Transcription
I've done it. The day has come. Possibly the best day of my life is today. And you're probably asking yourself why. Well, I had the privilege of interviewing and having a conversation with two employees at Google that work directly with Google Street View. Streetview has enabled exploration and encouraged learning about the world for the past 20 years and, of course, has been a massive impact in my life and how I view the world. This video includes them challenging me to unique places it has covered to see if I could, uh, get them right. We'll see. An open conversation about Street View, and it even leads to them making me guess new countries that Street View is adding off of unreleased panos. So this is really pretty exclusive access, and I hope you guys enjoy.
All right, it is another day to have the privilege to use your noggin, and I am here with Stafford and Emily. You guys probably don't know who Stafford and Emily are, but if anyone had ever asked me who is my dream guest to talk to, these two would probably be the two, and you'll probably understand why. Let's start with Stafford. Would you mind introducing yourself and like, kind of your role and why you're here with us today?
Yeah, I'm Stafford. I'm a product manager on Google Maps. I look after our imagery products, including Street View, satellite, and aerial imagery. I've been working on Street View in various roles since I think 2016, so that's about nine years now. And, uh, yeah, really excited to be here as well.
Yeah, so I'm the other product manager on Google Maps. I started as an engineer in 2020 and joined as a product manager back in 2023. The two best to talk to I've heard when talking about Street View and the product itself. And so I think today we're just going to go through and just like talk Street View, talk maps, and uh, see what comes out of it.
Works for us. Let's do it.
So this is coverage over the last 20 years that Street View has released. This is a combination of like Google's official favorites, like stuff we've put in blog posts, as well as my favorites.
All right, I'm nervous. Let's see. I don't know where this is. Uh, okay, I'm not using that to to guess either. I put that in there for you, you know, just in case.
No, no, no, I'm going to try and guess this without looking at that. What coverage could this be? Okay, so let me just talk through my thought process. Right, it looks like something over here that would be my… It's not Peron, is it? There's coverage all over in like Pikaron. There's like, you know, stuff over there. There's like the northern Filipino stuff that could look like that, um, but I don't want to use the distance because the distance isn't that's not G, that's distance guessesser. I don't want to use distance guessesser.
Yeah, it's a it's a random real island. I actually don't know what this is because in the pig heron usually the guy has hair. No, he's not wearing a hat. I'm like, so I don't think I've seen the guy on the pair islands wearing a hat. That's like the only thing I'm confused about. Uh, it could… Oh my god, I know it's like when you're talking about like, oh, you know, people in the geogesser community or whatnot, we know some of the people doing this.
Oh, well, it's not like this guy. I'm calling this guy bald. I'm just saying he's wearing a hat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, this is my best guess, but I met the guy, I I forget who it is, but I met the guy who did pick Karen. Wait, that would be an amazing interview. Hopefully, he hasn't gotten a haircut.
Yeah, I'm just gonna make a guess at Amsttown.
What's Amsttown?
Okay, nice. That's good. That's the damn all over again. Okay, so I'm one for one. That's good.
Oh, can I pan around? This is official. It is official. Wow. That is beautiful though. Oh my goodness. Um, yeah, I would go somewhere north, um, but there's too many trees over here for it to be that north, I feel like. But yeah, this is going to be a bad guess. Oh, is that the walking pattern of the guy trying to get 360? That is amazing. There's so much snow. Yeah, I'll go Norway or something here. I I don't know, northern Finland maybe? Could be.
Yeah, that was a good guess. That's a good guess. I got the country wrong though. I got the country wrong. I thought there'd be less trees up there, but that's that's solid.
What the heck? No, I've actually never seen this. How have I not seen this? Yeah, this is epic. There's… It's like a like a the tracker on a sled. I mean, I can make an educated guess, but I don't think it'll be very good.
Interesting. Very, very interesting. Um, okay, so obviously when I think of like… I'm not saying this is where this is, but the only animal locations I've seen where it's like treure animal is Madagascar. So this is a this is new. This is like new like horse… Um, I'm going to guess Mongolia. I I I I don't know.
It was Mongolia.
Nice. Okay, I I just haven't seen that location though. I haven't seen… I love that like sniping at the end, like, I'm gonna guess Mongolia. Boom, Mongolia. I probably should have guessed on water. I guess I kind of did, but yeah, that was actually that's actually findable, I think. Uh, this is… there is coverage over here too. That's very cool. I did not know there was coverage there.
The classic. Okay, let's see if I can find Tuvalu. Where is Touvalu? There it is. Wait, is this Tuvalu or… No, it's Vanuatu, isn't it? Pu's… the .tv domain. This is the venue atu. I always get them confused. I think it's one of these.
Yeah, it's that one. Yeah, I think this is the single most epic Street View.
