14 DAY TRIAL // The Winter Olympic Games start next week and Google wants to make sure it’s ready for the event. The company has been adding a lot of Street View imagery from a bunch of towns, cities and sights in Russia.
Starting today, users of Street View will be able to visit Vladivostok, Yakutsk, Irkutsk and Sochi, the exact place where the Olympics will take place.
“With the eyes of winter sports fans turning to Russia, we thought this would be a good time to add more towns, cities and picturesque sights of this sprawling country to Google Maps. From today, Street View will be available in Vladivostok, Yakutsk, Irkutsk and, of course, Sochi,” Google writes in a blog post.
In total, Street View cars have covered 300,000 km in Russia in 2013, reaching an area housing about 60 percent of the population.
“The mapping team met unusual challenges. When taking imagery of the Tobolsk monastery the drivers spent two days praying with the Monastery Abbot. In order to get to some remote spots, Street View cars were transported in containers on tracks and boats. There was even place for romance: while shooting Sakhalin, one driver met his future wife,” writes Google’s Carlos Reolid, program manager for Street View.
Additionally, Google is also adding imagery in Slovenia, covering cities such as Ljubljana, Maribor, Celje Koper and Kranj.
The 22nd Winter Olympics takes place between February 7-23, 2014 in Sochi, Russia, while some other events will be held in the resort town of Krasnaya Polyana.
There will be 98 events over this period, in 15 winter sport disciplines. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that the Sochi Olympics would be the safest in history, although there are concerns that a terrorist attack might take place after several bombs exploded in several Russian cities in the past few months.