The oddest shots captured on Google Street View

A gallery of places without addresses on Google Street View

Google Street View records billions of images of streets across the world. Within those photos are many "unplaces," locations that appear to have some purpose or former history but do not have an address. This site curates some of those images and seeks further information from users. You can peruse the odd, fascinating locations spread across both rural and urban areas.

How Google Street View generates profit

Google Maps, one of the most trusted navigation applications today, has a somewhat mysterious way of making a profit. YouTuber Phil Edwards uncovers the secret economic practices of Google Street View, while also offering a deeper understanding of how it works.

Explore coral reefs in Google's "street view"

Expanding its mission to map the world, Google Maps partnered with The Catlin Seaview Survey to introduce the first-ever underwater panoramas, making oceanic marvels like the Great Barrier Reef accessible to everyone. With Google Maps, the public...

Twelve artworks you'll love zooming into

Zoom in on these famous paintings to see what's hiding up close, then go exploring the rest of Google's incredible Arts and Culture hub.

Take a 360-degree tour of a Google data center

Explore Stonehenge up close with photos and a 3D model

This Google Arts & Culture gallery brings Stonehenge into sharp focus through Life magazine archives, Getty Images, and a rotatable Google Earth model—plus a virtual tour that is close enough to spot lichen on the 30-foot sarsen stones.

See a collection of mind-bending architecture around the world, including a teapot gas station, a duck home, and a picnic basket building.

An absurd website that always finds a photo of someone pointing at your cursor

Move your mouse anywhere on the screen, and the site finds a photograph from its archive of a person pointing at that exact spot. It's a completely useless and delightful experience, and required a massive trove of tagged photos.

Take a virtual journey through the world's deserts with Google Earth and BBC

Explore some of the world’s deserts in this “Natural Treasures” collaboration between Google Earth and BBC Earth. Visit the Namib Desert in Namibia where the simplest strategy to escape the heat is to emerge only in the cool of the night....

Check out the 50 weirdest roadside attractions in the US, from Alabama's Unclaimed Baggae Center to Wyoming's Elkhorn Arch.

Google Search includes over 50 Easter eggs hidden behind specific search terms

Some queries—besides providing search results—trigger additional effects on the site, including tilting the page after searching for "askew," having the page perform dance moves to the song after searching for "[cha-cha slide]," and the ability to play a version of block breaker after searching for "Atari breakout."

See the original websites for companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple

Explore archived images of homepages on websites dating all the way back to 1991.

Explore a digital graveyard of over 300 products, services, and devices that have been discontinued by Google, including Chromecast, Google+, and Google Goggles.

The unsolved mysteries of Machu Picchu

Who lived there? How did they get all that granite up there? Who were the 100 bodies found buried here, and why did some of them have elongated heads? Explore eight of Machu Picchu’s unanswered questions while scrolling through panoramic, clickable street-view images of the site, in this guide from Google Arts and Culture.

Take a series of virtual tours of Biosphere 2

The videos provide a 360-degree view of the indoor rainforest, ocean ecosystem, Landscape Evolution Observatory, and underground technosphere. A Google Maps Street View option is available to explore additional biomes, with each associated with a different floor level on the bottom right.

Explore a gallery of space-based images and animations of Earth

This collection compiles shots of well-known locations, such as US national parks, and natural features, including aurora borealis and fall foliage, to provide a high-level view of Earth's surface.

The art of 'undiscovering' phantom islands

Centuries of maps include islands and isles that appear to only exist on atlases. This article explores the discovery and "undiscovery" of such landscapes, which still persist despite modern technology. As recently as 2012, Google Maps showed an...

The world's weirdest flowers

We mostly marvel at the beauty of flowers, but some kinds of flowers are incredibly weird. This video highlights 15 of the world's strangest flowers, from the massive Titan Arum to the rare Lady Slipper Orchid.

Take a tour of Google's headquarters

With its vibrant and cutting-edge design, the so-called "Googleplex" is synonymous with Silicon Valley and surrounds employees with lush green space and unique artwork. Amenities include massage therapy, a medical clinic, and nap pods to inspire creativity.

Explore a list of the world’s weirdest and wildest ETFs

Whether you’re leaping straight into the future and looking for stocks picked by AI, a sci-fi aficionado who wants to invest in space travel, or a drama enthusiast looking to make money on stock market volatility, the ETF market’s weird corners have something for you.

Explore an interactive history of Google search trends

This interactive allows users to browse for the most searched topics on Google Search since 1999 and provides noteworthy statistics. Topics are sorted by categories, including athletes, movies, reality TV, dog breeds, and sauces.

Draw or drag on your screen, and this browser experiment matches your gesture to real Google Earth satellite imagery of rivers, coastlines, and highways.

