Now, Google is introducing an "immersive view" that fuses Street View images with artificial intelligence to create "a rich, digital model of the world"
Steven Silverman, senior technical program manager and manager of Imagery Solutions for Google, talks about the newest Google Street View Camera device that will be launched in 2023 at the Google Street View Garage in Mountain View, California. Image: Brittany Hosea-Small / AFP
Mountain View, United States: Fifteen years after its launch, a Google Maps feature that lets people explore faraway places as though standing right there is providing a glimpse of the metaverse being heralded as the future of the internet.
There was not yet talk of online life moving to virtual worlds when a "far-fetched" musing by Google co-founder Larry Page prompted Street View, which lets users of the company's free navigation service see imagery of map locations from the perspective of being there.
Now the metaverse is a tech-world buzz, with companies including Facebook parent Meta investing in creating online realms where people represented by videogame-like characters work, play, shop and more.
"Larry Page took a video camera and stuck it out the window of his car," Google senior technical program manager Steven Silverman said, while showing AFP the garage where the company builds cameras for cars, bikes, backpacks, and even snowmobiles dispatched to capture 360-degree images worldwide.
"He was talking to some of his colleagues at the time, saying, 'I bet we can do something with this.' That was the start of Street View."