The Wall Street Journal | By: Mike Cherney | June 7, 2017 | 10:01 a.m. ET:
In Cambodia, monkeys destroyed its equipment.
ULURU, Australia—Google is coming across some unusual challenges as it seeks to capture eye-level imagery of the most remote parts of the globe.
In a recent foray into the Australian outback, Google’s amateur cartographers used a backpack to lug bulky camera equipment around Uluru, a popular tourist site also known as Ayers Rock. One hitch: they had to avoid photographing certain parts of the red rock formation that are especially sacred to the local Aboriginal people.
Having taken shots of many of the world’s streets using cameras on vehicles, Google is moving to more difficult locations. On the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, where it captured images of a volcano, the company sought to photograph lava without any of its cameras falling in. And in Cambodia, monkeys destroyed its equipment.
The images are being used to enhance Street View, a component of the company’s popular Google Maps app, as the company searches for new features that will entice users. Starting today, users will be able to take a continuous, virtual walk around much of Uluru.
Maps are becoming more important to the world’s largest technology companies as they chase billions of dollars in potential advertising revenue and invest in something that is crucial to the autonomous-vehicle industry. The value of ads that are based on a user’s location will grow to $32 billion by 2021 from $12 billion in 2016 in the U.S., according to estimates from BIA/Kelsey, a media and advertising consulting firm. These location-targeted ads will take up 45% of the mobile-ad market by 2021, the firm said, up from 38% last year.
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