Google Street View now in France

GOOGLE expanded its Street View function of Google Maps, its free online mapping service, to six major cities in France, the first European country covered.

Paris, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Marseille and Nice have been added to Street View, which uses photographs to give users a ground-level view of places around the world.

'Using Street View, you can now walk down the Champs Elysees,' Mr Luc Vincent, the engineering director of Street View, wrote in a posting on the blog of the Google Earth and Google Maps team.

Street View was introduced by the Internet search king in the United States last year.

Earlier this year, Google Maps provided street views of the 21 stages of the Tour de France, but the six French cities now covered by Street View are the first in Europe with the feature.

Street View has been controversial because of privacy issues and Google announced in May that it was testing technology that would blur the faces of people pictured in street scenes.

[via]