Yeah, yeah. I'll show this one. But wasn't the story like some guy that worked on Street View… works on Street View… like some guy just cared a lot about covering this?
Yeah, I think he used his own vacation time and convinced everybody to give him a trucker and just go do it. I don't think he wore the Treker. I think the story is like he he definitely used his own vacation time to go be there with this. I think somebody else, like a Treker guy, still wore the…
Oh, yeah, he got he got a guide because you can't just randomly walk up to a volcano. Yeah, this is… But you can't see him. He's hidden.
Wow, Alex did a ton of the special collects back in early days of Street Fight, and this was like the Magnum Opus of his time. Yeah, now it's in the top 20, so he made it. It was worth it. Worth the vacation time.
Okay, so I'm four for four technically, right? Let's see if I can… Yeah, uh, is this new? This is new. This is new. I don't want to look at names. I'm just going to assume it's somewhere in New India coverage up here. Yeah, that is beautiful. This new India coverage is so, so awesome. You know, I actually didn't know that this was this extensive because this just got released I think recently. You guys covered it May 2024, but I think this is super new. Yeah, because the reason I really play Jester now is to keep up with Street View versus vice versa.
Okay, that was a a good… What did I get? 23? 22? That's good. I got picked Karen. Hey, listen, that that was a that was a convincing… I think you literally did better than I did when I played my own map.
Okay, so Emily, you guys have mentioned before that like you guys had some like unreleased panos. Can we get a look, or is that like something that's like…
No, no, no. We'll show you.
Oh, do I get to like… do I get to like guess where it is, or is it…
I think it's more fun if you guess, um, and for some of them we may or may not confirm it.
Okay, so basically, I don't see… I think people have a misconception of my skill set. My skill set is only on countries that are on Street View, just giving a forewarning. So if it's not on Street View, I know very little about that country. So I think my strategy would be what looks closest to this that has… We narrow it down for you real quick. Uh, all the countries but one we've already announced before. So these are going to be panos in countries that are getting updated coverage, new coverage, and these have been confirmed, and there's one that hasn't.
Mhm.
These countries are fully driven, fully driven, fully covered news. Yeah, we we could release them whatever we wanted, but you know…
Okay, wait, can I can I… I need to think about what has been confirmed if I say out loud what I think has been confirmed because I I can't forget. Is that okay? And then I'll try and guess. I'm not… I'm gonna be like dead.
Yeah. No poker face. I won't even look.
Okay, so I know what has been confirmed is Costa Rica is getting Gen 4. I think Bosnia has new coverage, or at least first time. 99.9% sure. There's Cyprus, there's Paraguay. What else is there? That's three. What am I missing? Namibia. Of course. We'll see how I do because I think I might have forgotten some, but those are the countries…
You guys have incredible poker face, by the way. Go ahead.
All right. Surely this is Bosnia then, right?
Yeah. No. Yeah. What? How could you tell?
Wait. Yes. How could you tell? Yeah, walk us through… uh, because it looks like Bosnia surrounding countries, and that is the only country that has or has been confirmed.
You literally told us that you would be so bad at this. Let's keep…
Well, I mean, listen, this is… that was probably the easiest one. We'll see, you know, we should have mixed in some old countries too to make this harder. This one's obvious too, right? This is Namibia, right?
Yeah. Yeah. No, you got it. You got it again. Well, because like I said, B… I I might have mentioned this. It has the same road line. It looks like South Africa, like completely 100%. They use the same road lines. They use the same yellow lines and the same center road lines, and obviously Namibia is very close to South Africa. So that one's fun, but this is… this is what the Namibia coverage will look like.
Oh my god, that is so beautiful. And look… okay, hold on. Look at this mask, by the way. Look how good of a job we did of removing that car.
All right, so yeah, Namibia, by the way, for all these locations, we kind of picked like locations… like Namibia. It wasn't hard to find something breathtaking. Yeah, this… I will assume is the new Costa Rica, or is it the Puerto Rico? Uh, I'm going to assume this is going to be new countries that you guys are adding. It won't be… won't be the Puerto Rico because it's already been released. And this will be Costa Rica.
We thought it'd be more exciting. I'm sorry.
No, no. We thought it'd be more exciting to show countries that we haven't published before.
Oh, 100%. Yeah, it's just kind of like… I just know what is being released because I keep up to it, so it's a little…
No, I think this is fun. I feel like I'm the first person playing this new Geogesser. I'm the first person to play Costa Rica Geogesser 2025 and Namibia. This is an amazing experience. Talk me through… how could you tell it was Costa Rica?
