Google Street View car still cruising throughout Madison

A Street View car is still taking photos around the Madison area. (CONTRIBUTED)

By Aldo Amato

Staff Reporter

MADISON — The Google Maps Street View car is still making rounds around Madison.

The car was last seen on Hughes Road in Madison on April 29. The car features a high-resolution camera on top of a small, compact car that takes panoramic views from positions along streets from around the world.

Though representatives from Google cannot give an exact location of the car, they said they are looking for key conditions.

“We pay close attention to the sun when planning our driving, and need the sun to be high enough so that shadows don’t obscure buildings,” a press representative said in an April 29 email. “We also consider weather and temperature, since we don’t want snow, fog, or rain to cause driving delays or blurred imagery.”

Madison, along with other southern cities are ideal for Google to start their nationwide journey.

To get the right light and weather when we drive in the United States, for example, we’ll start in the southern states and move north as it gets warmer,” the representative said. “Then we go south again as winter comes. In addition, when thinking about which places to start photographing, since Street View will be useful for the greatest number of people in large metro areas, we usually start driving there.”

Google Street View was launched on May 25, 2007 in several cities in the United States and has expanded across rural and urban areas worldwide. For each city, the Street View car has a plan moving from the city center on out.

“We often begin at the city center to collect popular downtown areas, and then move outwards.”