Maggio, 2022

Street View is turning 15, and the birthday nostalgia is hitting us hard.

In 2007, we published our first Street View images of San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver. Since then, Street View cars equipped with cameras have captured and shared more than 220 billion Street View images and mapped 10 million miles — the equivalent of circling the globe more than 400 times! We’ve also captured Street View imagery inside cultural landmarks, high up in space and deep under the ocean.

To celebrate Street View’s 15th birthday, we’re sharing 15 amazing Street View collections — including three places the world’s been loving lately, four new collections (consider this our party favor to you), and Street View images that make us feel some kind of way. So raise your glasses — er, cursors — and let’s cheers to exploring the world together.

Where you’ve been exploring and new places to go

With so many places and landmarks at your fingertips, three spots in particular piqued your interest over the past year. Here are the three most popular places to explore on Street View: head up to the 154th floor of the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates, which was named the world’s tallest building; the iconic Eiffel Tower in France, complete with dazzling views of Paris from the top; and our special collection of imagery from the Taj Mahal in India.

And for your next Street View excursions, we’ve started rolling out four new collections that we think will become all-time favorites.

The Pyramids of Meroë in Sudan: Thanks to new panoramic imagery, explore the ancient pyramids that are home to tombs of the kings and queens of the Kushite Kingdom.

The Duomo in Milan: The Duomo is the largest cathedral in Italy and the third-largest cathedral in Europe. Not to mention, it boasts one of the best views of Milan. We’ve been working with Google Arts & Culture and the Duomo of Milan since 2019 to bring imagery from inside the Duomo to Street View so that everyone can get a behind-the-scenes look at this architectural and cultural gem — and it’s now live!

Les Invalides in Paris: Before the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides’ golden dome was the highest point in Paris. New images of the historic Hôtel des Invalides buildings let you explore its museums and monuments. Learn more about French military history viaa virtual tour.

Sydney Ferries in Australia: The iconic Sydney Ferries will soon be digitally preserved as a result of our work with Transport for New South Wales and Transdev. Later this year, we’ll bring this collection onto Street View so that people around the world can take a virtual tour of Sydney Ferries and get a glimpse of the journey along Sydney’s stunning harbor.

8 Street View images we love

With endless places to explore, it’s difficult to pick favorites — really, you should have seen the list we narrowed this down from — but we gave it our best shot. Here are eight Street View images we love.

Does the thought of visiting an active volcano scare you? Us too! A New Zealand-based Googler took a trekker into the active Ambrym Volcano Marum Crater in Vanuatu so you don’t have to.

Monemvasia is a Greek town that’s name is derived from two Greek words meaning “single entry.” Fittingly, there is only one way into this rock fortress. Explore the town on Street View without the headache of getting there.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland is a UNESCO site with a chamber where all decorative elements are made of salt.

Calling all scary movie buffs! Can you guess which 1998 horror film this active volcano in Japan served as a backdrop for? (Hint: the title rhymes with “The Wing.”)

Does Petra, Jordan look familiar? How about here? The filming location has made cameos in a number of movies, including “Aladdin,” “The Mummy Returns,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Thanks to a collaboration with NASA, Street Viewers can get a taste of what it’s like to be an astronaut. Ditch the gravity and float through the International Space Station.

Dive into the Pacific Ocean and swim with sea lions off the shore of the Galapagos Islands.

And if there’s one Street View image that lives in our heads rent free… it’s this horse eating a banana on the side of the road in Canada.

We’re proud of the work we’ve done to capture so much of the world’s wonder, history and quirkiness in Street View. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t give a shout out to all of the Maps users around the world who have captured and shared their own Street View imagery. To help make exploring the world together even easier, we’re launching Street View Studio — a new platform with all the tools you need to publish 360 image sequences quickly and in bulk. Check out more ways we’re advancing Street View so we can explore together for another 15 years.

No other mobile platform is as open as Android and Google Play, and no other platform has shown more willingness to champion user choice, invest in change, or collaborate with developers. We are currently defending these points in court against Match Group, and at the court’s request, on May 19 we reached a temporary agreement while the case is being heard and we prepare our planned countersuit.

