Google Maps has taken on competitors like MapQuest, Yahoo and Apple. But after a decade of investing, collecting data and billions of images through Street View, Google has over a billion monthly users. It updated tens of thousands of times a day and has mapped more than 220 countries and territories. Here’s a look at how Google came to dominate maps.
Tag Archives: Google Maps Street View
Future Of Travel: Google Maps Offers The World (At 100% Discount Pricing)
From a New York Times article (March 24, 2020):
What I find particularly seductive about Google Street View is that it purports to be a very objective document of our world. It is simply the product of a car (or a motorbike or a hiker) driving down a street taking pictures. But, of course, it is far from an objective document. Humans get in the way, as they always do, filling each scene with stories.

There is something tantalizing about being there but not being there, about being everywhere and nowhere at once. The geospatial distance leaves us wanting, hungry for more. I’m enamored with the glitchiness of these human landscapes, the way people’s legs are sometimes separated from their bodies, the way everyone’s faces are blurred out, as if they no longer exist (sometimes they no longer do). This is our world, but it is not our world.