Sure, Why Not the Snowmobile Business for Google too?
February 10, 2010
(OLYMPICS TECHNOLOGY)
Silly us -- we just finished an article on Google’s (News - Alert) wanting to horn in on the broadband service business now, wondering what business Google would not want to get in, as they were already in books, music, search, social media, phones, video, Disney in China and what have you.
We should’ve known they’d sooner or later get around to the snowmobile business, too. We kid, but it seems that way sometimes.
“Iterating off the Street View car and the Street View tricycle, Google has built another contraption to record the physical world for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver,” writes industry observer Kim-Mai Cutler.
“If you live in a major city in the U.S., there’s no doubt you’ve spotted a Google Street View truck with a multidirectional camera speeding down the asphalt. But what about places that have no roads,” asks industry observer Andrew Nusca.
So you’ll see them tooling around on the “Street View Snowmobile,” since they decided to be splashy about the debut, picking the Vancouver Olympic Games. It’s built by Dan Ratner, the mechanical engineer who brought you the tricycle as well.
“It’s been able to capture everything from snow runs on the Whistler Blackcomb Mountains, the top of 7th Heaven chairlift, and a couple of peaks where alpine skiing events start,” Cutler says. Click on the link to her reporting for a cool video of it in action.
“As well as the Google Street View Snowmobile, Google also mounted cameras onto SUVs so they could drive around snow covered roads and take photos with their cameras,” wrote Geeky Gadgets.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Marisa Torrieri
