Yesterday, Stephen Newton, the Country Manager of Google South Africa, announced that Google will be starting to collect imagery in some of South Africa’s major cities for Google Street View.

With the World Cup fever building, people from around the globe are keen to experience everything that South Africa has to offer, so over the coming months Google will help bring South Africa’s vibrant cityscapes to the world. You can expect to see one of a fleet of Toyota Priuses on the road in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and Durban.

So what is Street View?

It is a hugely popular feature of Google Maps that is already available in more than 100 metropolitan areas around the world. It allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighbourhood through panoramic street-level images. It is also available in Google Earth and on Google Maps for Mobile.

Images collected by the cars in South Africa will be processed and carefully stitched together, a technological process that can take several months. They will be made available at a later date in Street View on Google Maps for South Africa. As with all Street View imagery, Google will apply face-blurring and license plate blurring to all these images to protect people’s privacy. Once images are available, people will be able to report images for removal or additional blurring by clicking on ‘report a problem’ on the bottom left hand corner of the image.

If you’re driving around any of these city’s and happen to spot a Toyota Prius kitted out with our amazing camera technology, then smile broadly!

Toyota Prius kitted out with amazing Google camera technology