Google Street View is quite possibly one of the company’s best innovations to date, besides cataloguing the entire World Wide Web, that is. Being able to take a virtual walk down a very real street is something that would have seemed almost impossible not too long ago, but Google made it happen. And today, Google is stepping things up a notch.
Not content with mapping the streets of Dubai, Google set about taking things one step further by taking Street View to the world’s tallest tower. And by that, we mean it went to the very top in order to give us all a glimpse into what it would be like to be there ourselves.
Whilst Street View is no doubt an awesome tool for navigating and planning trips ahead of time, we’re sure many of us use it as a way to visit places we may never be able to visit in real life. Virtual tourism is something Google may not have planned when designing Street View, but it seems very much aware that it’s how we use its street mapping system.
What does it feel like to stand on top of the tallest building in the world? To give you a better sense of how that may feel, we took Street View to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, our first-ever collection in the Arab World. Described as a “vertical city,” the Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest manmade structure, towering over the Dubai skyline at 828 meters (2,717 ft).
Mapping such a building isn’t easy, and Google used a combination of Trekker backpacks and trolleys, Google took Street View to the building’s observation deck on the 124th floor as well as a maintenance unit on the 80th floor. We’re not fans of cleaning windows at home, so the thought of seeing what it’s like to clean windows 80-floors up both intrigues and terrifies us in equal measure!
If you really have a head for heights, you can visit the building’s highest occupied floor right up on the 163rd level or check out the highest swimming pool on the 76th. We’re just coming to terms with the idea of hanging off that window cleaning platform, so we’ll let you head on up there on your own. We’ll meet you there. Honest.
(Source: Google)
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