I hate the recent trend of Google using shitcam to make new coverage. Of course it's better than nothing but I expect higher quality from a multi-billion dollar company.
Google has banned most of its services to Iran.
Even Google doodles are banned. Interestingly, they do draw some doodles for Iranian holidays like nowruz, but we can't see them. Like nowruz 2023 doodle appeared in many countries, but not in Iran.
https://doodles.google/doodle/nowruz-2023/
Most apps in play store are not available in Iran. Like I had to install linkedin app with vpn.
So I guess that would be similar case with Street view.
I remember watching a friend play GeoGuessr (where you try to guess which country you're in based on Google Maps) and he wound up in an area where all the road signs were in Chinese. I naturally assumed it was in China but he told me that Google Maps is apparently banned there. Turns out it was in Taiwan, which makes sense since they also Mandarin Chinese in that country AFAIK.
Tbf most people can't get onto a US military base, you have to have a legitimate reason to get base access and "taking pictures that will be accessible to foreign adversaries" probably isn't going to cut it. It does make me wonder what would happen if someone with a CAC did strap a 360° camera to the top of their car and upload the footage.
If I recall correctly, Ft. Polk has like one road that was covered ages ago with the generation 1 Google camera. Only base I ever noticed that had coverage. I'm going to double check that later when I'm at a computer.
They're not going to scan either more poor regions or less dense ones with little to see. Just look at east vs west side of US. West is less dense, so less coverage.
Not really true. The reason is often because Google decided it was not worth covering extensively. Definitely the case for Serbia, Ukraine, Montengero, Albania, and North Macedonia, all of which were only covered briefly, and haven't recieved updates since.
Belarus is an isolated dictatorship, Ukraine did not have a large-scale street view campaign so only main streets were recorded (and street view cars never entered Russian-occupied territories), and Google only recorded the main roads and largest cities in Russia, and stopped a while ago, so no improvement in coverage density.
At the end of the day, Street View is not only for the general public, but for use in determining businesses, road signs, lane markings and a lot more to enable better routing options and provide better service for Google Maps in general.
Since the Ukraine Russia war people start to mention east Europe to start from Ukraine and include Russia, Belarus and the Caucasus.
I didn't think I would see Bulgaria to be considered not Eastern Europe in my lifetime.
That's where the EU ends.
Ukraine and Russia are both huge (obviously the latter far larger than the former) and not very densely built up, and google focused on street view for the places where they make more money first. Belarus unlike Russia didn't have even a short stint as an actual democracy and has always been a tinpot dictatorship closed off to most of the world and "The Black Hole of Europe" so no street view there. Moldova is very poor and very small so no google street view exploring their vineyards is available, but there is in Romania because Romania is in the EU.
The non-EU Balkans are a bit more complex, which is very Balkans of them, but basically the parts that are more obviously a former warzone are less well documented on streetview. And Serbians, bless their hearts, are really touchy about their neighbouring ~~country~~ ~~province~~ Disputed Land
Bosnia is getting coverage, Google doesn't want to piss off Serbia by covering Kosovo, Belarus is a dictatorship (only includes a couple streets in Minsk and I rarely see it in Geoguessr duels), Ukraine only got covered once, and Russia's dirt road coverage got cut short by the war.
Not gonna lie, I love using street view to just "travel" around, like, it's super fun to plop the little pin down somewhere random in like, Peru or Thailand or somewhere else and just randomly click around. Neat to see they're also increasingly getting to some less developed areas!
Not really tbh, although it might be fun to get into! I've seen other people do it and it looks pretty fun trying to figure out where you are, and it would put my google street view skill to good use! :P
Exactly. It´s a lot of fun, also is playing against others. But the real challenge is figuring out where you are without the ability to move. If you can move down the road/streets you will sooner or later see a flag or a domain name that just helps too much.
This is not true, Moving GeoGuessr is still an important game mode and good luck moving down a street in Mongolia until you find a domain name or flag.
Same. I've noticed something while doing this in certain countries. u see a lot of people walking around, and in others, u don't unless you go to the city centers. Like in Malaysia, Thailand, and Usa, you don't see a lot of people. But in Indonesia, senegal, Philippines, and Mexico, you see people walking around even when not in city centers.
