Category: Bing Streetside

Google has announced that they will not add any more cities than the 20 currently available on Street View in Germany. This comes as a surprise to many as Google recently won a legal battle in Germany for it’s Street View service. Competitor Microsoft Bing Maps is now starting to take photos for it’s Streetside in Germany. And is already getting complaints from germans.

I’m guessing Google will let Microsoft take some of the privacy complaints for a while in Germany. And then be back in a few years time?

Watch this video for some amazing matchups between Flickr and Bing StreetSide.

This tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to our Streetside imagery to show images matched to its original spatial context. Why is this cool? You’re now able to see what that club looks like at night (is it really THAT scary?), see if you’re really going to get a good sunset at that B&B you’re looking to book, or check out the crowds on a Saturday morning at Pike Place Market in Seattle or get a view of the same market from decades prior. (official Bing blog)

A car taking photos for Microsofts Bing Maps images, similar to Google StreetView, has been spotted in Vancouver, Canada today. When Bing will release images is not clear yet, but we hope it’s soon. Since they are now getting images from Vancouver, my guess is that it will be ahead of the winter Olympics in this city. I believe it will have a different name than “streetview” though.

(You can preview a very early version of it here. It was released several years ago, so the final version will surely look much better.)