It just looks like it's neighboring… Yeah, again, it looks… Well, one, I've looked at a lot of Costa Rica because there is some trekker in San Jose in like the airport and kind of in downtown area, so I've looked at S… or I looked at Costa Rica, and it looks… Yeah, it looks like kind of the Central America vibe. Tropical trees. They use the same commonly… I actually didn't know what road lines Costa Rica used, but the single yellow road line makes sense for like that neighboring countries with like Mexico and Panama and… Yeah, it makes sense. But that that might be a 50-50 between like some Panama locations in Costa Rica, so that will be very fun I think for NPZ, but your… you guessed Costa Rica. Yeah, is it… you guessed correctly. You guys scared me for a second.
We literally… we tried to pick random highways and rural roads and stuff to make this hard.
Yeah. Oh, this is incredibly difficult. Okay, let me think. Uh, Cypress or… Wait, let me think. What if I said that… what else is being released in case it helps?
I think we included some countries twice.
Oh, you did. Okay. We… We intended to, whether or not we did is another question.
I know. I mean, if we just did process of elimination, that definitely would have been way too easy. Wait, this says 2024 copyright. You guys covered this. This is… That is crazy. I left in the… I left in the dates, so you had like a little bit of meta. I would probably go Bosnia on this. I I don't know though. Is that your final guess?
Yeah. Let's let's just see. You're correct. Okay, nice. I… if it wasn't clear, I've forgotten… No, this is so fun. Wait, I'm enjoying this so much. And that is a very cool location too, because that is going to be like super fun to get… Wait, give me a second. What new country would this be? The red and white… honestly, honestly, I forgot. So we're gonna find out at the very…
This one was hard to find. I mean… okay, so this is my… I'll tell… I'll probably give you my reasoning why I think this is Nepal. It looks like Bhutan with… they use the same cylinder blocks in Bhutan, and it looks like kind of that region of the world in Nepal. That's probably my best guess, but I I thought Nepal's only going to be Catmu, so I'm kind of confused.
Nepal is much more than Cat…
Oh, is it? Okay, so is this Nepal?
It is Nepal.
Oh, let's go! I was proud of this. I I spent so long trying to find a Nepalese panel that wasn't obviously Nepal, but I didn't realize they use the same cinder blocks as Bhutan. So Nepal has more extensive coverage.
Oh, it has way more than Cat…
Yeah, yeah. This is amazing. I love Nepal. I'm going back to Nepal. Like, I'm going to Nepal like three, four times a year because I love that country so much.
Um, I thought you said you only went to countries with stream view. Do you… they have Trekker. Trekker counts to me.
Okay, I got Nepal. I'm doing well so far, better than I expected to do. Oh, man, that is so cool. That's like over there. Oh, you guys are fist bumps for this. You know what? We do it for the community. I mean, it's… it's working.
Oh, interesting ballards. Uh, this surely is Cypress then. Uh, yeah, that would be my best guess here, I think, unless I'm missing a country. Wait, I don't know if Cypress has… It's Ballards. I I would… Yeah, that's what we… I mean, I don't know if these are technically Ballards, but they're like… I didn't know they had a name. That's amazing. I'm trying to think of what other new countries were confirmed over there in that part of the world because it looks Mediterranean. Bosnia doesn't have this quality camera. I don't actually… don't know what quality camera Bosnia has, but… or sorry, um, Cyprus, but I think Cyprus was confirmed. It doesn't look like any… Wait, unless this is… No. Yeah, that's my best guess.
You're saying that this is lower quality than Bosnia?
Yeah, this isn't Gen 4 or what we would call Gen 4. Are you saying is this Bosnia, or am I being duped, or…
Yeah, we we haven't officially told you…
Oh, wait, this isn't confirmed yet, so we'll let you know in like… I don't know… Wait, let me… Can I get like two more yeses or nos, or is that… no, no, or can… Let me… let me just think harder.
To be clear, we didn't say no to any of your guesses either.
Well, those the guesses I made were confirmed, so… or like confirmed location, so now I'm thinking… I mean, obviously I think I'm right in the part of the world, but I think it could be closer to like something near like Lebanon or something too, so I'm confused.
Okay, we'll leave it at that. Well, maybe people can guess what they think it is, or maybe someone has been on that road before.
Yeah, that's all nice. You know, it was a lot more time consuming than we thought it would be to get these… No, that was fun. We… we had ambitions of showing you many more panos, but… no, I think that was a good… I think a good mix of rural locations that weren't easy. That… I mean, that was news for me that Nepal was getting more from what I had saw. I know there's people that are way more into the scene than I am, but from what I had saw, I had only saw Cat spotted. So that's so exciting. All that I will say is that you guys have no idea how much coverage there is in Namibia and Nepal.
Okay, we'll leave it at that. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I think I… I think I… I think I played that fine. Do you just like release a new country and you're just like, I can't wait to see them not know where this is?
