Check http://maps.google.com.au
Great technology and the launch is sure to be fuelling office conversations (or diminishing office productivity) today as everyone looks for their house ... but my question is ... what's the actual use of street view for Joe Public?
Personally I can't see how it fits into the Google manifesto.
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Maybe real estate, check out the street you are looking at a house in to see if there is anything negative or positive?
Yep Nik, Youc ould check out your potential neighbours befor eyou go check out the house.
Or you could use it as a travel replacment. Who needs to visit Rodeo Drive when you can just google map there instead!
Another consideration is how you monetise this service. Does Google need another function they can't generate revenue from?
A rather astonishing email came in from Fairfax today, proclaiming: "We're really excited to announce the arrival of Street View on Domain.com.au.".
How they can stoop so low to spam their database to herald the arrival of a google feature that just happens to be visible on their own site, well, I guess it says something about where fairfax is at.
The win for google here is that it keeps their competitors floundering. Just like multi-gigabyte email storage, and google earth, it may not deliver any direct revenue but it ties up plenty of competitor executive headspace and R&D resources working out if and how they should respond, or trying to guess what google's going to do next. It's a little like landing on the moon; in practical terms it doesn't achieve a whole lot, but it sends a clear message to the world. Nothing reinforces their corporate objective "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" like having a photo of everyone's house.
my favourite finding so far - Lakes Entrance
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