On May 20, Match Group disregarded the stipulations it agreed to in court with a misleading press release that mischaracterizes what happened in the proceeding. We want to once again set the record straight to make sure the rest of the developer ecosystem is aware of the facts.

The court asked us temporarily not to remove Match Group’s apps from the Play Store on June 1 for its violation of our terms until a full trial in exchange for the following:

• Match Group has to put up to $40 million in an escrow account to begin to account for the service fees it owes us.
• Match Group must also provide Google with a monthly accounting of all in-app sales of digital goods and services from June 1 through trial so we can track what it owes for the immense benefit it receives from Google Play.
• Match Group must work in good faith to further enable Google Play’s billing system as an option for users. Google agreed to work in good faith to continue to develop additional billing system features that are important to Match Group, as Google has already been doing for years with countless developers, including Match Group.

And Match Group’s claim that it can’t integrate Play’s billing system because it lacks key features contradicts the fact that Match Group has been proactively and successfully using Play’s billing in more than 10 of its apps. Match Group collected hundreds of millions in consumer revenue in over 50 countries through Google Play’s billing last year.

Not only are we confident we’ll succeed in defending against Match Group’s unfounded complaint, we will be filing a countersuit against Match Group for violating their obligations under the Developer Distribution Agreement and to ensure Google Play remains a trusted destination for users.

Recent events have reminded us of the role that journalists play in helping us understand important topics as they unfold. The UK has a long history of great journalism, which has enriched our society, economy and democracy.

When people use Google Search to look for information about what’s happening in the world around them, they want links to reliable news sources. Likewise, publishers want to reach and inform more readers, helping everyone make sense of events. This has real benefits for publishers. In fact, the overall value of web traffic is estimated to be worth more than £500 million a year to news publishers in the UK.

Beyond this simple value proposition, we invest heavily in news – making us one of the UK’s biggest financial supporters of journalism. For instance, at the beginning of last year, we brought Google News Showcase to the UK, which licenses content from more than 200 UK news publications.

Sharing some facts about how we work with UK publishers

Publishers choose if and how links to their articles appear on Google

Like other types of web pages that appear on Google Search, we provide links to news content. News publishers remain in full control over whether or not links to their web pages are included in Search and how much of a preview of their articles we show. Most decide to be included because it helps readers find their stories. Each month, people click through from Google Search and Google News results to publishers’ websites more than 24 billion times around the world. This traffic helps publishers increase their readership, build trust with readers and earn money through advertising and subscriptions.

Google does not make significant revenue from news-related searches

In 2020, news-related queries accounted for under 2% percent of total queries on Google Search in the UK. And we don’t run ads on Google News or the news results tab on Google Search. Nearly all of the ads people see on Google are on searches with commercial intent like “toasters,” or “electrician,” rather than from news-seeking queries.

Publishers that use our ad products keep the vast majority of the revenues

Many of the top news companies around the world use Google Ad Manager to manage their digital advertising business and on average they keep over 95% of the digital advertising revenue generated on their sites with this tool. Between 2018 and 2020, we paid out over £245m to the top five UK news publisher partners alone in our ad network.

Google invests in products and programmes to help publishers make money online

Almost half of the overall decline of newspaper revenue has come from the loss of newspaper classifieds to specialist online players like Rightmove or Motors.co.uk. Yet innovative publishers are evolving, turning to new ways for distribution, analytics, advertising and subscriptions and the majority of publishers are optimistic about the growth of digital revenues. Google is providing support through products, programmes and funding, like investing £18m in training, partnerships and programming with news organisations in the UK.

We support new rules

Beyond our existing support for journalism, we have been engaging closely with the UK government and regulatory authorities over many months as they consider how to ensure a strong future for news and enable innovation. We support thoughtful regulation.

Addressing speculation on the value we gain from links to news

A few days ago, we saw new speculation about the value Google gains by providing links to news publishers on Google Search. However, this latest paper chose not to include any mention of the vast value that news publishers gain from reaching readers through our platform – leaving out half of the story.