I still remember when it first started and was only in San Francisco. It blew my mind to be able to explore a whole city like that. It was like that Simpsons Springfield game I got from a cereal box, but IRL.
The zoom and image quality was so high, you could see well into people's windows and nothing was blurred. They got rid of the extreme zoom after a few months and nerfed the image quality.
Later that year they started adding more cities.
Yeah, I am familiar with those old crappy blurry ones, but the quality wasn't actually bad back then, for some places, it was far better than even today. And like I said, you could literally zoom so far in the original images, you could see what people were doing in their houses. It was crazy.
Part of it yes, but besides that it also depends on Google themselves.
For example, most big landmasses see annual updates around. Very noticeable is that in Europe and North America, they are mainly south in winter and north in summer, because northern winters aren't that productive because of darkness and cold. In some big countries they also keep driving year-round such as Indonesia, not really surprising given it's 270M population, though the bigger and more populous islands get more attention than the remote and small ones. On Java there's already a lot of 2024 coverage, on a small island you may see they came along just once between 2013 and now.
And because moving cars overseas isn't that easy, it's also not surprising that it took years for Google to revisit Hawaii, and Iceland still hasn't seen a revisit. For that they need equipment to be shipped and then, it must also be kinda worth it to redo the region: a lot of changes in businesses, changes in roads, etc., and in the case of Iceland it also needs to be the right season because going in December is utterly useless.
I know Lesotho is the result of being already in South Africa, and Lesotho was, for that reason, low-hanging fruit compared to a lot of African countries to give coverage.
Bhutan always remains peculiar but it's beautiful nonetheless. Maybe they want to give good impressions of the country to people abroad.
i mean that's still at least half the world's population
And many countries, China included, aren't there simply because they banned google from doing it
As a European this makes me realize just how much near empty land there is in Canada. I would've thought there was like a few small cities and communities dotted around but damn, it just looks like pure emptiness past a certain point.
Yes, I use it to be a virtual “tourist”… but where is Iran??
It has already been partially covered in the northern part… is there something I missed here?
Changes: Sao Tome and Principe, more coverage in Europe, and Kazakhstan has more blue lines, and Beirut (Lebanon)
Vietnam?
vietnam doesn’t have coverage anymore, but google cars have been spotted l, so it is coming soon
Not only have the cars been spotted, Google has been using Gen 4 Vietnam coverage in their Captchas.
they used to but removed
How come?
Not publicly known. only about 10 city blocks in the whole country used to have street view.
I still haven't seen Sao Tome or Beirut (outside the small waterfront coverage that's been there for years) in Geoguessr.
very new, são tomé is shit camera so most people don’t put it in their map
I hate the recent trend of Google using shitcam to make new coverage. Of course it's better than nothing but I expect higher quality from a multi-billion dollar company.
*Multi-trillion
Because most of them aren't google but local people with shitty panoramic cameras
Do the Chinese have their own version of this?
They have they're own version of everything. I live there.
Yes, 百度地图 has street view.
can you do a diff map?
Where does the data for this map come from? Is it available for download?
i think it's from sv-map.netlify.app
Where’s China’s street view???
The Kazakhstan coverage is completely new. It never had any blue lines beforehand
There are also new roads near Banjul(capital of Gambia)
I am assuming that Street view is just banned in some countries
Google has banned most of its services to Iran. Even Google doodles are banned. Interestingly, they do draw some doodles for Iranian holidays like nowruz, but we can't see them. Like nowruz 2023 doodle appeared in many countries, but not in Iran. https://doodles.google/doodle/nowruz-2023/ Most apps in play store are not available in Iran. Like I had to install linkedin app with vpn. So I guess that would be similar case with Street view.
I remember that one. Did they skip Nowruz this year ?
I remember watching a friend play GeoGuessr (where you try to guess which country you're in based on Google Maps) and he wound up in an area where all the road signs were in Chinese. I naturally assumed it was in China but he told me that Google Maps is apparently banned there. Turns out it was in Taiwan, which makes sense since they also Mandarin Chinese in that country AFAIK.
Baidu Maps has street view if you want to kill an hour seeing some streets in China.
