Street View in Romania

Bram Stoker’s world famous novel Dracula was believed to have been inspired by fifteenth century Wallachian Prince, Vlad Dracul from Romania (better known to many as Vlad the Impaler). The legend of the vampire is still deeply rooted in Transylvanian culture today, and tourists from across the world come to explore the history and mystery of the many beautiful castles that can be found here.
But of course those aren’t all the sights Romania has to offer, and now you can see for yourself, because today we’re making 360-degree Street View imagery available in Romania for several cities and roads.
From your virtual vantage point, you can now take a look over the bridge onto Lacul Vidraru (Vidraru Lake). This is the starting point of the most beautiful road in Romania, the Transfăgărășan mountain pass, which at its highest point reaches 2,034 meters above sea level:
Or check out the summer residence of Romanian Kings, Castelul Peleș (Peleș Castle):
It’s not just Paris that has an Arc de Triomphe. You can whizz round the Romanian
Arcul de Triumf in the capital Bucharest:
And here’s our parliamentary palace, Palatul Parlamentului (Parliament Palace):
There’s heaps to explore but I’ll leave you with one final tip, and that’s to visit
Vatra Ardealului, my favorite cofee shop in Brasov, which you can see below:
Welcome to Romania and enjoy your virtual exploration!

Google Micro SERPS: Only 4 (Places) Results Showing

Rasmus Himmelstrup, of SeoAnalyst, and Sebastian Socha, of KennstDueinen.de, are both reporting from Europe a new Places Search Everything result that is showing only four search results on a page. In Sebastian’s screenshot all four of those results were blended results while in Rasmus’s 3 of the 4 were blended results

I had to look at the screen shot twice before I realized that it was NOT a cropped image:

Street View comes to 20 German cities

Two weeks ago, we celebrated with the people of Oberstaufen when we made available the first ever images for Street View in Germany. Today I’m pleased to let you know that you can explore even more of Germany because we’ve just released 360-degree, street level imagery of Germany’s 20 largest cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, my home town of Munich and more.

If you haven’t yet been to Germany, or if you simply want to refresh your memory from a previous visit, here are some places that might be fun to explore. These panoramic images that virtually transport you without the hassle of a plane ticket are now accessible directly from Google Maps.

Okay, I know it’s obvious, but the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is one of Europe’s most iconic monuments:


For a complete change of scenery, check out this traditional German architecture, near Hamburg’s historic port in Speicherstadt:


And here’s a personal recommendation for a place where I spend a lot of time and is a good example of a traditional German cafe:


In this latest Street View release, we’re also making some improvements to the way we obscure images of houses, cars or people when asked to do so using our “Report a problem” tool. Our new manual blurring process completely blocks out a house, car or person, but no longer cuts out all the surrounding scenery as well, such as a nearby street sign or trees. This enables us to respect requests for removal without blacking out the entire area.

Since first using this new blurring method in Germany a couple of weeks ago, we’re now rolling this out everywhere Street View is available for all new removal requests. As always, people should continue to use the “Report a problem” tool and we’ll review all requests promptly.

We hope you enjoy your virtual travels to Germany!