Take off for the holidays with Google Street View

Whether it’s touring the canals of Venice, swimming with the seals in the Galapagos or climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Street View has taken you to some of the most beautiful and exciting places around the world.

Now, in addition to scoping out your destination, Street View can help you cut down the stress of traveling by giving you a preview of your journey, too. Our first efforts to map global transit locations include 16 international airports, over 50 train and subway stations, and even a cable car station in Hong Kong.

Here’s an interactive map so you can see the new Street View transit locations worldwide.

Now you can visit the check-in counter of your airline in Madrid, map out the way from baggage claim to the bus at Tokyo International Airport and check out where to pick up your rental car at Eindhoven Airport; you can even scope out your seat on an Emirates flight from Dubai!

Or, if you’re planning to take the train, navigate through Waterloo station so you can be one step ahead, whether you’re with a group of friends, family or a baby stroller.

Check in at Madrid Barajas, ES

Arrivals, Tokyo International Airport, JP

Eindhoven Airport, NL

Emirates A380 at Dubai Airport

Waterloo Station, London, UK

Don’t let travel logistics get you down this holiday season. With Street View, you can see how to get where you’re going faster and easier. Enjoy and safe travels!

Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Google Street View Program Manager

Take a hike with Street View through U.S. National Parks and Parks Canada

What do tents and hiking boots have in common? You don’t need either to start exploring or planning your next adventure to some of the best national parks and historical sites across North America.

Working with the U.S. National Park Service and Parks Canada, our Street View cars, trikes and Trekker mapped more than 44 locations with beautiful, 360 degree panoramas.

Leave your gear behind and still get a chance to marvel at the Sequoias in California. Or perhaps you’re looking for more adventure? Lookout to Signal Mountain in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, climb around California’s Joshua Tree National Park, or dip your toe into Moraine Lake in Banff, Canada.

Moraine Lake’s beautiful color comes from the light reflecting off rock flour at the bottom of the lake. (Wikipedia)

Getting tired? Take a break to watch the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world.

Old Faithful’s eruptions last 1 1/2 to 5 minutes, expel up to 8,400 gallons of boiling water, and can be as high as 184 feet. (Yellowstone National Park)

Or, let your inner history buff come out to explore monuments and fortresses across North America.

Brush up presidential facts as you check out the Lincoln Memorial or get a closer look at US presidents at Mount Rushmore. Take a moment to “Remember the Alamo” as you visit this battlefield in Texas or step inside the Halifax Citadel to investigate the city’s role as a key naval station in the British Empire. For a selection of our favorites, check out the Views collection.

Fifty-six pillars and a pair of small triumphal arches surrounding a plaza and fountain make up the humbling World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Take a moment to remember those that served at the Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial and National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Whether you’re planning your next adventure or just looking to be inspired by the beauty of the world from the comfort of your living room, we invite you to head over to Google Maps and let Pegman be your virtual guide to Street View. We hope you enjoy exploring the majestic scenery of North America’s national parks and monuments.

Posted by Evan Rapoport, Product Manager, Google Maps

Street View floats into Venice

Venice was once described as “undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man,” and from these pictures it’s hard to disagree. You can now explore panoramic imagery of one of the most romantic spots in the world, captured with our Street View Trekker technology.

It was impossible for us to collect images of Venice with a Street View car or trike—blame the picturesque canals and narrow cobbled walkways—but our team of backpackers took to the streets to give Google Maps a truly Shakespearean backdrop. And not just the streets—we also loaded the Trekker onto a boat and floated by the famous gondolas to give you the best experience of Venice short of being there.

Our Trekker operator taking a well-earned rest while the gondolier does the hard work

The beautiful Piazza San Marco, where you can discover Doge's Palace, St. Marks' Cathedral, the bell tower, the Marciana National Library and the clocktower

We covered a lot of ground—about 265 miles on foot and 114 miles by boat—capturing not only iconic landmarks but several hidden gems, such as the Synagogue of the first Jewish Ghetto, the Devil’s Bridge in Torcello island, a mask to scare the same Devil off the church of Santa Maria Formosa and the place where the typographer Manutius created the Italics font. Unfortunately, Street View can’t serve you a cicchetto (local appetizer) in a classic bacaro (a typical Venetian bar), though we can show you how to get there.

The Devil’s Bridge in Torcello Island

Once you’ve explored the city streets of today, you can immerse yourself in the beauty of Venice’s past by diving deep in to the artworks of the Museo Correr, which has joined the Google Cultural Institute along with Museo del Vetro and Ca’ Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art.

