Friday 23 March 2012

Google Street View comes to Poland

As of Wednesday, Google has activated Street View for Poland - or more precisely for major Polish cities and the roads linking them. (To see Street View go to Google.pl->Mapy; drag the little orange human icon to the upper-left on to the map; the areas highlighted in blue are covered by Street View (the blue dots are individual photos uploaded by users which can be looked at as well). Below: areas of Poland covered by Google Street View.

The beauty of Street View is the ability to take a virtual tour of a city or along a major highway, click by click. A marvellous way of getting to know a place, but hugely time-absorbing. Below: the centre of Warsaw - the Palace of Culture and its surrounding. Google photographed the city from June to August last year; note that Zlota 44 to the left of the Palace has not been topped off.

Below: out here on the perimeter, there are no Google Street Views more than a few hundred metres away from the main roads. Ul. Sarabandy (below) and Pozytywki are covered, but not Trombity. I'm not a privacy nut, but I'm sure that properties within Warsaw's borders not covered by Google Street View would command some price premium.

Google Street View is brilliant - so help yourself to a tour of the city; you can also virtually visit Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk/Tri-City - indeed, right out the the very end of the Hel peninsula - below; the furthest extent of Google Street View, where the footpath at the end of ul. Kuracyjna meets the beach.

It will be some time before Google comes back to Poland, the photos are already dating. Look at the public debt clock (below) on the corner of ul. Marszałkowska and Al. Jerozolimskie; some 72 billion zloty (€18 billion) less than it is as I write, a mere eight months on. Plenty of old advertising campaigns (that PKO BP one in the background), the 'Offices to let' sign hanging outside our office on ul. Nowogrodzka.

4 comments:

Suzy said...

Best bit is seeing Ewa smoking outside the old office :)

Michael Dembinski said...

Hey Suzy - you're right!

Tom said...

Michael,

Would you have any idea as to when this StreetView of Warsaw was shot. It looks like it may have been late summer (possibly early fall). Is there a way to specifically date it using the public debt clock?

Regards,

--Tom

Michael Dembinski said...

@ Tom,

It was a huge job, don't know how many cameras they had out there, but from memory, they were at it for spring-summer-autumn 2011. Looking at the foliage in the Jeziorki screen grab and the warm sunshine in the Hel one, I'd say those two were taken in mid to late July. Debt clock - don't know who keeps this data, but I'm sure someone does. Advertising billboard campaigns are another indicator (ad agencies would know when they ran specific billboards).