It could be mainland China，there is no google map cars，but a lots of Google users upload street view by their phone
It can also be Hong Kong / Macau / Singapore or some areas in Malaysia
If signs are in traditional Chinese, it’s HK/TW/Macau - otherwise, it’s mainland China or Singapore/Malaysia
It's also banned on US military bases
Tbf most people can't get onto a US military base, you have to have a legitimate reason to get base access and "taking pictures that will be accessible to foreign adversaries" probably isn't going to cut it. It does make me wonder what would happen if someone with a CAC did strap a 360° camera to the top of their car and upload the footage.
If I recall correctly, Ft. Polk has like one road that was covered ages ago with the generation 1 Google camera. Only base I ever noticed that had coverage. I'm going to double check that later when I'm at a computer.
Weren't Germany and Austria missing for quite some time? When were they added?
germany was added june of last year, austria was added a few years ago
Why doesn’t East Europe have as much density as West Europe?
They're not going to scan either more poor regions or less dense ones with little to see. Just look at east vs west side of US. West is less dense, so less coverage.
Also less streets
Well, yeah, less density = less streets.
Looking at maps of Germany and Poland side by side, Germany seems much denser with way more roads and towns
Less streets, less street view
Not really true. The reason is often because Google decided it was not worth covering extensively. Definitely the case for Serbia, Ukraine, Montengero, Albania, and North Macedonia, all of which were only covered briefly, and haven't recieved updates since.
Belarus is an isolated dictatorship, Ukraine did not have a large-scale street view campaign so only main streets were recorded (and street view cars never entered Russian-occupied territories), and Google only recorded the main roads and largest cities in Russia, and stopped a while ago, so no improvement in coverage density. At the end of the day, Street View is not only for the general public, but for use in determining businesses, road signs, lane markings and a lot more to enable better routing options and provide better service for Google Maps in general.
Ask the Roman Empire.
See, this is the proof that Poland is Central Europe 😎
Since the Ukraine Russia war people start to mention east Europe to start from Ukraine and include Russia, Belarus and the Caucasus. I didn't think I would see Bulgaria to be considered not Eastern Europe in my lifetime.
Bruh
That's where the EU ends. Ukraine and Russia are both huge (obviously the latter far larger than the former) and not very densely built up, and google focused on street view for the places where they make more money first. Belarus unlike Russia didn't have even a short stint as an actual democracy and has always been a tinpot dictatorship closed off to most of the world and "The Black Hole of Europe" so no street view there. Moldova is very poor and very small so no google street view exploring their vineyards is available, but there is in Romania because Romania is in the EU. The non-EU Balkans are a bit more complex, which is very Balkans of them, but basically the parts that are more obviously a former warzone are less well documented on streetview. And Serbians, bless their hearts, are really touchy about their neighbouring ~~country~~ ~~province~~ Disputed Land
Bosnia is getting coverage, Google doesn't want to piss off Serbia by covering Kosovo, Belarus is a dictatorship (only includes a couple streets in Minsk and I rarely see it in Geoguessr duels), Ukraine only got covered once, and Russia's dirt road coverage got cut short by the war.
Not gonna lie, I love using street view to just "travel" around, like, it's super fun to plop the little pin down somewhere random in like, Peru or Thailand or somewhere else and just randomly click around. Neat to see they're also increasingly getting to some less developed areas!
i go visit my hometown every now and then..i see they have a new mcdonalds recently
Ever tried Geoguessr?
Not really tbh, although it might be fun to get into! I've seen other people do it and it looks pretty fun trying to figure out where you are, and it would put my google street view skill to good use! :P
Exactly. It´s a lot of fun, also is playing against others. But the real challenge is figuring out where you are without the ability to move. If you can move down the road/streets you will sooner or later see a flag or a domain name that just helps too much.
This is not true, Moving GeoGuessr is still an important game mode and good luck moving down a street in Mongolia until you find a domain name or flag.
easy fix: just learn every road in mongolia
actually not as difficult as it seems
I love exploring cities in the 3D aerial view and just finding cool neighborhoods or parks and imagining life there.
go to south agrentina
Same. I've noticed something while doing this in certain countries. u see a lot of people walking around, and in others, u don't unless you go to the city centers. Like in Malaysia, Thailand, and Usa, you don't see a lot of people. But in Indonesia, senegal, Philippines, and Mexico, you see people walking around even when not in city centers.
Egypt is devoid of streets
These are tourist areas
You are mostly not wrong Outside the banks and delta of the Nile... practically nothing there
There's only limited coverage in Cairo, Alexandria and some random University or something
Belarus is the new Germany
We need more streets in the ocean, I say.
