Mountain View, California — In a unique move to provide businesses with a new window for online shoppers, global search engine giant Google is taking its Street View concept inside local businesses with a new feature dubbed as Business Photos that shows you 360-degree images of store interiors using Street View technology.
As the saying goes: Its not what is on the outside that counts; it is what is on the inside. Well, looks like Google is following this age-old catchword with the roll-out of its new Google Maps Street View feature: The company announced last May it would be snapping interior shots of stores, but now it is moving out of its pilot phase with more 360 degree interiors cropping up online.
Now, Google Street View users will be able to do some factual “window shopping” right from the comfort of their home computers and mobile devices as Google will bring its Street View application indoors. Since this new feature was announced last May, Google has cropped up enough business interiors to meet its quota for rolling out the application to the public.
Interestingly, the latest approach by Google Street Views’ Business Photos lets you peep inside select stores in 10 U.S. cities and neighboring areas including Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C. The new feature is also available in Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand and the U.K.
Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, Tenn.
Street View on Google Maps has delivered endless hours of unique entertainment in looking up houses, friends’ houses, your elementary school, that park you fell asleep in that one time. Now Google is using these images as a marketing tool for businesses that want to show off their interiors.
In order to have your businesses’ interior photographed, starting today, business owners have the option to fill out an application with Google for the opportunity to have a 360-degree view of their store insides featured on Street View.
If chosen, you will be contacted by Google’s photographers to set up a time for the shoot. The catch? Google’s photographers are required to take the photos on-site, and Google reserves the rights to the images, including the right to keep one up, even if you object to it. In order to have an image removed, you must submit a request for it to be taken down. Google asks that you tell customers and those in the area you are holding the shoot on the day it happens. If people are in any of the shots, Google will blur their faces or simply not put the photo up.
A quirky, animated video released by Google explains the process:
“By applying for a free Google photo shoot, photos of your business will be visible on your business’ Place page for users to see,” the video illustrates. “We can take pictures of businesses like restaurants, hotels, beauty salons and more. Business owners can upload photos to the Place page, as well, for example, to announce seasonal events and new renovations.”
Apparently, this is not a “privacy” risk because you are authorizing on behalf of the business to the photographs. However, as a commenter on Hacker News points out, there is potential for criminals to use the interior shots as a way to “case the place,” or find out information before robbing it.
“This one’s my business,” said Nathan Kurz, chief executive of Scream Sorbet, shown in the photo above, “They came to shoot the interior as a perk for participating in a “Google Offer”. I think this is how they are rolling it out, at least in the Bay Area. To me, the results came out fine, although I worry that it now makes ‘casing the joint’ a little easier.”
According to a Google spokesperson, the company has already co-operated with thousands of businesses to photograph these 360 degree interior views. Photos will be available both on your Google business page as well as the Google Maps Street View.
In addition, this is a novel step forward for marketing purposes, and could be a non-issue as anyone can stroll into a store and look around, but having 360 degree shots on Google does make the information more readily available.
“It would only become a problem if all businesses had [interior photos] and then you could go down the block [on Google Maps] and see who does not have an alarm,” Kurz said in an interview with VentureBeat.
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