Google Street View Trike makes its way to Toronto

The company that revolutionized the web with the biggest search engine in the world will bring the image of one of the busiest intersections in Toronto to cyberspace.

On Tuesday, Google is sending its Google Street View Trike, a bike with a camera system attached to the back, to visit Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. The Trike will take photos of the square that will be available on Google Street View for millions of Internet users to see. Google’s marketing manager and Google Canada’s corporate communications representative will also be there to answer questions about how the Trike works, and how Street View technology can help businesses with promoting its location through the technology.

Though Google Earth, a virtual map of the Earth, was created in 2005, Google Street View was not integrated into the map until 2007. It was then that for the first time, Internet users could view detailed images of streets throughout the world with just the click of a button.

The technology started expanding worldwide, starting with France and Italy, however many regions throughout the world were not accessible by car and could not be mapped.

In October 2009, Dan Ratner, the senior mechanical engineer of the Google Street View team, combined his job and his love for mountain biking by creating the Google Street View Trike to produce images of places “off-the-beaten-path.”

Today, many university campuses, hiking trails, and popular tourist destinations such as the Table Mountain in Cape Town and the Detroit Zoo, accessible only by foot, are now able to be seen by people from the comfort of their own home, and at no cost. For more information, visit the Google Trike’s official website. 


— Jessica Galang