 Hey guys, it's Casey with The Verge. So in 2007, Google started building Street View. It's on the ground map of every street and trail that the company could get access to. And last year, Google introduced Trekker, a customized backpack that would let Google go places they could never get to before, from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of Mount Fuji. We wanted to know what it's like to actually make one of these maps. So we came with the Street View team to the Presidio in San Francisco, where I got to try on the Trekker and actually see what it's like to make Street View happen. So the Trekker is a mobile image capture platform. We took some of the same technology from the Street View car with the camera and made it portable, ultra portable. Before that, if we wanted to go down some steep hills, upstairs, I think we were only able to do maybe one of those. I think we carried our 350-pound trike up the stairs at the High Line in New York, just because that was a really cool location. But there was no way we were going to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon or the top of Mount Fuji. And so that is the whole justification for the Trekker is making it ultra portable and being able to go to places that we've never been able to go before. People are used to the image quality that we have with Street View. So we actually took this camera and it looks very much like the car because it's the same lenses, it's the same sensors, it's the same interface electronics. And we had to figure out a way to get that off of a car onto someone's back. So that was our biggest challenge. So the Trekker was, again, somebody's 20% project, really. A guy on the team named Gary Ambler and colleagues just decided that, yes, we should try to put our camera on a backpack, because there were so many places we could go with either cars or tricycles. And that made sense. Again, we always, you know, we have more ideas and we have people to execute on them. So it's not surprising that this started as a 20%. All these hardware projects, their genesis is somebody getting excited about something or trying to solve a problem and then getting their colleagues excited to work on it. Our process here is somebody will think up an idea. So the Trekker was a 20% project and 20% projects here are, hey boss, I'd like to think about this a little more and the answer is usually okay. And it started growing and becoming developed. Our engineering team said, okay, we're going to build one. And then when they got one working, they said, okay, this is going to work. So at a place like the Presidio, it starts with an idea. This place would be cool to go on maps. And so then we will reach out to the partner or partners will reach out to us through the, there's a partner portal on the Street View site. And they'll request that we come out or we request to them that, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we got together and made these imagery available to everyone. Fifteen five megapixel cameras with slight overlaps between all the imagery. If you just take that and you plop that on your desk, it looks like these distorted blobs with unique images. The colors are off, the exposures are all a bit off because the sensitivity is all a bit different. So what we do is we will take those 15 images, we'll blend the scenes, we'll adjust, we'll match the color, we'll match the exposures. And then even beyond that, we collect 75 megapixels raw. They're 65 megabits of unique pixels. Then we do the magic there to resample that imagery and serve it up so that it gets to your device in the way that's appropriate for your device. It's really a phenomenal bit of work that goes on after we put these pixels onto a disk. And the way I think about it now, I mean, the analogy I always give to people is that we, you know, Street View is like the physical equivalent of the Google crawler. But we just crawled the physical world taking pictures and trying to make sense of them, trying to make them useful. There's so many amazing ones. I mean, where do you start? So the White House or the Temple of the Pyramid and Sun down in Tijuana, Mexico. Five weeks going out doing ski resorts in the Colorado mountains, the Grand Canyon, NASA Kennedy Space Center. So there's some really, really cool ones. So far we have data in 54 countries. Last time I checked. And of course we like to expand that. I mean, the world is very large. So I think when we started the project, we were very opportunistic. We just went wherever we could, right? So now we're trying to do better job planning. And we tend to go first to places where there's more user interest. But, you know, we want to go everywhere. We want to be comprehensive. One thing that's of huge interest to us is all the landmarks of the world. And where there's a, you know, interest from tourists from around the world. But of course we want to go. We want to be comprehensive. So it's just a matter of time.
 Hey guys, it's Casey with The Verge.
 So in 2007, Google started building Street View.
 It's on the ground map of every street and trail that the company could get access to.
 And last year, Google introduced Trekker, a customized backpack that would let Google go places they could never get to before,
 from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of Mount Fuji.
