Thanks to our newest trekker that is equipped with higher-resolution sensors and increased aperture, we’ve significantly improved the quality of imagery we capture. In the 12 years since then, our Street View car and trekker operations have collected more than 170 billion images from 87 countries. In 2007, Street View launched to help people virtually explore the entire world, from the depths of Antarctica to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Street View and satellite imagery have long been an important part of how we’re able to identify where places are in the world-it shows us where roadways, buildings, addresses and businesses are located in a region, in addition to other important details-such as the town’s speed limits or business names. Today, we’ll start with an overview of the basics. In a series of posts over the coming months, we’ll give you a closer look at how we build our map-diving deep into each of the elements we use to help more than one billion people navigate, explore and get things done. The answer is, it takes a number of different steps, and the right mix of people, techniques and technology. Our role on the Google Maps team is to accurately model and reflect this ever-evolving world, and we’re often asked how we make a map that does that. All rights reserved.The world is a beautiful, messy, constantly changing place-roads are added, buildings are built, and new businesses are opened all the time. Labels and map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Tropical storm tracks are created using the latest data from NHC, JTWC, NRL and IBTrACS. Weather forecast maps show precipitation, wind, temperature and more using the latest global model data from DWD ICON and NOAA-NWS GFS. Coverage is limited and may show glitches/anomalies.

Radar maps show rain and snow detected in real-time. Heat sources show areas of high temperature using the latest data from FIRMS. HD satellite images are updated twice a day from NASA polar-orbiting satellites Aqua and Terra, using services from GIBS, part of EOSDIS. EUMETSAT Meteosat images are updated every 15 minutes. Live satellite images are updated every 10 minutes from NOAA GOES and JMA Himawari geostationary satellites. View LIVE satellite images, rain radar, forecast maps of wind, temperature for your location.

Google map world