Yeah, something… something like that. It's also interesting to see what the community does and doesn't notice.
Seems like you said some things the community notices and doesn't notice.
Yeah, from an outsider's perspective, seems like there's a lot of talk about small cam right now, but there's only been one very specific instance that we've released small cam imagery. Is the community aware of this?
Okay, context for the viewers here. I'm gonna use you guys' lingo for the sake of the video because… yeah. So we have Gen 1 through Gen 4, and then we had a certain camera type in India, and then uh, we had small cam get released, which is like the new… newest generation of… well, we call small cam, but you're saying it actually hasn't been released. Like, I'm curious now. Why… why… why small cam? Why not Gen 5? Who comes up with these names?
Uh, the whole community… I think small cam has been around for like two years though. I I've known small cam since I've… we… we saw small cam speculated being driven in like 2023, but you're saying that small cam actually hasn't been released. It's been… it's been driven. We just haven't made the imagery visible except in one very specific instance that we were very surprised Geogesser community missed. I actually… I I want to see if you can guess, armed with this knowledge, like what is the one place where it's been released so far.
Well, it was released in Switzerland. Has it… it's been driving… it was released in Switzerland. Then I thought it was removed.
Oh, well, that would be different. Okay. Uh, Lienstein… Small Cam, for what it's worth, I had the same conversations with somebody on our operations team of like, oh, but we've been showing this imagery already, right? Because we've been driving with it for a while now. So what is the camera that I'm talking about? Can we talk about that, or is it just… is it not small cam? There is a short mast Gen 4, which might look similar, but it's not the same camera, and we've been driving that in like Japan, for example, for a very long…
Okay, but that's not the… that's not the news… the new coverage that was… so you guys haven't released any small cam at all except in island… what… what island is it like? Is it Gen 4.5 or Gen 5, or is it…
It's the brand… the newest camera. Small Cam. The one with the little arms.
Yeah. Oh, wait, is it Puerto Rico?
Yes.
Oh, okay. So do you have Small Cam in Puerto Rico?
Yeah, we released it just for a certain pop star to release their album.
Okay. Okay. So Costa Rica or Puerto Rico was released with Small Cam. We've been… like, to be clear, we've been driving it everywhere, right? Like almost everywhere. So there have been sightings in a lot of different places, but we've… Puerto Rico is the only place where we've actually launched it so far. Like, you will see it pop up places, but right now it's just Puerto Rico.
Okay, 'cause I knew… I knew uh, Puerto Rico just got new coverage because it was the first time… obviously had had Gen 3 for like the longest time. Wait, and then Stafford just said that you're releasing more… you're actually releasing this small cam coverage that we thought was small cam in the coming…
Yeah, so there are a lot of countries with small cam coverage haven't shipped it yet.
Yeah, it's mainly Europe too, right? Like… and the US.
Okay. A lot… there's a lot in Europe. Yeah. Okay. So the purpose of small cam… it's easier to get to countries that are less accessible, or… like… what's the purpose of… to… it's to like reach places that are hard to reach because it's a smaller camera that you can ship, or what's kind of the thought process behind this?
Yeah, so like technology has improved to the point that you can put a lot of the stuff that used to require like a dedicated computer in the car… like you can put all of that into a camera now, right? So that's basically what we did, and so now you can just put it in a box or Pelican case or whatever and ship it around the world. And that makes it way easier. Even like within a country, right? So like in the US, like Alaska and and Hawaii get covered a lot less frequently than mainland US because logistically it was really hard to get a car over there, but now you can bring the camera and the car separately, which makes it so much easier to just keep these kind of places fresh.
Yeah, that makes sense. So will the future of the camera be small cam going forward, do you think?
I guess we'll just have to see.
Okay. And it's used for people to understand their surroundings, and we want to reflect the real world as accurately as we can. And so, of course, when we have fresher imagery somewhere uh, that meets a certain quality bar, that's what we want to show the world. So…
Okay, so then going back a tad, there's some countries that get updated a lot more than others. Like, I live in Thailand. In Thailand, I think is one of the most updated countries. Like, I see new coverage… unfortunately, never seen actually in the car, but I've seen new coverage updated like sometimes three, four times a year. Obviously, like places like California… like, what's kind of the process on like how frequent something gets updated versus doesn't? Why was there such a delay in like a Slovenia for Gen 4 versus like… obviously there's some, you know, country things there that make sense, but just kind of curious on like what factors into deciding when something gets covered.
There's a difference between like when we cover it and when we publish it. So sometimes we don't publish right away for various reasons. In terms of how often we cover it, Emily's the expert in that, so I'm going to pass it over to her.
