After the Google Street View teams canvased cities around the world, the Amazon rainforest, airports and train stations, it's finally taking a backseat and letting you take a crack at it.
Urban explorers now have a new tool in the Views community that will enable them to plan, shoot, and upload their own Street View journeys.
Google says the new tool will allow people to convey the feeling of walking through their favorite park or create virtual tours of their businesses. To get started all someone needs to do is create photo spheres with their Android phone or DSLR camera.
After sharing them on Views, users can use Google's new tool to connect them on a map like a constellation of stars. Once amateur Street Viewers are done fussing with the way it looks, others will be able to navigate to them on Google Maps.
Sans giant camera backpack
In the same blog post, the search company says it hopes this will be another avenue for users to share and see different types of Street View experiences.
"It also opens up a new tool for photographers to showcase diversity in a specific location - by times of day, weather conditions or cultural events - in a way that Street View currently doesn't cover," Evan Rapoport, Google's product manager of Google Maps and Photo Sphere, wrote.
This isn't the first time Google has tried to get average folks involved with its Street View ambitions.
Previously the search company loaned out a backpack version of its Street View car camera called the Trekker to capture remote locations on foot.
Google's latest tool seems to be an even easier way for anyone to jump in using just their Android smartphone or the DLSR they may have sitting around already. It's definitely a ploy to get more snappers to share their pictures on Street View, but in the long run it could help turn the feature into a more diverse, more beautiful creation.
