Google Maps and Street View have become so useful that it's hard to imagine living without the services sometimes. Street View is especially useful when searching for businesses—seeing exactly what that hole-in-the-wall taqueria looks like from your computer often helps you find it when you're wandering around after some late night bar hopping. But unfortunately for Internet business-stalkers, Street View stops at a storefront's front door, and who knows what could be going on inside.
Google has decided to help answer those questions by introducing Google Business Photos, a free service that will allow business owners to request Google to take photos of the inside of their storefronts for use with Google Maps. Google VP of Product Marisa Mayer announced the new initiative at the Social-Loco conference in San Francisco this week, noting that the feature would be live for end users in roughly a week.
The feature is tied in with Google Places (a related, Yelp-like service that lets users read about a business and leave reviews), where business owners can already submit their own photos. Google Business Photos, however, allows owners to request a Google photographer to come and take pictures—a list of cities that Google plans to start with is already online, but businesses in any city can apply for a photo shoot. "[D]emand will help us decide where to send our photographers next," Google wrote.
Why would Google be so nice as to offer free professional photographs to businesses? Because it's trying to grow Places, Maps, and Street View at a faster rate than its competitors; the more content that's readily available to users, the better. Yelp in particular has a leg up on Google Places when it comes to business reviews, simply because of its massive mindshare. If Google can juice up its own business listings with a slew of new photos—all while integrating them with Street View—it could keep users from moving to other sites for more info after the search is done.
Read the comments on this post
Katy Perry Vinessa Shaw Rebecca Romijn Nadine Velazquez Pink
No comments:
Post a Comment