This feature on google maps is incredible. Have a look at the images of the street, in the street view. Does this means Google has the photographs of each and every street in the world?. Anyways this is a cool feature to added to a website. http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/examples/streetview-data.html
well I think its not photograph its something like a live view of streets through some satellite camera......................................
google has a snapshot of entire earth from the help of a retiring nasa website (just like cache , but it never updates) so what you see is 4-5 yrs old
Those are not the images taken from the top. A satellite can give you live images from the top. This is different from wikimapia images and seems to be taken at ground level.
Not every street in the US. Not even close. However, they added a TON more imagery yesterday: http://www.digitalearthblog.com/2008/06/10/huge-update-to-google-maps-streetview/ No, it's just photographs, wrapped in a slick Flash presentation. The new cities posted yesterday appear to be about 3-6 months. They get their data for Google Earth and Google Maps from a wide variety of sources. Most data in those products is 1-3 years old, though some is bit older.
Yes they have a car that travels around and takes the images. I've seen it in Philadelphia and in remote North Central Pennsylvania. They have been sued by celebrities I believe I read somewhere over this issue.
A bunch of cars -- not just one. Nope, not celebrities. Just a couple of claims that Google took photos from private roads: http://www.digitalearthblog.com/2008/06/01/minnesota-city-demands-removal-of-streetview-images/ http://www.digitalearthblog.com/2008/04/04/a-new-twist-on-the-streetview-privacy-concerns/