United Kingdom Welcomes Google Street View

This day has finally arrived! The day that Google Street View finally arrives in the United Kingdom. It is now possible to explore the United Kingdom from street level. This first phase of Street View in the UK consists of the cities (and sometimes surrounding areas) of: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, Swansea, and York. (List source: Google Blogoscoped) I’m sure more of the UK will eventually be visible in Street View, as apparently the Street View car(s) with the tell-tale gigapixel camera mounted on the roof has been spotted around the UK in more rural areas and smaller cities than the ones mentioned above.

What I’m pleasantly surprised about is how nice the weather was on the days that the Street View car(s) went around Glasgow. You can actually see some rare blue skies! Alas, as this is Scotland we’re talking about, rain drops can be seen on the camera’s lens every now and then. I’ve gotten conflicting opinions on when the Street View car(s) went around Glasgow, although I found a road sign on our street which gave some clue to the period of time in question:

In celebration of this new level of geekdom/surveillance/voyeurism/procrastination, below are 10 sights of Glasgow, as seen in Street View. You can pan around and  zoom in and out each of these embedded street views, or click the link below them to open the view in a larger window. I’ll be using Street View to enhance my posts about Glasgow and Scotland in the future, in addition to the hundreds of photos I take here.

To go exploring in Street View yourself, head on to http://maps.google.com (or Google Earth), find the city you want to explore, and pull the little yellow pegman from the left-hand side of the screen onto a street on the map. The roads which become highlighted in blue are the ones where you can go exploring. Then just pan around, zoom around, and explore! If you find something exceptionally funny or cool in street view in Scotland, especially in Glasgow, please post the link in the comments section below!
(Hit the link below to view embedded street views)

The University of Glasgow from University Avenue

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The Duke of Wellington was caught on one of his hat days

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Looking up our street (Great George Street)

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Buchanan Street
Unfortunately Google takes the Street View photographs from a car, and as such it fails to adequately record pedestrian-only streets, such as Buchanan Street

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Ashton Lane in the West End of Glasgow

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Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

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Glasgow Science Centre and IMAX Theatre. Pan around for the BBC Scotland Headquarters

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Glasgow Green, the Peoples’ Palace, and the Doulton Fountain. Pan around for the Templeton Carpet Factory.

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Glasgow Cathedral

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George Square and the City Chambers

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For more information and other posts about Google Street View in the United Kingdom, check out the posts below, while I spend the next few days playing with Street View.
Street View cures the homesick blues – Google LatLong
UK Street View Has Arrived – Google Sightseeing
Street View Now in the UK and Netherlands – Google Maps Mania
Google Street View Launched in UK and Netherlands – Google Blogoscoped
News on the Google Street View UK Launch – Google Sightseeing
Google’s pictures of UK go live – BBC News

-Jani