How often we cover it… it… it really depends on the country though, and ultimately we want to make sure that we're supporting all of our users as best as we can. Uh, I'm going to tell you like what we're trying to do, which is that we're trying to give the freshest imagery that is like the most accurate view of the world to as many of our users as we can. And so that's a function of where do the users live and what stuff is out of date and… well, and of course, like if a change… like we're going to update that more often. But then we also make sure that from time to time we update everything that makes sense. But again, like it is no small feat trying to capture the entire world. There's various challenges that we run into, and Stafford and I have no shortage of lore. I mean, I think even the geogesser community sees like sometimes the cars end up in bizarre situations.
Yeah.
Okay, so does the… you mentioned that the users and where the users live and where the users are active using Street View influences, but does user feedback, or if there's an urgency around a certain area be like, oh, like this hasn't been updated in a while. Is that taken into account? Or is maybe like the blur requests are super high and like this place… we're not going to cover them as often. I don't know. You know, is there like nuances like that, or…
I have some lore. I have some lore. So I think what was it? 2018? Forgive me if I'm wrong on the date. The Pharaoh Islands were um, really upset that they didn't have Street View, and so the Pharaoh Islands like tourism board, they launched this campaign to put cameras on sheep, and it made like global news, um, like went super viral, and uh, and so we heard about it, and so like we were so impressed by the support of the community that we actually brought real Street View to the Pharaoh Islands. So yeah, like we actually do listen um, when and there's like a strong community push to get Street View in place. And now Pharoh recently has Gen 4 too, or the newest… they just got updated too.
Yeah, yeah. They called it… they called it sheep view, and and like the the sheep had like the camera, and they also had like a little solar panel on their back, so um, they could walk around without caring…
Oh, so it's actual sheep view. It was like… it was real. They actually went through this… recorded…
Yeah. Is it still published, or is… was it on Street View?
It was… I mean, it was on Street View, but like it was user-generated content.
I see. I see. Yeah, it was unofficial. I'm surprised that you didn't get dropped into that in any… You… you know, I stick to only official coverage, you know what I mean? We don't… we don't go to that unofficial stuff.
Okay. Okay. So speaking of… kind of… this is… I mean, this is the age-old question, right? New countries. I mean, obviously I… I see speculation, and obviously, you know, I keep up with like where cars are spotted. You know, unfortunately, we did miss Mongolia when that was released, but that was kind of a surprise. We got new Gen 4 Mongolia. We see, you know, the community sees when cars are being driven, and we kind of wait for them to be released because like, you know, Sapper mentioned earlier, like covering versus releasing is two different things. And obviously, we know that you guys are… community is aware of the new African countries. Yeah, you guys caught Namibia. We've caught Namibia for a while now. Okay, it's… it's like… it's done. Like, you're going to see it very soon. Can we talk about how extensive the coverage is, or is… is it more than yellow roads? I mean, it's like… it's… it's like any other country, right? Like, it's real… it's real Street View coverage, right? It's not just…
Yeah, we didn't go down like crazy dirt roads. And there are some parts of Namibia that I'd love to go back to because we didn't go down dirt roads. Like, there are some really special parts of Namibia that are unfortunately not on there, which, you know, maybe somebody in the future will sort out.
Okay, so if you ever like, you know, take Pegman and put him over, and you can see all the blue lines hovering the whole world, right? You can see blue lines literally everywhere. There's kind of that gray… there's kind of that empty area in Africa. Is that… is Africa kind of like a new… a goal for like the coming years to cover more African countries, or… I'm assuming obviously getting cameras and, you know, working with governments and things like that is a little more difficult, but is that kind of the goal?
We're working on it. Um, let's see. So recently like we launched Rwanda, South May… we redid Sagal. We're launching Namibia. Obviously, continue to drive in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria. Yeah, so we're working on it. It's something I care a lot about, and I'm really happy to see how many countries we've added just since I joined the team. I mean, it's been… if you play GS in 2013 versus 2025, it's completely different game. I'll take any new country. Any new country added is… is a W, and it's going to be so hard for you guys because having poked around in the Namibia imagery, there's… there's a lot that looks…
Yeah, I mean, the meta looks the same in South Africa, you know, it's… especially if it's both Gen 4, which I think it will be, um, or at least…
Kind of similar; they all use—I do. I've looked at the movie enough to know like they use the same outer lines, like the same road lines as South Africa. So yeah, that'll be fun. You said there's new countries coming. I won't try to dig deep into that; I know that's that's that's not a hill worth dying on. I understand. But is there like new countries that you would like, that you're like eyeing, that you would prefer, like you really want to see in the future? Like I have this goal by 2026 or something, like uh, personal goals, or is this trying to listen like any sort of country that you would like to be seeing added, or any preference, or like part of the world I would guess, or like updated countries?
