Of all its core services, Maps is often seen as one of the biggest and most useful and with that comes Google Earth and Street View. Earth and Street View have helped millions of people all over the world experience places and sights that they never could in interactive detail that was never thought possible before. Even though we’ve yet to get out of January this year, Google’s Street View team has been busy, releasing content from miniature railways and now they’re letting people climb one of the world’s most famous mountain ranges, Mont Blanc.
As Google explains on their blog, the Street View team partnered with world-renowned photographers as well as athletes. Doing all the hard work was Kilian Jornet, Ueli Steck, Laetitia Roux, Catherine Destivelle, Candide Thovex, Korra Pesce and Patrick Gabarrou. Each of these renowned athletes and guides had something different to bring to the table, for instance Jornet holds a speed record for climbing up and then back down Mont Blanc in just under five hours. Different members of the troupe took their hand at using Google’s custom Street View hardware, and the end result is a fully-mapped out mountain range, including highlights like the 3842-meter peak of Aiguille du Midi. There’s a video with some info from the individual athletes down below, and of course it can all be explored using Street View here.
Street View has become an interesting side-porject for the Google Maps team, and it’s arguably become part of pop culture, with the famous street view cars making social media posts the world over, 365 days a year. With this new addition, Google’s Street View now offers users one more piece of culture to explore from the comfort of their tablets, phones or computers. While it’s nothing like being there, it’s at least a better of sharing the experience with people and we can’t help but think Google is doing these sort things to shore up some VR content to help with their Cardboard project. Regardless, there’s more fun and inspiring content to oggle over thanks to this latest expedition.