While more people are using mobile phones and Google Maps to navigate through cities each day, it is surprising that India is still deliberating on the company’s proposal to bring its Street View service—generating a panoramic view of streets—here. This, despite the fact that Google has mapped over 5,000 cities and six lakh villages in the country. The company has launched several India-based products like offline maps and local language based navigation, but it is yet to receive permission to launch Street View, which would entail company using vehicles with cameras to roam the streets of Indian cities.
The service, operational across the developed world, allows people to find places easily and gives them a glimpse of how a particular area is. It would also help chart more routes and improve upon the accuracy levels possible for mapping services. It is a big help to travellers, or even potential home-buyers, in determining the lay and characteristics of a locality and its surroundings. It is understandable that government has some reservations regarding security, but given that Google has a map service that gives a near-accurate reading and most people are tagging their surroundings on Facebook, there is nothing more that a Street View would reveal.