I think Staff and I would both love to see uh some more coverage in Central Asia, in particular. Um, there's some countries that I think are really surprising that we haven't gotten yet. Uh, like the Bahamas is a really good example. Those are the two that I have off the top of my head. It's also really fun to cover more ambitious places; for example, Antarctica. I think we'd love to see that. Like Emily said, like we actually we both want a lot of the same countries. I'm answering like totally personally here, just as as a fellow Street View nerd.
On the Antarctica topic, there is an ice road that goes from Ross Island to the South Pole where they like truck goods like through a convoy, and it takes like 40 days to get from Ross Island to the South Pole on this ice road. I just think that would be the absolute coolest thing to record, like from a pure like geography nerd, it'd be insane. Uh, I mean, we kind of have a Street View snowmobile; it's sitting in our office right now, but we've used it in the past to cover some ski resorts. Maybe one day we'll bring it. I mean, the amount of stuff that you guys have used to cover Greenland, even like the craziest like things you're putting camera—I mean, yeah, anything's possible. Yeah, like we're both uh huge like Central Asia nerds. I'd love to get Street View in the Stans. I mean, we have it in in Kyrgyzstan, but uh, and you released Kazakhstan too. We did. So we're—
So basically what Sakur might be saying is some Uzbekistan is coming soon. Be sick. Yeah, know we really really want to get the entire world someday. I also like going back to the Africa thing; I really do care a lot about coverage in Africa. I'd love to get Morocco. Like Morocco is such a special place. I don't know if you've been there; you've been like everywhere, so maybe you have, but I only go to places with Street View though, so I can't go there until you release Morocco. I'm not kidding, by the way. The only reason I went to Botswana was to because I knew of because the Street View covered the northern grass near Chobe National Park; I wanted to go see. So we have to get Morocco so you can go visit because it's so cool. Like I only went to Kilimanjaro because you guys had Kilimanjaro coverage; that that was the only like I had; I wouldn't have known about it prior. So and also Ethiopia, like I really like Ethiopia; I was there a few years ago; it's a super cool place. I'd love—like there are a lot of um ancient like ruins and monuments and stuff that that a lot of people don't know about. I'd love to get all that stuff on Street View. Like there's like 200 million people that live in Ethiopia and then maybe even—
Yeah, like Egypt would be cool too. Egypt would be amazing. There's lots of—Yeah, Egypt would be really cool. I mean, obviously there's Egypt Trekker, but yeah, but like the whole like to really like official—Yeah, like and like it's obviously important to get the tourist places because not everybody can go there, and you know, in some cases like there have been monuments that have been destroyed unfortunately, right? And I think it's really important that we document that stuff, but there are so many places that are important that aren't just monuments, and it would be really cool to get the entire country. Also, I'm just going to say this now; I would die a happy man if there was full extensive Lao coverage. I just have to be the the spokesperson for Laos. I'll say it: most beautiful country that only has, you know, has like four cities covered. It also hasn't been updated since Gen 3, 2013. It was a different meta car, especially Lao. I mean, Laos was kind of what introduced me to Geoguessr.
Oh really? Yeah, like I kind of was watching lots of videos on Laos and then I kind of like got into Southeast Asia and then Geoguessr. It was kind of a mixture of things, you know, though. But I've always been—me and a fellow Geoguessr pro; we almost went to the tourism agency or like the tourism board in Laos with like a deck to like to ask you guys to get more coverage in Laos; that's how like adamant we are on like really trying to do this. Um, but anyways, yeah, that's kind of another topic. Okay, okay. Well, we'll see what we can do. I I would be I would be sad if I didn't leave this call without even just playing the universe. So so what what you're really saying is you you want us to go cover Laos and like give you a ride along or something while we're there? That would be the best thing in my life. I think the peak happiness was to go through the the hills in in Laos in the 3D car. Yeah, then you coverage and then I could put my hand out the window and then I can be I can be a the Rainbolt meta.
Are you guys familiar with like how many like metas that the Google Street View car uses or like for the game of Geoguessr, like you know? I don't think we're familiar with every single one of them, but we know they're used a lot because recently—so the game is Geoguessr has progressed so much over the past—even honestly became really like we had to retire world records because Stafford and Emily here kept releasing new coverage that maps became too difficult because the coverage in Europe would become too extensive and it became a lot harder, so we had to retire because some records were unbeaten. But recently, over the past year or two, the community has discovered the the copyright symbol, which has been kind of a big unlock. It changed the game for better or for worse; it depends on who you ask, but I'm obviously a meta guy. I enjoy Street View more than the average person probably, especially the nuances behind the cameras and things like that and making guesses based off of the Street View operations. You guys have any like inside metas that could potentially unlock something or in the future things that you think might affect like small cam or things like that? I'm curious. I mean, like when we play, we definitely look at the shadow and see what camera it is. A lot of us know what years we were in what countries we—and then like we also know what years what cameras we're like filming.
