Google now lets you create your own Street View maps using Photo Sphere or your dSLR camera
Google has unveiled a new way to allow anyone to create their own personalized Street View map of their location. The company states in a blog post that a Street View experience can be created …
Context & Ripple Effects
Street View has been Google's most capital-intensive map layer — built by cars and trikes it owns and drives itself. The December 2013 move opens that layer up: anyone can now assemble a Street View experience from Photo Sphere panoramas or a dSLR, no Google fleet required.
The idea has been circling since 2012, when CNET covered a DIY streetview camera promising 'you be Google,' and The Next Web reported Google Maps stitching landmark tours out of users' own photos. What changes this week is official sanction: Google is publishing user-captured panoramas under the Street View brand itself, and the story travelled widely on day one — picked up by PC World, the Guardian, Gizmodo, Digital Trends and others alongside Google's own Lat Long blog.
First-order effects
- Owners of dSLRs and Android phones running Photo Sphere can publish their own locations as Street View experiences, putting interiors, trails and small-business spaces onto Google Maps that Google's own fleet would never reach.
Second-order effects
- Rival mapping efforts face pressure to match a crowdsourced imagery pipeline whose marginal cost per mile approaches zero, while camera and panorama-accessory makers gain a consumer use case pitched against Google's own capture hardware.
Third-order effects
- If contribution volume holds, Google's role shifts from capturing the world's imagery to curating and moderating it — making upload quality, stitching standards and privacy review the real bottlenecks instead of fleet logistics.
The trend: Street-level mapping is shifting from company-operated capture fleets to user-contributed panoramas, turning Google's imagery moat into an open contribution pipeline.