Google Beefs Up Street View Exploration

In June, Google unveiled the collection’s first-ever photographic contributions taken in the Arab world and from the top of the world’s tallest skyscraper, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Global Sights

The images at Burj Khalifa allow online visitors to get a taste of what it is like to stand on top of the tallest building in the world, according to Google. This is the first time Google has captured skyscraper images using Street View. In the new images, virtual visitors can experience the view from the highest occupied floor in the world on the building’s 163rd floor, and they can also experience being in the fastest-moving elevators in the world, which operate at 22 mph. Visitors can even see the highest swimming pool in the world on the 76th floor.

Earlier in June, Google added images of 1,000 additional famous locations around the world with new images from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the United States and Canada. The images are being provided to offer more information to viewers as they plan vacations or simply explore the world from their Web browsers, according to Google.

Google’s Street View image collection has been growing regularly since its debut in 2007.

In March, Street View added spectacular images of the world’s tallest mountain peaks, including Everest and Kilimanjaro, to its ever-expanding collection of photos from destinations around the globe.

Also in March, a Street View crew collected and released a collection of haunting images of the Japanese town of Namie-machi. The photos were taken to document the evacuated town two years after radiation leaked from a nearby nuclear power plant following the 11 March, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan.

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Originally published on eWeek.