celebrated the summer solstice there this morning. But that would have required real-time aerial coverage. 192.com also provides free access to aerial imagery for the UK.

Yeah, that is the type of “meta-article” EPIC was talking about. A bit of a mess, but you get all the info. So, I’m thinking Google prepped this update for the release of MSN Search Local with satellite maps. I’m also thinking they needn’t bother, since MSN’s isn’t good enough yet (read my unimpressed review). Soon Google Maps will rule over the entire earth. I really need to take a look at Google Earth one of these days…
(a lot of links via Findory)

June 22nd, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Microsoft, General | one comment