If you’re tired of looking up your friends’ street addresses on Google Maps Street View to see who has a mansion and who lives in a trailer park, Google has the next big thing: 3-D maps, which might be even creepier.
Street View cars have become fixtures in recent years, driving around neighborhoods with cameras to capture a moment in time on your street — just just to capture something embarrassing. Google is replacing those with a fleet of airplanes.
The tech giant won’t say where its planes will be operating, so there’s a good chance they will go unnoticed. Google plans to release several 3-D maps by the end of the year.
Google Earth product manager Peter Birch told Reuters, “We’re trying to create the illusion that you’re just flying over the city, almost as if you were in your own personal helicopter.”
Since so may Google shareholders actually have personal helicopters, we’l forgive them the conceit. If you want to see the world through Sergey Brin’s eyes, though, get ready to strap on — we assume — a pair of funky glasses, and have the unmistakably geeky experience of seeing just how tall your house is.