I can't believe how you guys remember like the color of the cars or the trucks; like it is insane how the community like literally remembers like red car is whatever it is; that's amazing. Yeah, it's gotten to the point now where it's what season did Google drive in like in some countries, right? Like countries like Ukraine are completely fixed because of like the coverage and the seasonality. Almost for some players that really studied with it, only really works in countries that don't get updated frequently, right? So if it's a country that hasn't been updated in a while, you look at the seasons of the—oh, this was in this is in July 2015 coverage versus—Yeah, vice versa. When we updated Iceland last year for like the first time in a decade, did we break a bunch of your meta? You know, Iceland was one of those countries where I just, you know, hope just click revive and hope for the best. But uh, no, you definitely—I mean, there's people that main Iceland or like learned Iceland, but I think at that point they're like up for a new challenge. But yeah, you definitely broke a lot of meta when you update new countries. Yeah, so what kind of Street View coverage is the most engaging anyways? Is it like when we open new countries or when we're like very expansive and kind of get more like rural areas?
For me, I feel like I I don't want to say I've seen everything, but like I've seen a lot of Street View, and I just like when there's like new locations that get dropped in, like dirt roads and like that dirt road could either be Colombia or it could be like Sri Lanka that I forgot about. Like when you guys release Panama and now there's a new like 50/50 between like Panama Mexico or Panama and Colombia, right? If it's NPZ obviously because the car—so I just like when there's new challenges or new 50/50s that get added that look like other countries, if that makes sense. What's the hardest country that we launched recently? Probably India, I would say. The easiest was probably Kazakhstan because it was mainly covered uh main highways. The Geoguessr community learns the driving direction of the car, so like you know like what direction the car drives on and what road it's completely mapped like where the driver drove and it's kind of fixed that way. So the countries where it has more extensive coverage are always going to be more difficult because it's less fixed. Yeah, I would say just bigger countries that have more extensive coverage are always going to be more difficult, like India. I mean, now like I can see myself going something tropical US on Costa Rica or Puerto Rico. Hopefully there's more 50-50s in the future though, because that's the fun part of the game.
Tell me about the time that that you pulled up the space banner. Like I I I remember this one video that you dropped into the space station and then you were like on Mars and stuff. I never even knew that had coverage if I'm being honest. Yeah, so I was just playing a map and I just saw a member of the community who's very prominent in like the Street View scene, and he obviously knows all the coverage, and he had a location—five locations of space or like space or space-related. It was like the space shuttle; there was like a literally it was like official coverage on like Mars, and I didn't even know where to click because obviously the map it only showed—so I was just like—sometimes like it equates to like 00 coordinates, so I was just like—but I didn't know where, and sometimes it's just attached to like a random photosphere somewhere in like the ocean, so I like I when I was watching that I was like it was like so nerve-wracking; like I was hoping the whole time that you'd figure it out. I made those panos like I don't know five or six years ago. Like the the moon and the Mars ones are like public domain NASA images from the moon and Mars and like we put them at the coordinates on Mars and the moon, and I was like—I don't—is like you going to figure it out? And well, I mean, I don't know where the coordinates on equate from the the space station. We had an astronaut shooting like manually with a DSLR like with a wide-angle lens up in the space station, and we were in the space station mockup facility in Houston. And so like we would go into a module of the space station and like like try to like imagine that we were like floating there and shoot it, and then we would like the people would send the instructions up to the astronaut, and he would shoot it. And so we were like, well, we're at the mockup, like let's just make that the location for all the panos, and that's why the space station panos are actually like secretly like you can't see the blue dots on the map if you look, but like they're all secretly inside the space station mockup.
The community member that made that must have had—he has some extensive knowledge to find that—must—yeah—to find the Mars ones; that's impressive because I don't even know if those are published anymore. I mean, they're obviously still serving, but like I don't know if you can find them anymore. There's—Well, there's a way that—No, I love—see like locations like that are kind of like my new favorite thing because it's like things that you didn't know about it. Like what's an example of like—Oh, like this random island off of New Zealand that has like penguins everywhere—like those are the fun ones. Obviously like—pick your islands—like how the heck—Yeah, we we love getting any and all imagery of penguins on map; it's kind of a personal thing. Do you know how hard it is to get to pick an island, by the way? It's like ridiculous. Yeah, so there's obviously competitive Geoguessr, right? And there's like a World Cup now with like prize money and everything, and I think during the first World Cup or—Yeah, during the first first year of the World Cup, you guys released Kazakhstan a couple weeks right before one of the biggest tournaments, and all the players were like frantically trying to learn Kazakhstan because if we knew it was going to be on the map—was that like on purpose or like where you guys—No—get—No, but you're getting me thinking—would it mess a lot of people up if we started releasing new countries right before the World Cup? If you just like dropped all the countries you guys you know are sitting on and just like you know it's in August, the finals, so some food for thought, you know, just to you know—it's it's up to the map makers to add it if they think it has enough time at the end, but I mean, if we happened to have a country that was like ready for launch in a June to August time frame, I think we could probably make life difficult for some people. Yeah.
