Google has launched its Street View service in the UK, giving street-level photography of 25 of the largest cities in the country.\n\n
\nHere silicon.com has rounded up a selection of the top UK tech sites seen through Street View’s lens – starting with Google’s own HQ in London: Belgrave House, Buckingham Palace Road in Victoria.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Not all roads in the selected cities have been mapped – Google relied on a fleet of camera-packing vans to take images, and coverage ‘blackspots’ are easy to find.\n
\nApple’s Regent Street Store appears to have missed out on a direct Google drive-by but the Apple flag is visible in the image above, down the street on the right hand side, along with plenty of shoppers – not all of whom appear to have been facially blurred by Google’s algorithm.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Rising above the rooftops of London’s West End is the BT Tower – a 1960s icon and now a Grade II listed building.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Another tech mecca – the Science Museum on South Kensington’s Exhibition Road.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Way out west at the edge of Street View’s coverage area in London is the unimposing low-rise building pictured in the middle of this photograph: Heathrow Airport’s newest addition and tech mega-project, Terminal 5.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Also sitting in a Street View blackspot is the CBS Interactive offices – aka Silicon Towers. The entrance to the offices on Lavington Street is further along this road.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Also with headquarters in Southwark is the Symbian Foundation, on Boundary Row – tucked away down the side street pictured here, off a leafy-looking Blackfriars Road.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Rather more imposing to look at is the BBC’s White City building, in Shepherd’s Bush.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
And just up the road from White City is the home of BBC Television Centre.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Tech heritage can also be tracked down via Google Street View: here is St James’s Square, Mayfair – where a blue plaque commemorates the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
And here is the plaque on the former home of Charles Babbage, on Dorset Street, Marylebone (the beige house in the center) – the man who invented the machine Lovelace wrote programs for.\n
\nImage credit: Google Street View
Tech sites can be spied on outside the capital too. Pictured here is Microsoft’s Cambridge research lab – just at the edge of Street View’s coverage area.\n
\nThe sloping roof of the research facility is just visible across this cricket ground – between the two trees on the right-hand side.
\n\nImage credit: Google Street View
