Google Street View in 2026

Street View is such a missed opportunity. In 2007 it was visionary and essential to create the map data that allowed Google Maps to win. In 2026 it is a symbol of Google's stagnation. Essentially zero improvement in user experience for more than a decade, in a time of incredible advancements in computer vision.

By now we should all be flying around the planet in a seamless 3D reconstruction unifying street level and satellite views and allowing smooth free camera motion all the way from space to the front door of buildings and even inside. Many years ago I saw internal Google demos of dramatically improved Street View rendering, none of which ever made it to production. Google has consistently failed to recognize the value of the product and systematically underinvested in the user experience.

Apologies as this is fairly tangential:

There's a parallax effect in Street View on Apple Maps that separates out the layers of every image. Things like lampposts or telephone poles all rotate slightly differently to whatever is behind them.

And it's such a subtle effect that I still break my brain trying to determine whether or not I've made it up.

Imagine expending that much development time and effort for something you're not even sure is there. And somehow I still find it enviably cool.

The workstation paragraph seems like a humble brag. Most of us yearn for a set-up like that! Especially with the price of components going up thanks to AI and corporations buying all the hardware to support it.

Tangential comment but I still don't understand how we have technology to identify a car license plate from space but we have pixelated images from Antarctica on Google Maps / Google Earth. Why not publish that and make it accessible? Is it true that Antarctica is not easy to scan due to ice and snow?

Large sections of streets I look at on Google street view are blurred now which has started to seriously limit it's use for me.

Since anyone can request a building be blurred forever, I imagine it'll just get worse.

Switzerland seems very up to date. Maybe because it's small, or because Google Zurich is developing some of the Google maps features (?)

Streetview is such an incredible product - one of the few digital products that still manages to bring me joy every day. it'll be a shame when it's inevitably enshitified.

El Salvador looks black but has pretty good coverage throughout the country.

Costa Rica seems also to have more coverage than I see here.

Paraguay too.

Why is there so much dense coverage in southern Ontario than anywhere else in North America?

Is that base map style inspired by the board game Pandemic, the computer game DEFCON, or a third thing?

Edit: Apparently it is "Nova Map" base tile set from ArcGIS.

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