Google Street View hits 50 countries

Those Google Street View cars have been busy, with Google adding Hungary and Lesotho to reach a total of 50 countries and five million miles of roads. Google has also updated 350,000 miles of existing Street View imagery in 14 existing countries.

Google launched the service in the US in 2007, rapidly expanding from there. Although best-known for the highly visible cars, Google has used a range of other vehicles, including 4x4s, trikes and even backpacks to get to hard-to-reach places. Last year, it announced a Ground Truth initiative to overlay its mapping data with a whole of supplementary ranging from prohibited turns to traffic levels.

The company was yesterday fined a trivial sum for illegal wifi-sniffing by the cars.