Google adds Panoramio user photos to Street View

Stephen Withers
Friday, 27 February 2009 10:03

Business IT - Networking

When Google acquired Panoramio in 2007, it explained that "Panoramio will add interesting, useful content to Google products and will bolster Google's engineering and technical resources."

And now selected photos from Panoramio are displayed in Street View.

Where do these photos appear? "Anywhere, really, where Street View is available and where users have contributed lots of high-quality photos; of course, this usually is near famous landmarks but you never know where you’ll discover more to see," explained Frederik Schaffalitzky, a software engineer at Google Zurich.

Among the Street View locations with Panoramio photos are the Arc de Triomphe, Paris; Sydney Harbour Bridge; and New York's Broadway.

The Panoramio Privacy Notice warns that "Users may be able to see your photos through searches on Panoramio, Google, and through third party services that access publicly available information on the web."

Panoramio images displayed in Street View include an appropriate copyright notice for the photographer's benefit.

If the quality of the examples viewed by iTWire are any guide, Panoramio is a useful addition to Street View.