Click on a pin under "Take a Tour" to compare the modern streets with paintings of the same spots by artists such as Carpaccio and Cesare Vecellio

Or delve into historical maps of Venice, like this one showing the Frari Church, built in 1396

Finally, take a look behind the scenes showing how we captured our Street View imagery in Venice.

The Floating City is steeped in culture; it’s easy to see why it’s retained a unique fascination and romance for artists, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights and pilgrims through the centuries—and now, we hope, for Street View tourists too.

Posted by Daniele Rizzetto, Street View Operations Manager (and proud Venetian!)

Mapping the world’s deforestation over time

We’re excited to announce today that, in a collaboration led by Dr. Matthew Hansen at the University of Maryland, we’ve built the first detailed maps of the world’s forests, from 2000-2012, documenting and quantifying forest landscape changes such as fires, tornadoes, disease and logging.

The most significant findings were that the overall rate of tropical deforestation is increasing, and global forests have experienced a net loss of 1.5M sq km during 2000-2012 due to both natural (disturbance) and human causes. That’s a loss of forested land comparable in size to the entire state of Alaska.

Global Forest Change, 2000-2012: individual maps of forest extent, gain, loss, and loss color-coded by year. Click to enlarge.

Sumatra has lost over 50% of its natural forest within the past 30 years. Click to enlarge.

The detailed study was published today in the journal Science, High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change. Key to the study’s success was the collaboration between scientists at the University of Maryland, who developed the models to analyze Landsat satellite data, and computer scientists at Google, who then used Google Earth Engine technology to run these models on more than 650,000 Landsat images. While the analysis would have taken a single computer more than 15 years to perform, it was completed in a matter of days using Google Earth Engine.

Here are some other notable sites:

Paraguay’s Chaco woodlands within the western half of the country are experiencing rapid deforestation in the development of cattle ranches. The result is the highest rate of deforestation in the world. Click to enlarge.

The Siberian larch forests of Yakutia, Russia, are prone to fire during spring to early summer. Most of these fires are deliberately set and spread uncontrolled. Such extensive fires result in significant carbon emissions. Click to enlarge.

If you'd like to dive even deeper and learn more about this project, head on over to the Google Research blog post authored by Dr. Matt Hansen. Also, tune in next Monday, November 18 at 1:00pm ET, 10:00am PT to an online presentation and demonstration by Matt Hansen and colleagues from UMD, Google, USGS, NASA and the Moore Foundation. Please submit your questions for live Q&A.

Updated 3:30pm PDT: Corrected total sq km of net loss during 2000-2012.

Posted by Rebecca Moore and Matt Hancher, Google Earth Engine team

Meet nonprofits using “Geo for Good”

This week, we are excited to welcome this year’s group of nonprofit mapping specialists to the annual Geo for Good User Summit – a workshop hosted by the Google Earth Outreach team. The 4-day intensive workshop gives these do-gooder techies hands-on technical training with Google mapping tools and guidance with their projects. Out of the 75 participating organizations this year, there are some truly amazing stories to tell.

One of the attendees, Devin Dotson, is from the nonprofit American Rivers, focused on protecting and restoring the rivers of the United States. American Rivers uses maps to help tell the story of river conservation across the nation. Most recently, American Rivers made their annual announcement of the 10 rivers that are America’s Most Endangered Rivers in 2013. To illustrate these rivers, they released this map in the Google Earth Gallery, built using a Google Maps Engine software grant. The map allows the public to explore the map of the rivers and learn more about how to get involved by clicking each river.

American River’s map of America’s Most Endangered Rivers in 2013

Another Geo for Good participant is Lilian Pintea from the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). Lilian will be sharing JGI’s story about how they’ve used mapping technology on mobile devices to monitor chimpanzee populations, habitats and human threats with local communities in Tanzania. Using this data, JGI is able to engage local communities in protecting chimpanzees and share real-time information with the world through dynamic web maps using App Engine, Fusion Tables, Google Maps API, and Open Data Kit (ODK).

Learn how the Jane Goodall Institute uses Google mapping technology to protect chimpanzees

Returning to the Summit from last year is Daniel Orellana, representing the Charles Darwin Foundation. It was during last year’s Summit that Daniel was inspired to suggest that Charles Darwin Foundation work with Google Earth Outreach to bring Street View to the Galapagos. Since the imagery was launched in September, the Charles Darwin Foundation has been working on projects to use the images for science, conservation and education. One of these projects is Darwin for a Day, which allows the public to help identify plants and animals observed when navigating through the imagery.

Daniel Orellana of Charles Darwin Foundation wearing the Street View Trekker to capture Galapagos’s volcanic beauty

To learn about Google Earth Outreach and how you can use maps to make the world a better place, head to the Google Earth Outreach website. To find out about next year’s Geo for Good or other mapping workshops, follow Google Earth Outreach on Twitter.

