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Have you ever tried to convey the feeling of walking through your favorite park? Or have you wanted to create an interactive tour of a memorable journey? Well, starting today, it’s now possible for you to build your own Street View experiences to do just that. Using a new feature in our Views community, you can easily connect your photo spheres to create 360º virtual tours of the places you love, then share them with the world on Google Maps.

To get started, just create photo spheres using your Android phone or a DSLR and then share them on Views. Next, select the photo spheres from your profile and use our new tool to connect them together (as seen in the example above). Once your photo spheres are connected and published, people can navigate between them on Google Maps, just like they can in Street View. Please visit our help center to learn more about connecting photo spheres.

We are excited to see the different types of Street View experiences that everyone will contribute. For example, this feature can now enable environmental non-profits to document and promote the beautiful places they strive to protect. 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.

And, just like with Street View, you can embed our interactive viewer on your own website or build applications with it using the Google Maps API. You can learn more about solutions for developers.

We hope this new feature will enable people to share and witness the beauty and breadth of our planet through Google Maps. Whether you’re photographing exotic islands or your favorite neighborhood hangout, mountain peaks or city streets, historic castles or your town center, we’re thrilled to see the places you love coming to life on Google Maps.

Businesses, as a reminder, you can showcase the beauty of your interiors through Business Photos.

Evan Rapoport, Product Manager, Google Maps & Photo Sphere
Updated December 16: Modified use cases for clarity & added reference to Business Photos.

Posted by Frank Biasi, Director of Digital Development, National Geographic Maps

After 11 months soaking up the sun in the tropics, Santa and his elves are back at the North Pole getting ready for Christmas Eve. In addition to making toys, they need to clear the snow off 23 elf homes, candy factories and command centers in Santa’s Village.

To join in the flurry of preparations for Christmas Eve, visit the Village every day through December 24. You’ll have the chance to join the elves as they catapult presents and race with reindeer—and you’ll be able to send holiday wishes to friends and family from Santa himself. The elves make a little more progress each day, so be sure to stop by the Village to see the latest.

Meanwhile, a team of Google engineers are working hard to track Santa’s sleigh with the most advanced maps and holiday technology available. On December 24, grab some cookies and apple cider and settle down in front of your computer, phone or TV to follow the big guy across the globe with our Santa Tracker. See where Santa’s going, the number of presents he’s delivered, and what he’s thinking throughout the evening.

Keep up the holiday cheer across all of your screens. Once the elves approve, we’ll launch the Google Santa Tracker app for Android in mid-December. Use your phone for on-the-go flight practice with the elves or cozy up near the fireplace with your tablet to follow Santa around the world as he delivers presents Christmas Eve. If you have Chromecast, cast from the Santa Tracker Android app to explore the Village or track his route right from your TV. Worried you’ll forget the big day? Download the Chrome extension to count down to Santa’s takeoff while browsing the web for holiday gifts.

Be sure to come back to Santa’s Village each day to find new ways to celebrate—and from all of us at Google, happy holidays!

Posted by Sandy Russell, Elf Creative Director

Whether it’s touring the canals of Venice, swimming with the seals in the Galapagos or climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Street View has taken you to some of the most beautiful and exciting places around the world.

Now, in addition to scoping out your destination, Street View can help you cut down the stress of traveling by giving you a preview of your journey, too. Our first efforts to map global transit locations include 16 international airports, over 50 train and subway stations, and even a cable car station in Hong Kong.

Now you can visit the check-in counter of your airline in Madrid, map out the way from baggage claim to the bus at Tokyo International Airport and check out where to pick up your rental car at Eindhoven Airport; you can even scope out your seat on an Emirates flight from Dubai!

Or, if you’re planning to take the train, navigate through Waterloo station so you can be one step ahead, whether you’re with a group of friends, family or a baby stroller.

Don’t let travel logistics get you down this holiday season. With Street View, you can see how to get where you’re going faster and easier. Enjoy and safe travels!

Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Google Street View Program Manager

What do tents and hiking boots have in common? You don’t need either to start exploring or planning your next adventure to some of the best national parks and historical sites across North America.

