Google Adds Brazil World Cup Football Stadiums to Street View

Google Maps on Thursday began letting soccer fans dive into World Cup venues in Brazil without having to leave home.

The free online mapping service added "Street View" imagery of all 12 World Cup stadiums along with scenes captured on roads painted in festive tribute to the major global sporting event.

"Whether you're watching the games from the comfort of your couch or packing your bags for Brazil,Google Maps is your ticket to the World Cup," Street View program manager Deanna Yick said in a blog post.

"And if you're lucky enough to have a physical ticket to Brazil, don't forget to pack Google Maps for mobile."

Google mapping applications for smartphones or tablet computers include tools for finding the most efficient ways to get to games using buses or trains in host cities.

The service also features maps of the insides of stadiums, airports, malls and other spots soccer fans may want to explore, according to Yick.

Images from other potential locations of interest, such as Iguacu National Park and St. Michael of the Missions, were also added to Google Maps.

Google in April introduced a 'time travel' mode for Street View. Street View snapshots now include the option to see what neighbourhoods and landmarks looked like at different periods in the last seven years, as Google Inc. has been dispatching camera-toting cars to take street-level pictures for its maps.

The search giant said it intends to keep adding pictures to the digital time capsules as its photo-taking cars continue to cruise the same streets gathering updates.

U.K. regulator to Google: Delete Street Viewdata -- or else

The U.K.'s top privacy watchdog has decided that Google won't be hit with any fines over its collection of Street View data. The Information Commissioner Office (ICO) announced on Friday that it has placed a "legal requirement" on Google, forcing the company to delete any data it still has on hand related to its Street View snooping. The company had offered to delete data back in 2010. 

But Google kept some data on hand, leading the ICO to reopen its investigation in April 2012. "Google has...confirmed that it still has in its possession a small portion of...data collected by our Street View vehicles in the UK," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, wrote in a letter released by the ICO last year. 

He said that "Google apologizes for this error." The ICO was not pleased with that revelation. It had signed an agreement with Google in November 2010, requiring the company to fully remove all Street View data it had collected on U.K.-based residents by December 2010. But Google didn't delete everything. 

Friday's ruling is essentially the decree the ICO sent down in 2010, requiring that Google delete all data within the next 35 days. Upon completion, Google must inform the ICO that the data has been deleted. If the company fails to delete the data within that period, it could be hit with a criminal offense for contempt of court. 

"The ICO's investigation found that the collection of payload data by the company was the result of procedural failings and a serious lack of management oversight including checks on the code," the ICO said in a statement Friday. "But the investigation also found there was insufficient evidence to show that Google intended, on a corporate level, to collect personal data." Based on that, the ICO decided that Google should not be monetarily fined. Instead, the company can simply delete the remaining data and move on.