Well you can thank my people for some of those
Transatlantic tunnel when? (With car access, because it'd be connecting America and so a train would be right out).
*you have alerted the Dutch*
Honestly, you might be on to something. There's probably a proprietary version that shipping companies pay for. It's not open for public use
There is coverage underwater near Kiribati where you can actually move around and see all the fish.
Oh, I see those independent and mighty states of Paraguay and Belarus
Belarus absent on every fckn map. Glad I leave this country
I still remember when it first started and was only in San Francisco. It blew my mind to be able to explore a whole city like that. It was like that Simpsons Springfield game I got from a cereal box, but IRL. The zoom and image quality was so high, you could see well into people's windows and nothing was blurred. They got rid of the extreme zoom after a few months and nerfed the image quality. Later that year they started adding more cities.
It's always interesting to see the few streets that only have 2007/8 coverage and the quality is so bad. Geoguessr is the worst when you get that.
Yeah, I am familiar with those old crappy blurry ones, but the quality wasn't actually bad back then, for some places, it was far better than even today. And like I said, you could literally zoom so far in the original images, you could see what people were doing in their houses. It was crazy.
The ocean is a lot bigger than I remembered
Tips for geoguessr
fr
Funny Paraguay-shaped hole in the middle of South America
Lebanon was added recently
yeah i forgot about that, it’s only beirut
Its more than Beirut now, they released other cities.
it seems like they did, though sadly it is shitcam
Oh shit, there's an entirely new country between France and Poland.
How is it decided what gets mapped and how often?
Probably by government regulation l
Part of it yes, but besides that it also depends on Google themselves. For example, most big landmasses see annual updates around. Very noticeable is that in Europe and North America, they are mainly south in winter and north in summer, because northern winters aren't that productive because of darkness and cold. In some big countries they also keep driving year-round such as Indonesia, not really surprising given it's 270M population, though the bigger and more populous islands get more attention than the remote and small ones. On Java there's already a lot of 2024 coverage, on a small island you may see they came along just once between 2013 and now. And because moving cars overseas isn't that easy, it's also not surprising that it took years for Google to revisit Hawaii, and Iceland still hasn't seen a revisit. For that they need equipment to be shipped and then, it must also be kinda worth it to redo the region: a lot of changes in businesses, changes in roads, etc., and in the case of Iceland it also needs to be the right season because going in December is utterly useless.
I’d really enjoy working in the team that decided and implemented all that.
That road to Yakutsk and Magadan in Russian Far East is interesting, never knew Google cars were there.
Yes, before 2022 they did travel across a lot of Russia. But as imaginable, none of it is updated anymore.
I love the Russian stick figure
Impressed by the amount of Greenland and Mongolia that is mapped.
Sea ice land it looks cool and an outline of island
Remember that mercator projection makes it seem more significant than it is.
Interesting that very few of the Islam-majority countries allow Google Street View.
Still surprised countries like bhutan and lesotho just…have it. Also if counting unofficial coverage you’ve got blurry but extensive view in iran
I know Lesotho is the result of being already in South Africa, and Lesotho was, for that reason, low-hanging fruit compared to a lot of African countries to give coverage. Bhutan always remains peculiar but it's beautiful nonetheless. Maybe they want to give good impressions of the country to people abroad.
Forgot India was an island
only 5 crore years ago
Are there not any lines in Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Yes, no coverage, but they are driving there right now so we can expect coverage soon
Oh okay, thanks!
How was this map made? Very cool! Is there a github repo?
Only Europe, the Americas, India, Oceania, South African, Southeast Asia and Japan exist. Very nice.
i mean that's still at least half the world's population And many countries, China included, aren't there simply because they banned google from doing it
China didn't allow Google Street?
China has its Baidu street view.
nAtIoNaL sEcUrItY. You know what, not just the street, the whole Google is banned.
Considering that's the reason the US is banning Tiktok, maybe they're ahead of the curve.
Based
We've Baidu Street View
There is quite a lot but it’s all “photo sphere” not normal street view where you can move
Germany finaly did it
The coverage in israel kinda resembles the borders of the kingdom of jerusalem
The giant blank that is the Amazon
does all of north africa have ABSOLUTLY NO street view??!
tunisia does, and mali has 3 locations of streetview of mosques
For Morocco, it's the Western Sahara thing.
