MSFT to Launch Its Own Street View in Europe

Google’s Street View program has garnered quite a bit of attention in Europe, and a lot of it has been negative. However, that hasn’t stopped Mountain View rival Microsoft from taking its own shot at the street photography business.

If you’re the type to get excited about seeing the Google Street View cars driving around town, you’ll want to start keeping an eye out for Microsoft’s cars. The company has teamed up with Navteq to map major European cities via photographs. The new service, dubbed Streetside, will not be as thorough as Google, though. Microsoft says it’s focusing on photographing the more popular areas.

"We're not setting out to record every street. We believe it is most valuable in urban centres where people want to find services," Dave Coplin told, Director of Search at Microsoft, told BBC News.

However, mapping urban centres is not all of what this project is about. Those of you familiar with Google’s plight in this area will remember that the search giant recently got into hot water for collecting WiFi data. Google faced the wrath of privacy groups the world over when the company admitted it had accidentally collected information from both public and private-but-open WiFi networks. Coplin says Microsoft also plans to collect WiFi data, though he insists only the ‘bare minimum’ of data would be collected for assisting Redmond’s location-based services.

Camera-equipped cars have already started taking pictures around London and will expand to other major European cities in Europe. According to the BBC, Microsoft has postponed the WiFi data collection portion of the program until it can ‘refine its strategy.’ Microsoft has already started mapping cities in the United States.