Rumors of Google “Store View” Spreading

According to Barry Schwartz of clickz.com, Google is planning a “Google Store View”. Currently in Google Maps you can see traffic, a normal map, a satelite map, a terrain map, and as you zoom in more you can even do a “street view”. This allows you to see what the area looks like if you were actually on the street itself. Google accomplishes street view with a fleet of cars mounted with cameras. They simply drive around the streets with sophisticated camera equipment constantly taking pictures. If you’re interested in seeing what it looks like here is an article with some up close pictures of the equipment.

So this brings us to the point of this post… Googles “Store View”. Apparently now Google is planning on entering stores and taking pictures of everything going on inside. A store in NYC called “Oh Nuts” tipped Clickz to Googles plans and supposedly came in and took pictures. It makes me wonder if this is really plausible. Would the ROI on hundreds or thousands of photographers taking pictures be worth it? It will be interesting to see what Google comes up with… Stay Tuned!

-Luke