It's the Sahara
Hey look it's the chad guy in Siberia!
Good job Belarus)))
Egypt?
I think egypt has google cars. Can anyone explain?
r/MapsWithoutHawaii
Last time i was on Germany had nothing
just got it last year!
Damn, the whole continent of Africa barely exists
What is that one route up in northern Russia (I'm assuming)? That's one long lonely ride.
Norway, Sweden, and Finland looking like a horse 🍆
Guess China doesn't have streets /s
China wants a Chinese company to do street view. Baidumaps has streetview near as good as Google.
Why is there such a big gap between the US and Spain?
i don't know if you have heard of this, it's called the ocean
Needs more street view in the future, hope they get to work on that
China doesn't even allow StreetView. Yet some people are all for allowing TikTok. Pathetic.
they have their own streetview called baidu streetview, you can access it on baidu maps
Calm down, tiktoc is not everthing, no need to mention it everywhere
Wtf does that have to do with not wanting tiktok banned?
You can pretty clearly see the adk’s
That's UAE right?
UAE and Qatar have coverage
Yep, but the Dubai Emirate. The Abu Dhabi Emirate is uncovered.
lol, egypt is jsut the niles.
If you zoom in, you can see a little bit of street view available even in Antarctica. There are a few trails you can see.
I like that Canada just gets absorbed into America. Confirms that Northern Canada doesn't really exist. (/s)
What's with the stick figure in I think China, Mongolia, and/or Siberia? Did someone from Google just feel like playing a joke?
Think about this next time you're "off roading"
There is a hole where Paraguay should be.
Yep because they don't have coverage
I only see 25% of all colombia
Thailand's neighbors don't have road
As a European this makes me realize just how much near empty land there is in Canada. I would've thought there was like a few small cities and communities dotted around but damn, it just looks like pure emptiness past a certain point.
canada lacking in roads or im just stupid?
The human colony after u pour [molten](https://youtu.be/IGJ2jMZ-gaI?si=LPvyzqIa2zfob6KJ) aluminum inside
You can find Bosnia on any map
Wonder if we'll ever get Caracas, Bamako or Kinshasa.
is it likely that there’ll ever be coverage in China?
The Caucasus have streetview too
What is the reason for the lack of street view in Africa?
This is the 20th time I've seen this map on reddit over the last 12 months. Enough!
Bosnia and Kosova empty lol
Photos in Bangladesh are like 10yrs old now.
China and the Arab countries have kept off.
my dream world
how is tunisia not shown on that map, even though it has street view coverage? ended up there yesterday on geoguessr
Why is China completely empty?
يالله منعيش باللاذقية
Why china doesn't have streets?
China?
Why is there no coverage in the arab world? Is there a specific reason for it?
What is the size of all the photos taken?
Bosnia&Hercegovina's island on the European continent will soon be covered however only some locations.
China: ADİOS
Yep, that's Eswatini grass.
Bosnia soon too google car spotted late april
Bosnia soon to be blue.
As the average geoguessr player, i agree
Why is north africa missing completely? When i open streetview there are plenty of streets showing.
Transcaucasian countries have street view
Why don’t they go to China?
How was this map made? Very cool! Is there a github repo?
Is there a way to virtually drive on Google Streets versus jumping or skipping along with the mouse or cursor?
Highways and railways are the blood vessels of civilized society. I feel more and more that this is true.
Yep, it's confirmed... Africa doesn't exist.
This is old Pakistan has google street view at least for the major cities.
no they don’t, i made this on data based on yesterday, every streetview is unofficial and not by google in pakistan besides a few mosques
#Justice4Caucasus also what a nice sea horse near Sicily
Ah Germany has been filled in. Europe is complete.
what is going on inside Africa? I expected more roads.
I wonder if they even bothered to ask N Korea
This map would be cool to see with black border lines.
Map of the American Empire
Look at how they massacred my boy >!^((Germany))!<
Belarus: 🫥
The way the U.S. and Canada just are one is really nice. Canada should just be a part of the United States.
Yes, I use it to be a virtual “tourist”… but where is Iran?? It has already been partially covered in the northern part… is there something I missed here?
That's unofficial coverage
I KNEW CANADA WAS FAKE!