Google revealed for the first time the area of the world that it photographed for more than a decade until now for its projects represented by Street View and Google Earth through its fleet of Steet View vehicles equipped with cameras and other devices, in addition to clarifying the amount of work done by those cars And other devices to map the world.
According to Google, the company has covered more than 10 million miles of Street View imagery and a total of 36 million square miles of Google Earth Maps imagery for people to browse, and the search giant said: This distance is enough to spin around the Earth more than 400 times.
The company has a huge fleet of vehicles roaming the world to collect street-level imagery, but also uses boats, sheep, and camels to help collect images from remote locations that cars cannot reach.
Ethan Russell, product manager at Google Maps, said: “Images are at the core of everything we do, and we think of that as the basis for the entire mapping process, and Google Earth’s number is particularly impressive, as the search giant shows that it now covers the parts of the world that lives It has 98 percent of people on the planet.
Russell emphasized that Google Maps images are among the public places that a person sees while standing on the street or flying overhead, adding that all the high-quality satellite imagery obtained by the company comes from a variety of service providers.
And the 10 million mile Street View imagery puts Google miles away from its competitors like Apple, which has just begun to include similar street-level photos in Apple Maps with the release of iOS 13 this year. But Apple has a long way to go before it reaches millions of miles like Google.
These numbers represent the first time that Google issues numbers about the world’s area that its services have drawn, providing an insight into the scope of Google Maps, with more than one billion users per month, its maps service is one of the company’s most popular products, in addition to being a powerful means For the search giant to provide local ads.
Moreover, these numbers highlight Google’s efforts to accurately index the entire world in its applications and services, and even if the user does not use Street View imagery or satellite imagery in Google Earth on a daily basis, it is still a large part of Google Maps.
It is noteworthy that Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, who resigned from his position as CEO of Alphabet Company (Google’s parent company) earlier this month, developed the feature “Street View” in 2004, and the aim was to create a map in 360 technology A world score that crosses streets and highways to include alleys, landmarks and mountain ranges.
Source : Google