Raleigh Seamster, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach

Tour Builder: Tell your stories with Google Earth

As we’ve worked with veterans and their family members on projects like Map The Fallen and VetNet, we’ve heard many amazing stories and seen how helpful storytelling can be. So we thought it might be useful to make a very simple storytelling tool. One hallway conversation led to a joint project between the Google Creative Lab and Google Earth Outreach, and today, in honor of Veterans Day, we’re excited to share Tour Builder—a simple tool for recording and sharing stories on a map.

Though originally inspired by veterans, we quickly realized that Tour Builder has the potential be a simple, useful tool for any aspiring storyteller. You could be a high school history teacher explaining the geography of the Revolutionary War, a musician updating your fans from the road, or a grandmother who wants to share her family’s story of service in WWII.

Creating a tour is easy: give it a name, add an introduction photo and a quick description. Then search the map for where your story begins and drop a placemark. Describe each place and embed photos & videos as you guide people through your story. You can dive into Street View or pick the perfect 3D view to show off your adventure.

For inspiration, just download Google Earth and explore our Gallery, which showcases some incredible journeys that have already been created using Tour Builder:

• Elizabeth O’Herrin’s story of service in the Air National Guard from Wisconsin to Afghanistan and back.
• The veterans of Team Rubicon who deploy emergency response teams following natural disasters like the Haiti earthquake
• Dr. Jane Goodall's multi-generational saga of the chimpanzee “G Family” and how her Institute is protecting endangered chimpanzees with high-tech tools
• BRAC’s efforts spreading anti-poverty solutions in 11 countries through the 100,000+ people they employ worldwide.

We invite you to try Tour Builder, and share your memories and stories with the people you love. Let us know what you think—we’d love to hear your ideas and feedback at tourbuilder-team@google.com for how Tour Builder could be a better storytelling tool and we’d love to see your tours.

Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all of the service members and military families, past and present, whose stories of service, patriotism, survival and achievement inspire us all.

Posted by Sean Askay, Google Earth Outreach, and Carrie Laureno, Google Creative Lab & Google Veterans Network

From where you are to where you want to go

As you gear up for the holidays, you can easily plan your vacation with the new Google Maps for desktop. With the latest updates, Earth Tours will take you on a virtual trip through cities and natural wonders in full 3D, while Street View imagery and real time traffic incidents will help to ensure smooth travels.

Explore the world with Pegman
Street View’s comprehensive imagery has always been a great way to preview your destination before arriving, but it's equally helpful when deciding where you want to go. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made it easier to find where Street View is available, so you can explore locations in over 50 countries around the globe.

To discover a world of imagery at your fingertips, look no further than Pegman – your guide through Street View – who you can find in the lower right corner of the screen. Click on Pegman, and areas with Street View imagery will light up in blue. For a street-level preview, hover over any highlighted road, then click to dive into that location.

To see a preview before you go, click on the highlighted map

As you zoom in, you’ll also see blue circles indicating where you can find user-uploaded photos, including Photo Spheres – immersive, 360º panoramas taken from land, air, and sea. Click on a yellow circle to see inside restaurants, museums, and more. With these features, you can explore an increasing variety of locations, inside and out.

And for the Pegman fans out there, you know he's a globetrotter. Jump over to Google+ now to submit your idea for his next adventure!

New blue and yellow circles show you where to find user-uploaded images and indoor photos

Get a bird’s-eye view with Earth Tours
Explore beautiful, 3D imagery of buildings and terrain for thousands of locations from above with Earth Tours available right in your browser.* Wherever you see the Earth Tour icon, you can click, sit back, and get a virtual tour from a soaring angle. Dive into Boston or circle the Alps.

*Available on WebGL-enabled browsers, like Chrome.

Get a 3D experience wherever you see the Earth Tour icon

Navigate the roads with confidence
Maneuvering an unfamiliar route can be tricky when turns, exits, or tolls appear without warning. With the new step-by-step preview, you can see a street-level snapshot of each decision point to know exactly where you’re going and what to expect. Just click “Preview steps” from the directions card and advance through for a quick study of your trip, including transfers for transit.

Click on the thumbnail in the directions preview for a closer look

Save time commuting and navigate the roads accurately with traffic incident reports – available on desktop and mobile. When you search for driving directions, you’ll now see congestion along the route and real time incidents on the map, including data reported by Waze.

Know the road conditions before you leave

These tools are designed to help you explore and effectively navigate your world. If you’ve opted into the new Google Maps preview, these features will start rolling out today – and in the coming weeks, more of you will begin to see the new Maps experience, which you can tour below.



Posted by Kelvin Ho, Product Manager, Google Maps