Google Street View is amazingly popular in Canada. In 2009 alone, Canadians have viewed over 150 million street level images in countries where Street View has been available. Now we finally have it at home.
Street View image of Vancouver's Lions Gate Bridge
Google Canada has announced the availability of Google Street View in 11 Canadian cities: Vancouver, Whistler, Squamish, Banff, Calgary, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax. 49, 400 kilometers of roads have been covered so far. Disappointing to me is that Winnipeg isn’t on this list despite the fact that Street View cars have been spotted mapping my hometown.
Personally I’d like to know why Winnipeg isn’t on the list with the initial launch. Canada’s privacy commission has been rather outspoken about some of the privacy implications of Street View since Google began mapping the country. I wonder if this has something to do with Winnipeg’s absence from the launch list.
Google says that other Canadian cities will be added to Street View in the near future so hopefully we’ll see Winnipeg then. If not, I’d appreciate it if someone in the know would let me know if there is some legality standing in the way. I wouldn’t mind starting a local lobby group to get our imagery liberated online! We could use a Vancouver-like open data initiative.
Since Google Street View arrived in May 2007 with 5 American cities, it has grown exponentially to include a full 15 countries. Aside from Canada and the United States, Google Street View is also available in the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and Australia.