What—What do y'all do when we release countries? Like what's your process for learning them? The process has changed over the years; obviously now the first thing you look at is the meta uh and you look at the car, the street car, and you look at the smudges, the dirt on the car, and see if it's like distinct to certain areas. I mean, this sounds cringe because obviously the pro the riding should probably be like, oh, we look at to see if the mountains look cool here, you know, but like if you want to learn as quick as possible, the first thing you do is actually look at the street car and like the unique characteristics across the country. We talk a lot about, you know, maybe someday we'll like update the ground mask so that you can more reliably remove the car. Like how—how much would that change the way—it would change the game 100%, especially in African countries because it seems like the African countries are using the bigger truck um and that is like Oman and uh you know that you see in you know Senegal and Nigeria and obviously Kenya and stuff like that. So like yeah, that's a little bit of a harder task because the car is so big and would probably create such a wide blur. But in countries like—why is the—that's actually a very good question, Stafford; why is there like four pixels of the color of the car visible? Like why is it only—everything else is blur besides like kind of the front or the back of the car with a couple colors? The answer's pretty boring; like I you're probably going to be unimpressed with the answer, which is that there there are only a few ground mask polygons that are used for all the coverage, and we don't create a new one for every single car. And so you see it more in these places where we use like totally random cars. Like for for most of the world where you have Gen 4 like there are specific vehicle models that Gen 4 platform fits on and there is a ground mask created for each of those car makes and models, but then when you get into like Africa where it's like you're you're putting—you actually in most of those cases like before small cam you're taking the backpack and you're literally mounting it to a frame that's attached to the bed of a pickup truck, so like that you're ending up with like random and models. Like same thing with like the the third-party cameras, right? It's like random vehicle—those don't have custom ground masks usually, and you end up seeing a lot more. So on let's call it the conventionally covered Gen 4 Gen 4 coverage where the car is smaller—you're saying you theoretically could remove the meta by adding some couple more polygons.
We—Yeah, we could theoretically remove your whole ability to do like the Gen 4 blue—like I wouldn't count on that anytime soon, but—Well, you couldn't you couldn't retroactively go back and add it to the coverage; it would have to be new, or you could—I mean, you could—I don't know if we would, but we could—you should do that; you should do that right before August 2025. Like now that we know how much harder—like now that we know that it would make you guys actually look at the scenery to play the game and there's—Yeah, and you can remove the the copy—No, I'm just kidding; don't remove the copyright because the copyright now is probably the biggest unlockage you guys are competitive scene because really—I mean, you were saying you look at like the shadow and you know what camera is being used; this is kind of like the equivalent of like I know when this coverage was released or what copyright this place because the copyright varies in regions of countries too. Yeah, it does, and it's actually kind of funny because the copyright meta like kind of makes you guys play the game that we do like the way that we do because we know when the stuff was captured, and that's like—that's our main meta is like what was the camera, when was it captured? We've talked about ways like with the maps API developers like we've talked about ways that we could conceal that—we obviously need to watermark the content in some way. Yeah, I mean, I think all of the meta is fair game at this point for becoming harder in the future. No promises, but um, we are aware of all of it and we're thinking about it. There would be people that would rejoice, and there would be people that would not rejoice, which is kind of the beauty of it. Yeah.
What—What side would you be on? I'm I'm in the middle ground because I don't really play as competitively anymore, so I'm just kind of here for the cool locations, but I am a meta player, not a geography expert by any means. I like the meta. So would it make my game worse potentially? Oh man, yeah. I think August 2025 you guys should remove all copyright, all Google Street View car meta, add 20 countries and just see what happen. No, I'm just kidding. And you're releasing 20 countries by then too, and that's perfect. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, I could talk about Street View for hours and hours with them probably, but thank you again to everyone that you know made it this far in the video, getting the opportunity to talk to them directly and to nerd out about Street View for so long, and it's it's awesome. I hope you guys enjoyed this. You know, if the reception of this video is good uh maybe we can do another one; I'm sure they'd be happy to come back. If you guys enjoyed this, don't forget to like, subscribe, or don't, and I'll see you guys.