The 95th Tour de France has been taking place from July 5 -27, 2008. For this great cycling event, Google has placed its first Street Views of France on-line.

The 360° Views are to be found in Google Maps, Google’s local search wing. By clicking on “Street View”, a virtual view of the entire race routing is to be found. What’s more, the view is presented from the rider’s perspective, as was reported by Google employee Daniel Ratner in the Google Lat Long Blog.  According to Ratner, the absolute latest features of Street View have been implemented for the 21-stage France tour, encompassing ‘Face Blurring’ and high image resolution (see our post).

So, for the first time users are able to access panorama views of Europe, via Google Maps.  Until this introduction, users were only able to view USA cities, national parks and recreational areas in Street View.  The Tour-de-France route is only the beginning ― Google has already announced that views of other European cities and areas will be forthcoming (see our report).  At the moment, German cities are being documented (as noted in the Google Watch Blog). Street-View cars have been already spied in Munich and Berlin– confirmed by a report in the Berlin Tagesspiegel, which also mentions that Google is also shooting in Frankfurt am Main.  When these Street Views will be posted on-line is any body’s guess.