Working with the U.S. National Park Service and Parks Canada, our Street View cars, trikes and Trekker mapped more than 44 locations with beautiful, 360 degree panoramas.

Leave your gear behind and still get a chance to marvel at the Sequoias in California. Or perhaps you’re looking for more adventure? Lookout to Signal Mountain in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, climb around California’s Joshua Tree National Park, or dip your toe into Moraine Lake in Banff, Canada.

Getting tired? Take a break to watch the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world.

Or, let your inner history buff come out to explore monuments and fortresses across North America.

Brush up presidential facts as you check out the Lincoln Memorial or get a closer look at US presidents at Mount Rushmore. Take a moment to “Remember the Alamo” as you visit this battlefield in Texas or step inside the Halifax Citadel to investigate the city’s role as a key naval station in the British Empire. For a selection of our favorites, check out the Views collection.

Take a moment to remember those that served at the Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial and National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Whether you’re planning your next adventure or just looking to be inspired by the beauty of the world from the comfort of your living room, we invite you to head over to Google Maps and let Pegman be your virtual guide to Street View. We hope you enjoy exploring the majestic scenery of North America’s national parks and monuments.

Posted by Evan Rapoport, Product Manager, Google Maps

Venice was once described as “undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man,” and from these pictures it’s hard to disagree. You can now explore panoramic imagery of one of the most romantic spots in the world, captured with our Street View Trekker technology.

It was impossible for us to collect images of Venice with a Street View car or trike—blame the picturesque canals and narrow cobbled walkways—but our team of backpackers took to the streets to give Google Maps a truly Shakespearean backdrop. And not just the streets—we also loaded the Trekker onto a boat and floated by the famous gondolas to give you the best experience of Venice short of being there.

We covered a lot of ground—about 265 miles on foot and 114 miles by boat—capturing not only iconic landmarks but several hidden gems, such as the Synagogue of the first Jewish Ghetto, the Devil’s Bridge in Torcello island, a mask to scare the same Devil off the church of Santa Maria Formosa and the place where the typographer Manutius created the Italics font. Unfortunately, Street View can’t serve you a cicchetto (local appetizer) in a classic bacaro (a typical Venetian bar), though we can show you how to get there.

Once you’ve explored the city streets of today, you can immerse yourself in the beauty of Venice’s past by diving deep in to the artworks of the Museo Correr, which has joined the Google Cultural Institute along with Museo del Vetro and Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art.

Finally, take a look behind the scenes showing how we captured our Street View imagery in Venice.

The Floating City is steeped in culture; it’s easy to see why it’s retained a unique fascination and romance for artists, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights and pilgrims through the centuries—and now, we hope, for Street View tourists too.

Posted by Daniele Rizzetto, Street View Operations Manager (and proud Venetian!)

This week, we are excited to welcome this year’s group of nonprofit mapping specialists to the annual Geo for Good User Summit – a workshop hosted by the Google Earth Outreach team. The 4-day intensive workshop gives these do-gooder techies hands-on technical training with Google mapping tools and guidance with their projects. Out of the 75 participating organizations this year, there are some truly amazing stories to tell.

One of the attendees, Devin Dotson, is from the nonprofit American Rivers, focused on protecting and restoring the rivers of the United States. American Rivers uses maps to help tell the story of river conservation across the nation. Most recently, American Rivers made their annual announcement of the 10 rivers that are America’s Most Endangered Rivers in 2013. To illustrate these rivers, they released this map in the Google Earth Gallery, built using a Google Maps Engine software grant. The map allows the public to explore the map of the rivers and learn more about how to get involved by clicking each river.

American River’s map of America’s Most Endangered Rivers in 2013

Another Geo for Good participant is Lilian Pintea from the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). Lilian will be sharing JGI’s story about how they’ve used mapping technology on mobile devices to monitor chimpanzee populations, habitats and human threats with local communities in Tanzania. Using this data, JGI is able to engage local communities in protecting chimpanzees and share real-time information with the world through dynamic web maps using App Engine, Fusion Tables, Google Maps API, and Open Data Kit (ODK).

