Soccer World Cup with Google Maps and Street View

Google has launched Street View in South Africa, so you can now see your favourite World Cup stadiums and city hotspots online. The image above is from Google Maps, and shows Green Point’s Main Road, with the Cape Town Stadium in the background. Truly magnificent! Of course, license plates and people’s faces are blurred to avoid privacy issues. What is interesting though, is that I’ve seen company signage on cars and this of course cannot be hidden. Try Street View for yourself, but I warn you, it’s addictive. Images are not live, and they’re not current, they can be up to a few months old. So there’s no need to worry about stalkers and the like. This is simply an archive of street imagery that Google has been collecting for a very long time. The launch of Street View is a real big shift for us in South Africa – and I’m very excited about it.

This Google video explains Street View adequately, and towards the end of it you’ll see imagery from Cape Town, which feels nice, I must say.

Are you a mobile user? This video explains Street View for mobile:

If you want to be creative during the World Cup season – or really at any other time – Google allows you to create your own Google Map with a tool called MyMaps. It’s really very simple to do, and it can be done in just minutes. Look at this short video to see how it’s done:

CleverPete has made his MyMaps public. He’s done the Waterfront bus route in Cape Town. Check it out here. This map was created a while ago, but it’s now very interesting because Street View has been activated.

Try Street View by clicking this link.