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Google Street View Arrives in France

Franck Mée
October 20, 2008 9:47 AM
If you've been planning a trip to Paris, then you might have noticed a new option in Google Maps--Street View has arrived on the streets of the French capital.

After a popular trial that covered the route of 2008's Tour de France cycle race, the system is now available for almost all of Paris and some of its suburbs, as weel as Lyon, Marseille, Nice and Toulouse.

You can now check out street cafés, shopfronts and historic sights as if you were wandering through the city yourself.   The photos for Street View are taken at the height of around two meters from the top of a moving car before being stitched together, and the overall effect is a bit like taking a bus ride down the rues and boulevards.
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Streets are indicated clearly, and you can navigate using the arrows.  In this screenshot of 136 rue d'Aubervielliers (it's actually 134, but Google only claim an adresse approximative so we'll let them off), you can follow the road north or south using the white arrows.

While it's great fun to check out the places you already know, the system is also useful for navigation.  Whether you look before you go or from the screen of a smartphone, the ability to look out for landmarks that aren't necessarily included on a map--a café for instance, or a clump of trees--can help find your way.

Privacy Concerns

For this French version, Google has chosen to blur out the faces of passers-bt in their photos.

By doing so, they hope to avoid some of the uncomfortable publicity which followed the launch of Street View in the USA.

Several people complained about an invasion of their private life after discovering themselves in the Google Maps web application, or in its desktop cousin, Google Earth.


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