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SINGAPORE’S streets can now be explored virtually with Internet giant Google’s new Street View service, which went live yesterday.

The Republic is the first in South-east Asia to have the free service, which offers 3-D views of roads, landmarks and buildings islandwide.

Between October last year and this June, several Opel Astra cars chalked up thousands of kilometres driving up and down the island’s roads and highways, with multi-directional high-resolution cameras mounted on them snapping pictures every few metres.

The millions of images shot were then stitched together to create the service, which is accessible via the Web and some mobile phone models, like those using Google’s Android phone software, said its regional head of product management, Mr Andrew McGlinchey.

It also ran an online poll, together with the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), to gauge the public’s opinion on the must-feature heritage hot spots and tourist attractions here. The tourism agency, which sees value in the service, paved the way for Google to access private roads at sites like Sentosa, so that it could map as much of the island as possible.

Said STB’s assistant chief executive for marketing, Mr Ken Low: ‘People unfamiliar with Singapore can now get a first look at our city. The convenience…will give people from anywhere in the world a much better idea and picture of what Singapore looks like.’

Street View now covers 95 per cent of all public roads here, said Mr McGlinchey. It has begun using a human-powered tricycle to capture images of areas inaccessible to cars.

At this point in time, the pictures taken by the tricycle are not yet online, but should be by next year, he said.

Some areas whose pictures are not available include military bases and schools; certain other sites, which Google declined to disclose, are also not accessible on Street View for security reasons.

While reception in countries where the service is available has been generally positive, Street View is not without controversy.

When first launched in the United States in 2007, Street View ruffled the feathers of privacy advocates, who said the service was a violation of a person’s privacy.

Then, clear pictures of people at indiscreet moments like entering brothels, in an awkward pose, or enjoying a private moment like sun-tanning were available and subsequently widely re-published.

Following the outcry, Google began blurring out faces and other identifying marks like car number plates in Street View images last year.

This has also been done for the photographs captured in Singapore, said Mr McGlinchey, adding that it has taken care to abide by Singapore’s laws.

He added that people whose faces are not blurred out or who are otherwise unhappy with a picture can lodge a complaint and expect an answer within two days, he said.

Google will also ‘honour any home owner’s request to have an image of their home removed due to privacy concerns’, he said.

When quizzed on the costs of setting up the service here, Mr McGlinchey said only that the company had ‘devoted significant engineering resources to drive the cars, take the images, build Street View and continue to provide this feature on Google Maps every day for Singapore’.

The Google cars are away mapping another city currently, but they will be back next year, to capture pictures of the integrated resorts and post-makeover Orchard Road.

Source : Straits Times – 3 Dec 2009