Google cars to start Street Viewing Botswana

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Google Street View car

Google Street View carGoogle has just announced on its Google Africa blog that the company’s Street View cars will start driving around Bostwana in the coming weeks to collect photographs for Google Street View.

Street View allows users of Google Maps to get a 360 degree street-level photographic view of streets in Google Maps. For the user, the Street View view feels like they are looking around a still version of the streets and it’s frankly quite awesome. For a good example, please check out the Soccer City stadium in South Africa which had Google Street View enabled just before the soccer World Cup tournament in 2010.

Bostwana becomes the second African country Google has Street Viewed. The company says they’ll focus on the two main cities of Gaborone and Francistown and that they’ll also capture some tourist destinations around the country.

You can read the full announcement here.

Here are some more shots of Google Street View in South Africa:
Google J'burg road

Google Street View Johannesburg City Centre

Google car image via fastcompany.com

15 comments

  1. Harrison Ford, Air Force 1

    That’s what they did in Yugoslavia and Libya before coming in! lol

  2. Chanyani

    This is marketing. They do that to plces with disposable income.

  3. Joe Black

    Aheeede. We’re getting left behind here. Time to implement our own mapping initiative, but this time instead of street-view cars trundling down the streets, we have walking cameras through Vic Falls, Great Zimbabwe and down the dam wall.

    Just sayin’.

    1. Harrison Ford, Air Force 1

      That’s a great idea. Just offer US$1 airtime for 4 pics in all directions from the middle of the street to unemployed youths with camera phones and your job will be done. lol.

      I certainly don’t see Google’s cars being allowed anywhere in Zimbabwe. Right now you can zoom in on military bases with google maps yet it is a criminal offense punishable with imprisonment to photograph cooling towers of power establishments. the threat to national security is already exaggerated enough. it will be called a spy car. worse with reports of people’s passwords and data being collected en-route in the process because the car cant filter messages transmitted wirelessly.

  4. Ted Von Beefcake

    I would love to see them try doing that down Chancellor Avenue.

    1. Harrison Ford, Air Force 1

      I bet the moment it tru8ns it will accelerate to 300km/hr because the boys in that street will not take kindly to the sight of the western contraption. The Herald will report it was a western Sue side bomer, or spy car or something lol

    2. kthaker

      exactly why Zim will always remain in the stone ages….with everyone around us progressing forward.

  5. Duwayne Goddard

    i can’t wait for the day it comes to Zim. Maybe it will jolt Zimbabwean people to use google maps to search for an address instead of wasting minutes trying to get directions from someone.
    Just google it, it works!
     

  6. WinstonD

    “Sue side bomer” really Mr Ford? Am sure your English teacher is proud.

    1. oMegatron

      Better than being flagged by some security agency like the DHS or CIA 😉

    2. Harrison Ford, Air Force One

      call me paranoid Winston D and you would be right. Ever since i read that using some words on US websites can get you monitored for life, and those docs will be declassified even after you are dead, i dont want to be monitored for every word i say. Disqus is a US site so these things can be tricky. you can be innocent and some fake story mistakenly made up about you through patching up so-called evidence. Turned out Iraq did not have zvombo US said it had. it’s complicated. maybe is should have used vernacular.

  7. MyName

    Mayas NO street view kuZim please you will embarass us. Potholes , unkempt kerbs with 10m tall grass, sewer rivers , garbage mountains, the ex-jap skoro-koros all over

  8. Alfred Ncube

    Tsvangirai will allow all these things Gays, Streetview, Google cache, Blackberry Rim licence, 4th Mobile operator, 2nd terestial telephone operator, multiple digital broadcasters, Free setup of 2.4ghz wifi’s, etc etc

  9. Man and Van hire London

    if you can de-program yourself & look at it for what it is as I have explained than you’ll have that much more funds in your pocket after you buy your new automobile.

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