Google Street View Summit 2019: Top Takeaways

We've been in London this week with boots on the ground at the Google Street View Summit. It was great to see so many cases using our Insta360 Pro and Pro 2! With Google's increased move in encouraging third party creators for Street View content, we wanted to highlight a few of the top takeaways that show where the industry is heading.

Google Street View Trusted is changing

If you're not familiar with Google Street View trusted, you can learn more about it here. The program has always been a solid way to get a badge of recognition from Google, to show that you're qualified to put businesses on the map. However, as the industry evolves, so too is the program.

Google will now be segmenting the program into three service-based tiers, rather than one standardized stamp. The tiers are as follows:

Street View Trusted:This is for general walking or driving street view capture

Large Tours Trusted: This is for larger virtual tours, such as shopping malls.

Virtual Tours Trusted: As the name suggests, virtual tours of smaller venues such as shops will fall under this category.

Opportunity presents itself in road assessments

Virtual tours represent just a fraction of the possibilities when it comes to building a business using Google Street View.

Google has been adding emphasis on Street View being leveraged for road assessments and planning. Organizations such as IRAP have been using Street View imagery as a way to survey to ensure road safety, ultimately with the aim to guide road maintenance investment and prevent fatal injury.

Engineers are using Street View to dramatically cut costs.

The value agencies can offer to engineering clients is evolving. We heard from Black and Veactch, who have been using Insta360 Pro to cut project costs in road construction projects.

They use 360 camera content as a way to enable their engineers to remotely visit roads using Google Street View. They can review road conditions and plan for construction without ever having to step foot on busy roads. Not only is it faster and cheaper, but it's also safer.

Google Street View Summit 2019 was a great chance to learn from industry leaders, and get a glimpse from Google as to where the industry is heading in 2020.

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