Google Maps: The New Street View

I was looking something up on Google maps yesterday and noticed a new button called "street view". Being the curious sort, I pushed it and a little rather MSN looking fellow popped up and said I could get a street view of the location I was looking up if I just moved him around on the map. Needless to say I wasted a perfectly good hour moving the little guy all over the bay area. It seems that there are only certain areas covered at the moment but depending on the success of this initial push, you can probably expect more street views.

Just last week I was using Microsofts maps to look something up and noticed they had a "birds eye view" that were probably taken from a plane and let you move around an address from many directions and with great clarity. I thought finally, someone has "out cooled" google. And for that short week, someone had. I'm thinking there are a bunch of people in Redmond hitting themselves on the forehead this morning.

I have to imagine that this feature will only be available in large metro areas, but who knows, Google can be ambitious and they are on the way to world domination. It probably makes sense that they have a picture of it.