Returning to the Summit from last year is Daniel Orellana, representing the Charles Darwin Foundation. It was during last year’s Summit that Daniel was inspired to suggest that Charles Darwin Foundation work with Google Earth Outreach to bring Street View to the Galapagos. Since the imagery was launched in September, the Charles Darwin Foundation has been working on projects to use the images for science, conservation and education. One of these projects is Darwin for a Day, which allows the public to help identify plants and animals observed when navigating through the imagery.

To learn about Google Earth Outreach and how you can use maps to make the world a better place, head to the Google Earth Outreach website. To find out about next year’s Geo for Good or other mapping workshops, follow Google Earth Outreach on Twitter.

Raleigh Seamster, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach

As we’ve worked with veterans and their family members on projects like Map The Fallen and VetNet, we’ve heard many amazing stories and seen how helpful storytelling can be. So we thought it might be useful to make a very simple storytelling tool. One hallway conversation led to a joint project between the Google Creative Lab and Google Earth Outreach, and today, in honor of Veterans Day, we’re excited to share Tour Builder—a simple tool for recording and sharing stories on a map.

Though originally inspired by veterans, we quickly realized that Tour Builder has the potential be a simple, useful tool for any aspiring storyteller. You could be a high school history teacher explaining the geography of the Revolutionary War, a musician updating your fans from the road, or a grandmother who wants to share her family’s story of service in WWII.

Creating a tour is easy: give it a name, add an introduction photo and a quick description. Then search the map for where your story begins and drop a placemark. Describe each place and embed photos & videos as you guide people through your story. You can dive into Street View or pick the perfect 3D view to show off your adventure.

For inspiration, just download Google Earth and explore our Gallery, which showcases some incredible journeys that have already been created using Tour Builder:

• Elizabeth O’Herrin’s story of service in the Air National Guard from Wisconsin to Afghanistan and back.
• The veterans of Team Rubicon who deploy emergency response teams following natural disasters like the Haiti earthquake
• Dr. Jane Goodall’s multi-generational saga of the chimpanzee “G Family” and how her Institute is protecting endangered chimpanzees with high-tech tools
• BRAC’s efforts spreading anti-poverty solutions in 11 countries through the 100,000+ people they employ worldwide.

We invite you to try Tour Builder, and share your memories and stories with the people you love. Let us know what you think—we’d love to hear your ideas and feedback at for how Tour Builder could be a better storytelling tool and we’d love to see your tours.

Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all of the service members and military families, past and present, whose stories of service, patriotism, survival and achievement inspire us all.

Posted by Sean Askay, Google Earth Outreach, and Carrie Laureno, Google Creative Lab & Google Veterans Network

As you gear up for the holidays, you can easily plan your vacation with the new Google Maps for desktop. With the latest updates, Earth Tours will take you on a virtual trip through cities and natural wonders in full 3D, while Street View imagery and real time traffic incidents will help to ensure smooth travels.

Explore the world with Pegman
Street View’s comprehensive imagery has always been a great way to preview your destination before arriving, but it’s equally helpful when deciding where you want to go. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made it easier to find where Street View is available, so you can explore locations in over 50 countries around the globe.

To discover a world of imagery at your fingertips, look no further than Pegman – your guide through Street View – who you can find in the lower right corner of the screen. Click on Pegman, and areas with Street View imagery will light up in blue. For a street-level preview, hover over any highlighted road, then click to dive into that location.

As you zoom in, you’ll also see blue circles indicating where you can find user-uploaded photos, including Photo Spheres – immersive, 360º panoramas taken from land, air, and sea. Click on a yellow circle to see inside restaurants, museums, and more. With these features, you can explore an increasing variety of locations, inside and out.

And for the Pegman fans out there, you know he’s a globetrotter. Jump over to Google+ now to submit your idea for his next adventure!

Get a bird’s-eye view with Earth Tours
Explore beautiful, 3D imagery of buildings and terrain for thousands of locations from above with Earth Tours available right in your browser.* Wherever you see the Earth Tour icon, you can click, sit back, and get a virtual tour from a soaring angle. Dive into Boston or circle the Alps.

*Available on WebGL-enabled browsers, like Chrome.

