Google Street View Available Now in Romania

Google Street View is one of the company's most controversial products, sometimes rightfully so. But not all Street View roll-outs are met with the kind of drama that the Germany launch got. Google has just unveiled the service in Romania where several of the biggest cities are now already available with more on the way.

"Bram Stoker’s world famous novel Dracula was believed to have been inspired by fifteenth century Wallachian Prince, Vlad Dracul from Romania (better known to many as Vlad the Impaler)," Octavian Iercan, Operations Lead, Street View Europe wrote.

"The legend of the vampire is still deeply rooted in Transylvanian culture today, and tourists from across the world come to explore the history and mystery of the many beautiful castles that can be found here," he added.

"But of course those aren’t all the sights Romania has to offer, and now you can see for yourself, because today we’re making 360-degree Street View imagery available in Romania for several cities and roads," he announced.

For now, full Street View data is available for Bucuresti, the capital of Romania, and Brasov. Oradea and Arad also have fairly complete data and more is being rolled out.

There is also imagery for some of the main roads in the country and data for more cities will be made available in the short term future as Google is busy shooting new images and processing the ones it gathered so far.

Romania is one of the first countries to get Street View in Central and Easter Europe with the only other one being the Czech Republic. Interestingly enough, Google has been blocked from shooting new images in the Czech Republic.

A localized version of Google Maps is also available in Romania now in beta. The market seems to be the next big focus in the region for Google as the mapping data is more complete and of higher quality that in neighbouring countries.