In Asia, Google Street View is currently available in Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan. It has also been planned for parts of Israel and South Korea.
Service in Japan was introduced on August 4, 2008. Japan's coverage is currently concentrated in five areas with a total of 10 camera icons. The service has faced criticisms from bloggers in Japan of cultural insensitivity.
Google Street View camera cars were spotted in the streets of Singapore in October 2008. On December 2, 2009 Street View imagery of Singapore was made available.
In early 2009, camera cars with the Google Street View labels were spotted in Hong Kong's streets. On August 18, 2009, Taipei, Taiwan was added. On October 7, and December 2, 2009, more locations in Japan were added. On January 21, 2010, more Taiwan locations are added. At the same time, more Japanese locations are added. Unusually, while Street View images are, at present, primarily collected during daylight hours, a number of Taipei streets were imaged at night.
On March 11, 2010, Google Street View for Hong Kong, Macau, and more locations in Japan was launched.
On December 8, 2010, Google updated some of Japan's imagery with HD photographs.
Timeline of introductions
Note: Bold indicates locations available in newer high quality view, and italic bold indicates locations partially available in high quality view.
Areas included
People's Republic of China
Japan
Singapore
Taiwan
Controversy
Like in other places, there has been controversy surrounding plans to bring Street View to various Asian counties.
In Israel, there have been concerns that introducing the service could increase the risk of terrorism to which the region is prone.
Google had to reshoot all images in Japan because the camera cars that took the original photographs were originally too high, leading to privacy concerns. Fences in this country are generally lower than those in much of the Western world because the average height of people in the country is shorter.
Police in South Korea raided offices in that country in order to determine if Street View was legal.
References
Retrieved from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View_in_Asia