Navigate the roads with confidence
Maneuvering an unfamiliar route can be tricky when turns, exits, or tolls appear without warning. With the new step-by-step preview, you can see a street-level snapshot of each decision point to know exactly where you’re going and what to expect. Just click “Preview steps” from the directions card and advance through for a quick study of your trip, including transfers for transit.

Save time commuting and navigate the roads accurately with traffic incident reports – available on desktop and mobile. When you search for driving directions, you’ll now see congestion along the route and real time incidents on the map, including data reported by Waze.

These tools are designed to help you explore and effectively navigate your world. If you’ve opted into the new Google Maps preview, these features will start rolling out today – and in the coming weeks, more of you will begin to see the new Maps experience, which you can tour below.

Posted by Kelvin Ho, Product Manager, Google Maps

(Cross-posted on the Google Enterpise Blog)

Maps are a part of our daily lives—from finding the best local Italian restaurant to planning a trip abroad. Maps are also a valuable tool in the workplace. Businesses use maps to help customers easily find their store locations or help travelers get to their final destination.

Today we’re announcing a new professional mapping tool, Google Maps Engine Pro, which lets businesses visualize their data on a map. By importing data like addresses, names, office locations and sales leads from various file formats onto a map, businesses can edit, analyze and share their information in a simple format. Google Maps Engine Pro can be as easy to use as creating a document and it gives businesses an added productivity tool to help make decisions, organize information, and plan operations using Google Maps.

With the ability to collect business information, visualize it on a map and share it across multiple devices, organizations can make better sense of data in relation to real-world surroundings. For example, Pure Fix Cycles, a distributor of custom, fixed gear bikes, uses Maps Engine Pro to identify sales opportunities across target markets, helping to expand their business throughout the U.S. and around the world.

Google Maps Engine Pro was built as an application on top of the Google Maps Engine platform, which provides businesses with cloud based technology to help them organize large datasets and create more complex maps. Today, in addition to introducing Maps Engine Pro, we’re also announcing several new features to Google Maps Engine:

• Mobile App: The new mobile app allows individuals to access their maps created in Google Maps Engine, Maps Engine Pro and Maps Engine Lite. Once a map has been shared, users can access their data on-the-go and from any Android device.
• Connector Tools: It’s now easy to migrate data from legacy systems, such as SAP, into Maps Engine using a connector tool that can be downloaded for free. There are more than 300+ business and geospatial applications available through the connector. To make data migration even easier, the Maps Engine now features an ESRI Toolbar that lets you transfer your ArcGIS maps to Maps Engine.
• Introductory Account: Want to test out Google Maps Engine for your business? The introductory account is an easy way to introduce Maps Engine to your organization’s geospatial infrastructure. The free account supports the product’s full platform capabilities, including API access, but limits the number of map queries per day.

By providing better ways to easily integrate maps into your organization’s operations, businesses now have the ability to use powerful mapping technologies that were once only available to the mapping experts. With the launch of Google Maps Engine Pro and the new Google Maps Engine platform features, now every enterprise and business professional can visualize their data on a map.
Posted by Brian McClendon

[Cross posted from the Official Google Blog]

In 1986, a five-year-old boy named Saroo Munshi Khan accidentally fell asleep on a stationary train in India. He woke up hours later, alone and in an unfamiliar place. This fateful train ride ripped Saroo away from his home and family. For more than a quarter century, he searched for them before finding his way back home with the help of Google Earth.

This incredible true story spans decades, miles and continents. If it weren’t for hope, determination and technology, Saroo would have remained forever lost.

On that day 27 years ago, Saroo and his 14-year-old brother, Guddu, were searching a train station for change to help support their family. Guddu wandered beyond the station and Saroo fell asleep on a stationary train waiting for his brother’s return. When he woke up, the train had left the station, separating Saroo from his home and family.

The train Saroo boarded was in Berhanpur, India, and he ended up 1,500 kilometers away, in Calcutta. For weeks, he survived on the streets. Eventually, he was taken into an orphanage, where he was adopted by the Brierleys, an Australian family. He moved across an ocean to the town of Hobart in Tasmania. At six years old, Saroo had a new family, home, country and name. Though Saroo Munshi Khan couldn’t find his home, Saroo Brierley never gave up the search.