 We wanted to know what it's like to actually make one of these maps.
 So we came with the Street View team to the Presidio in San Francisco,
 where I got to try on the Trekker and actually see what it's like to make Street View happen.
 So the Trekker is a mobile image capture platform.
 We took some of the same technology from the Street View car with the camera and made it portable, ultra portable.
 Before that, if we wanted to go down some steep hills,
 upstairs, I think we were only able to do maybe one of those.
 I think we carried our 350-pound trike up the stairs at the High Line in New York,
 just because that was a really cool location.
 But there was no way we were going to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon or the top of Mount Fuji.
 And so that is the whole justification for the Trekker is making it ultra portable
 and being able to go to places that we've never been able to go before.
 People are used to the image quality that we have with Street View.
 So we actually took this camera and it looks very much like the car
 because it's the same lenses, it's the same sensors, it's the same interface electronics.
 And we had to figure out a way to get that off of a car onto someone's back.
 So that was our biggest challenge.
 So the Trekker was, again, somebody's 20% project, really.
 A guy on the team named Gary Ambler and colleagues just decided that,
 yes, we should try to put our camera on a backpack,
 because there were so many places we could go with either cars or tricycles.
 And that made sense.
 Again, we always, you know, we have more ideas and we have people to execute on them.
 So it's not surprising that this started as a 20%.
 All these hardware projects, their genesis is somebody getting excited about something
 or trying to solve a problem and then getting their colleagues excited to work on it.
 Our process here is somebody will think up an idea.
 So the Trekker was a 20% project and 20% projects here are,
 hey boss, I'd like to think about this a little more and the answer is usually okay.
 And it started growing and becoming developed.
 Our engineering team said, okay, we're going to build one.
 And then when they got one working, they said, okay, this is going to work.
 So at a place like the Presidio, it starts with an idea.
 This place would be cool to go on maps.
 And so then we will reach out to the partner or partners will reach out to us through the,
 there's a partner portal on the Street View site.
 And they'll request that we come out or we request to them that, hey, wouldn't it be cool
 if we got together and made these imagery available to everyone.
 Fifteen five megapixel cameras with slight overlaps between all the imagery.
 If you just take that and you plop that on your desk,
 it looks like these distorted blobs with unique images.
 The colors are off, the exposures are all a bit off because the sensitivity is all a bit different.
 So what we do is we will take those 15 images, we'll blend the scenes, we'll adjust,
 we'll match the color, we'll match the exposures.
 And then even beyond that, we collect 75 megapixels raw.
 They're 65 megabits of unique pixels.
 Then we do the magic there to resample that imagery and serve it up so that it gets to your device
 in the way that's appropriate for your device.
 It's really a phenomenal bit of work that goes on after we put these pixels onto a disk.
 And the way I think about it now, I mean, the analogy I always give to people is that we,
 you know, Street View is like the physical equivalent of the Google crawler.
 But we just crawled the physical world taking pictures and trying to make sense of them,
 trying to make them useful.
 There's so many amazing ones.
 I mean, where do you start?
 So the White House or the Temple of the Pyramid and Sun down in Tijuana, Mexico.
 Five weeks going out doing ski resorts in the Colorado mountains, the Grand Canyon,
 NASA Kennedy Space Center.
 So there's some really, really cool ones.
 So far we have data in 54 countries.
 Last time I checked.
 And of course we like to expand that.
 I mean, the world is very large.
 So I think when we started the project, we were very opportunistic.
 We just went wherever we could, right?
 So now we're trying to do better job planning.
 And we tend to go first to places where there's more user interest.
 But, you know, we want to go everywhere.
 We want to be comprehensive.
 One thing that's of huge interest to us is all the landmarks of the world.
 And where there's a, you know, interest from tourists from around the world.
 But of course we want to go.
 We want to be comprehensive.
 So it's just a matter of time.