Even setting this aside, the paper essentially alleges that links to news content are of vital importance to Google, and that their loss would have devastating consequences. In the framework of the paper (which is something of a black box), it is claimed that the quality contributed by these links enables Google to carry something like half of its ads. This is not just wholly implausible – it also flies in the face of the facts. In reality, Google does not make significant revenue from news-related searches. As we said earlier, in 2020, news-related queries accounted for under 2% percent of total queries on Google Search in the UK and we don’t show ads on the vast majority of searches.

The paper also features some fanciful estimations on the value of the “data” derived from the integration of links to news results in Search for Google’s revenues from YouTube and its ad tech products. Yet its calculation relies on something else – the impact on publisher revenues from the removal of third party cookies on non-Google sites. Confused? So are we.

Ultimately, both publishers and readers gain real value from the presence of links to news sources on Google Search. We must all work together to ensure that people have access to authoritative information online and we will continue to work with the government, publishers, journalists and readers on public policies that further strengthen journalism.

Editor’s note: Dr. Nicholas Allenis a professor of psychology, the director of the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregonand a lead researcher for the latest study hosted on Google Health Studies.

In Australia, where I’m from, any topic so contentious that it interrupts whatever a group is doing and prompts loud debate is called a “BBQ stopper.” Discussing whether digital technology is good or bad for wellbeing and mental health is a classic BBQ stopper. And this issue has become even more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic as so many people have turned to digital technology to maintain some semblance of their lifestyle.

This is a focus for our work at the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon, where we conduct research and build tools to enhance mental health and wellbeing, especially among underserved and young people. Our goal is to provide people and their support networks with actionable feedback on their wellbeing.

We’re expanding our research using Google Health Studies with a study focused on how smartphone use impacts wellbeing. With this research, we hope to uncover insights that help us all build a future where digital products may support us in living healthier, happier lives.

Weighing benefits and risks

With today’s smartphones, social media and bottomless streams of content, many are quick to condemn technology based on their conviction that these products must be bad for mental health and wellbeing. But focusing only on these potentially harmful effects doesn’t tell the full story. Nor does it help us reap the full benefits these tools have to offer, while also managing their risks.

Technological developments throughout history have had both benefits and risks. We urgently need high-quality research to identify which use patterns are associated with benefits versus risks, and who is likely to experience harmful versus beneficial outcomes. Answering these questions is necessary so that the research community and technology industry can pursue evidence-based product design, education and policy aimed at maximizing benefits and minimizing risks.

The need for new research

Not only do we need new research that focuses on both the benefits and risks of technology, we also need to rethink what we ask people, who we include in this research and how we work together to use the findings.

Most scientific research on digital wellbeing has relied on self-reported questionnaires, which are heavily subjective. Could you say how many hours or minutes you used your phone yesterday without checking your screen time metrics? Probably not!

Existing studies also typically have small or unrepresentative samples. To make sure research and potential solutions support everyone, it’s critical for new research methodologies to incorporate data from people historically underrepresented in health research.

Finally, many studies might miss certain patterns of behavior that reveal complex relationships between device use and wellbeing — like the relationship between screen time and sleep.

Understanding these relationships can inform insights and guidelines for developers and people to maximize wellbeing and minimize risks. Scientists around the globe are calling for greater transparency and collaboration between the technology sector and independent scientists to solve these problems and provide the answers we need.

Studying the impact of technology, with technology

We believe that technology can help bridge many of these gaps and improve research on digital wellbeing. That’s why the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon is partnering with Google to launch this landmark study.

We’ll recruit a large representative sample and collect direct, objective measures of how people use their phones, with their informed consent. We’ll use passive and continuous sensing technology to do this, rather than relying only on self reports. The study will also use participants’ phones to directly measure many of the well-established building blocks of wellbeing, such as sleep and physical activity.

How to participate

The study takes four weeks to complete and is open to adults based in the U.S. who use an Android phone and can complete daily activities without assistance. Participants will also have the option to add relevant Fitbit data, including step count and physical activity.[f1908e]The data collected will be managed according to strict ethical standards and will only be used for research and to inform better products. The data will never be sold or used for advertising.

We hope you’ll join this important study so we can build a healthier digital future together for everyone. Download Google Health Studies, and sign up for the study starting Friday, May 27.