Google adds Street View to iPhone and iPad web app

Google has added Street View, its panoramic ground-level mapping service, to its iPhone and iPad web app. That should hopefully ease the pain currently being experienced by iOS 6 users who found Street View missing following the September update. When Apple ditched Google as their mapping data provider and created the new, and controversial iOS 6 Maps app, they lost Street View and instead offered Flyover, which is nowhere near as useful. Thankfully Google has added a nice feature for iOS users.

Street View allows you to visually inspect a location, move down a street, turn around, and zoom into place you were planning to visit. If you were unsure what a building, shop, or restaurant looked like, Street View could help make sure you recognized it when you got there. And now, when you visit Google Maps in Safari on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you will see the familiar symbol of a person that you can click on and it takes your straight to Street View.

It works very well and the Google web app does offer a nice alternative to Apple’s own native maps app. Of course it is still nowhere near as good an experience as the previous native Google Maps app that we had with iOS 5. It will help to ease the pain while waiting for Apple to improve its offering or Google getting a dedicated Google Maps app into the App Store. Either way, it all helps!

You can also create a short cut to the Google Maps web app right on your iPhone home screen. Selecting this option will give you a rather bland, black and white Google Maps icon on your home screen with a red push pin, but it’s better than nothing.