After months of photographing the streets, attractions, and landmarks in Dubai, Google is now launching its Street View service, making Dubai the first city with complete online view in the Arab world. Dubai’s Street View kicks off today, allowing billions of virtual tourists to explore Dubai.
Google’s 360 degree panoramic view of Dubai becomes available to every connected device from Tuesday, December 9. Users will be able to see all the main streets, attractions, traditional markets, and ultra-modern parts of the city, including the amazing skyscrapers. Of course, one of the highlights is Burj Khalifa, as well as The Dubai Mall and in fact, Google users can now simply take a virtual walk around Downtown Dubai. This makes Dubai the first Arab city to have a full Google Street View coverage.
For the project, the tech giant partnered with the municipality not simply because Dubai is the most visited tourist destination in the region, but also to benefit the city’s residents. The UAE is one of the countries with the highest Internet and mobile penetration, with approximately two thirds of the population being regular surfers on the web. And in Dubai, almost everyone uses online maps to navigate in the city on a daily basis. Certainly, this is a welcomed boost for the tourism, unarguably among the biggest and most profitable sectors of the local economy. While in 2013, the city attracted 11 million tourists, it is aiming for the unbelievable number of 20 million by year 2020.
Google Street View launched in the U.S. in 2007 and by now, it includes 63 countries, including parts of the Arctic and Antarctica. Other places, available ion Street View are Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, as well as the Liwa desert, which was just recently photographed. The Google teams spent months taking imagery from Dubai by mounting a special camera, capable of photographing 360-degree view, on their car roof. It took so long due to the challenging environment – hot, dusty weather, but in the end, the result is beautiful, stunning panorama of Dubai’s best attractions and landmarks.
