Google Street View Photos

• On July 2, 2008, Google Street View was introduced in France and Italy, providing the first service outside the United States and the debut of Google's new 4th Generation Cameras. On this day, 19 camera icons were added, mostly showing small towns and areas along the Tour de France route and part of north western Italy
• On August 4, 2008, 28 icons of major metropolitan areas of both Australia and Japan were added to Google Street View. Included in the update were approximately 40 new U.S. hub cities.
• On December 1, 2008, New Zealand was added to Google Street View. Faces were blurred upon recommendation by the New Zealand Privacy Commission, but vehicle registration plates were not obscured.
• Two other features included in the June 10, 2008, update were an effective mask of the "Google Car" and the application of face-blurring technology on all photos, which effectively lowered the resolution across all photos, even the formerly impressive high resolution images of San Francisco. Also, many nearby metro areas were included, but they did not receive their own camera icons. Google initially used images from spherical video company Immersive Media as well as their own vehicles. Since December 2007, Google has used imagery that belongs exclusively to Google.