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Google Street View has just expanded its collection of images of college campuses in the United States and Canada so that new, returning or prospective students and their families can “see” what the campuses offer. The latest group of 36 additional campuses has been added to hundreds of others that were documented in images in the past few years.
“Whether you’re a college applicant or a curious parent getting to know your kid’s new home away from home, Street View can take you on a walking tour of schools around the world,” wrote Deanna Yick, Google’s Street View program manager in an Aug. 7 post on the Google Lat Long Blog.
The newly added schools include Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where architecture buffs can explore images of Georgetown’s Healy Hall, which is a National Historic Landmark and iconic building in the Romanesque revival style, wrote Yick. Also featured is the University of Miami, where a tropical climate and scenic pathways winding through palm trees and clear blue water greet students and faculty.
In Canada, the University of Regina, which was founded in 1911 and is well-known for its emphasis on experiential learning, has also been added to the Street View collection, wrote Yick.
“These universities are the latest additions to the hundreds of college campuses all over the world that are already available for you to explore in Google Maps,” she wrote. “To see if a Street View tour of your dream school is available, search for a particular university on Google Maps and click on Pegman to enter the Street View imagery. Visit our Street View gallery for global highlights and other popular universities around the world.”
Google Street View added a major update of its college and university images back in September of 2012, when it added photographs of 150 schools around the world, according to an eWEEK report at the time. That expansion included schools such as UCLA in the United States, Pembroke College in the United Kingdom, McGill University in Canada, York University in Canada, University of California-Davis, Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Emory University, Florida Atlantic University, Loyola Marymount University, Stetson University, University of Notre Dame and Washington State University.
The growing Google Street View collection also includes panoramic views of notable places around the globe, including historic Italy and California national parks, and highlights of must-see sites in the United States, Poland, Israel, Russia and the magnificent Swiss Alps.
Google’s Street View program has been a source of controversy—particularly over concerns about privacy—since it first started more than seven years ago. As part of the program, Google cars have been sent around the world to take photographs in order to create street-level views of communities, which then can be accessed by Google users.
In June 2014, Google Street View unveiled a collection of beautiful images captured in Greece, which has a rich history dating back centuries in Southern Europe. For years, opposition from the Greek government due to privacy concerns kept the Street View cameras out of the country, but negotiations eventually resolved the objections and enabled the images to be collected. Greece was the 56th nation to be added to the Street View collection.
In May, Google Street View introduced a new “time warp” feature, which allows online viewers to see collections of images taken in the same places over time in various locations since 2007.
And in March, Street View unveiled a collection of stunning color images of Hawaii’s coasts, national parks and other stunning natural areas, which were captured by volunteers from the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.