Virtual tours of Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Donetsk are now available from the comfort of your couch with the launch on April 20 of Google Street View in Ukraine.
Already well known abroad, Street View offers Internet users to go one step beyond Google Maps – to come down to street level. By zooming down into the online maps or dragging the little orange man from the sidebar onto the map, a user can travel through one of the five cities with simple clicks of the mouse.
The service is available online via desk computers or laptops and on 3G phones.
With the four host cities for Euro 2012 plus tourist hotspot Odesa available, fans and prospective tourists will now be able to see hotels ahead of booking them or plan out their tour of a city’s top sights. It can also be useful for Ukrainians and foreigners trying to navigate the country’s sometimes obscure road network. Tournament co-host Poland also saw its main attractions added to the Street View list in previous weeks.
“The service is available to people everywhere who want to learn more about Ukraine: tourists, businessmen, football fans,” said Ulf Spitzer, who heads Google mapping projects in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
First launched in five U.S. cities in May 2007, Google Street View is based on sending a car, tricycle, trolley or snowmobile equipped with 360-degree panoramic camera attached on top of it to photograph an area. People and car licenses are blurred out to ensure privacy.
Ukraine is the 20th country in Europe to be fully or partially covered by Street View, which is available in over 30 states and regions around the world, including Antarctica.
Kyiv Post staff writer Jakub Parusinski can be reached at [email protected]
