China: The Chinese search engine Soso.com (run by social media giant Tencent) added ‘StreetView’ feature to its online maps. Recently, it surpassed Google to become China’s second most popular search engine. Baidu, the most popular search engine in China, is yet to introduce ‘StreetView’ feature to its online maps.
At present, ‘StreetView’ feature of Soso.com is in beta. It covers just three areas – the modern city of Shenzhen; the ancient Tibetan capital, Lhasa; and one scenic mountain region. More cities in China are being visited by Soso’s StreetView camera cars, and will go online in due course.
Soso’s StreetView has all the usual dragging, zooming and dropping pins that users are familiar with from Google’s, which rolled out in 2007. It also has a night-time mode, so that users can feast their eyes on some neon-lined streets.
Google has rolled out its StreetView in the Greater China area – such as Hong Kong, and parts of Taiwan – but it’s inconceivable that the American company would get permission to do the same thing in mainland China.
Source: www.penn-olson.com