In 2011, using vague memories and Google Earth imagery, Saroo identified his home town. Using the ruler feature in Google Earth, he mapped out a search radius by making an educated guess about how far he traveled by train. After countless hours of scouring this area of Google Earth imagery, he came upon a proverbial needle in a haystack. Saroo spotted one vague landmark that led him to the next, helping him unlock a five-year-old child’s memories. He eventually spotted a neighborhood, street and tin roof that looked familiar.

In Saroo’s words, “It was just like being Superman. You are able to go over and take a photo mentally and ask, ‘Does this match?’ And when you say, ‘No,’ you keep on going and going and going.”

In 2012, Saroo embarked on a trip from Australia back to Khandwa, India. Once he arrived, he shared his story with locals, who helped him find his way back home to his mother and surviving brother and sister. Twenty-six years after accidentally leaving home, he finally found his way back.

The Google Earth imagery that brought Saroo home.
Maps can affect our lives in many ways, big and small—but hopefully they always help us find our way. You can now read Saroo’s book, “A Long Way Home,” for a detailed account of his journey of survival and triumph against incredible odds. It celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit—hope.

Posted by Peter Birch, Google Earth Product Manager

Though summer has come to an end – at least in the Northern Hemisphere – your feedback on the new Google Maps preview these past three months has been a great help in our continuing quest to build a better map, more tailored to you. Based on your input, we’re pleased to announce one of your most requested features – directions for multiple destinations – will begin rolling out today. And with two new tools to help manage your reservations and discover upcoming events, it’s never too early to plan your next road trip or adventure.

Directions for multiple destinations
Whether you’re running weekend errands or planning a cross-country tour, you can plot multiple destinations for your trip with ease – now available for driving, walking and biking directions. Once you’ve chosen a starting point, click ‘+’ and add stops to your route by typing in the search box or clicking on the map.

When you’re exploring a new city, find the best way to museums, historic squares, and other attractions by dragging and dropping your destinations in the order that works for you. And if you’re curious before you go, the Views carousel, located in the bottom right corner, is a great way to preview Street View, Photo Tours, and other imagery.

See your flight, hotel, and restaurant reservations
Similar to Google Search, find your flight, hotel, and restaurant reservations faster right in Maps. Just search for your departing airport or dining destination, and we’ll instantly show your upcoming plans. Having all your stuff in one place makes it easier to manage your appointment details and plan your commute. This info is available when you’re signed into Google, and only you can see it.

Then, when you’re ready to go, you can quickly access your recent search history on the Google Maps app for your iPhone or Android device and hit the road

This feature is currently rolling out to Maps users in the U.S. and is available in English only.

Upcoming Events
Search for Radio City Music Hall, the O2 Arena, or your favorite local performance venues, and click
on the Upcoming Events card to see a schedule of concerts, sports matches, and other events happening near you. Or if you’re new to an area, start with “music venues.”

It’s been a busy summer for the Maps team, and we wanted to share a few things we’ve been working on, but there’s a lot more coming soon. Keep sending us your feedback using the “Help & Feedback” menu in the upper right corner of the screen.

Posted by Florian Goerisch, Product Manager, Google Maps

At CERN, the European particle physics laboratory based in the suburbs of Geneva, some of the world’s best physicists and engineers are using advanced particle accelerators to help solve age old questions about the universe — What is is made of? How did it start?

We’re delighted that CERN opened its doors to Google Maps Street View allowing anyone, anywhere in the world to take a peek into its laboratories, control centers and its myriad underground tunnels housing cutting-edge experiments. Street View also lets scientists working on the experiments, who may be on the other side of the world, explore the equipment they’re using.

For two full weeks back in 2011, members of our Street View team from Google’s Zurich office worked with our CERN partners to capture this incredible imagery. You can check out the above experiments, like ATLAS, ALICE, CMS, LHCb and the Large Hadron Collider tunnel in Google Maps, as well as collections of other Street View imagery from amazing sites around the world, on our Views site.

You can also learn more about CERN by following its Google+ page.

Posted by Pascale Milite, Google Street View operations