Google is now accepting applications from businesses to be among the first places the company sends photographers to take panoramic photographs of the insides of buildings. Street view? You aint seen nothing yet.
We reported in February on rumors that this project was in the works. The company says the photographs will be taken by professionals trained in low lighting, will be as unobtrusive as possible, will initially be traditional in format and will be stitched together to form panoramas in the future.
In September we wrote about a company called Micello – billed as “Google Maps for the indoors” – which is creating floor maps for places like shopping malls around the country. That would make a nice compliment to the new indoor photography feature.
Startups like Micello are probably no more worried about Google stepping on their toes than they were before, but the new indoor photography launch does have at least one independent professional photographer worried. “Did Google just put low- to mid-range commercial photographers out of business?,” social photography blogger Aaron Hockley tweeted this morning. If that was a consequence of Google’s new feature, the world would be much poorer for it.