Google reveals the top searches of 2023

Google Search remains the world's most popular online search engine, and the tech behemoth reveals the most common searches from at the end of every year. See global as well as more local trends in most common searches for people, films, and more.

Explore the Arctic from your living room

Explore the unique ecosystem and wildlife of the Arctic tundra thanks to Google Earth and Explore.org. Captured from a series of stationary and moving live cams, watch polar bears gather as they wait for the Hudson Bay to freeze so they can search...

Explore the 2025 Uber Lost & Found Index to find out the weirdest items that passengers left behind in Ubers last year, from ten live lobsters to a mannequin head with human hair.

Five of the strangest cemeteries in the world

Since forever ago, people have been burying the dead in odd ways that are still practiced today. Here's a roundup of some of the strangest burial spots in the world.

Explore the British Museum's collection across time and continents in this interactive Google Arts and Culture experience.

A look at some of the world's most unique churches

From a skeleton-adorned church in the Czech Republic to wooden churches built without nails in Russia, this video explores some of Christianity's most intriguing architectural feats. These places of worship were built in remote areas throughout history, and show amazing innovation. See a fascinating glimpse into the overlooked structures, along with stories of how and why they came to be.

Forty-nine top-notch photos of springtime around the world

Peruse this collection of stunning images gleaned from thousands submitted in a 2020 "springtime" contest which features close-ups and drone photos from Vietnam to Ireland.

Visualizing how we dream via Google search trends

When dreams perplex us, we often want to understand them—and in the age of Google, millions go to its search engine to find answers. Now, researchers have compiled a decade's worth of dream-related queries to glean dream trends across seven languages. See what dream was most commonly searched in Arabic in 2015, or what fears and hopes are specific to one culture and time alone with this unique visual essay.

Vintage 1980s photos of the streets of San Francisco

In the early 1980s, San Francisco was changing amid increased diversity and a nascent tech boom. This series of photos from 1981 and 1982 was found of the evolving city, depicting trolleys, doorsteps, storefronts, and more from a time very different from today. Explore the vintage shots here.

Imagining the nostalgia we'll feel one day for gas stations

Car drivers everywhere are accustomed to an endless array of gas stations along the road, with their high, flat roofs, convenience stores of varying quality, and bathroom availability. Current trends in electric vehicle development point to such stations' inevitable obsolescence, and one photographer has begun documenting neglected filling stations in transit-oriented Germany. See the images for yourself and begin the journey toward so-called petronostalgia.

How Google's Tilt Brush brings artists' creations to life

Google has been working closely with more than 60 artists to help them explore their style in virtual reality as part of the Tilt Brush Artist in Residence program.

Take a virtual tour through the Amazon Basin

Thanks to Google Maps’ Street View feature, people can virtually explore the Amazon River basin and its surroundings—part of the Amazon rainforest that is under the protection of the Brazilian government with restricted access to the public. The...

The beauty of the Earth in 80 photos

The world is full of beautiful landscapes, creatures, and scenes. Here's a gallery of 80 incredible photos with explanatory captions to deepen your appreciation for the diverse wonders of Earth.

See some of the weirdest Advent calendars you can buy

Modern Advent calendars span nearly every niche imaginable. Shoppers can now buy versions filled with cheese, dog treats, hot sauce, and even sexual-wellness products, reflecting how far the tradition has expanded beyond simple chocolate countdowns.

The slow disappearance of America's roadside attractions

Roadside attractions, as defined by Jane Stern, are quirky, oddball landmarks. Instead of corporate entertainment, charms like a giant twine ball, a shabby dinosaur sculpture exhibit, or hand-painted oddities beckon travelers off the interstate. These roadside attractions have declined in recent years, but Stern commemorates their value and reflects on the joy of discovering unusual and homemade wonders in this piece.

Take a virtual tour inside Stonehenge, the stone monument built roughly 5,000 years ago.

Prehistoric visitors approached Stonehenge along a processional route known as the Avenue, where the sunrise of the summer solstice aligns with the sarsen stones. This interactive 3D tour recreates that experience with explainer videos and detailed sidebars.

A look inside North Korea through photographs

What does life look like inside North Korea? Get a behind-the-scenes peek through 38 photos in the Atlantic.

View a list of companies owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet

These companies include Google subsidiaries like YouTube, the biggest online video sharing and streaming platform, Nest, which manufactures smart products like speakers and thermostats, and Waymo, the technology company developing self-driving cars.

See photos of McDonald's locations all across the world from the 'McAtlas.'

Explore the Museum of the World

This collaboration between the British Museum and Google presents an interactive timeline showing artifacts from five world regions. Go back in time and learn about each item from the museum.

Five surprising things your GPS can do

You’d be surprised at all the things that GPS—the global positioning system that underlies all of modern navigation—can do. Here's a quick breakdown.

Stephen Wilkes' day-to-night panoramas

Renowned US photographer Stephen Wilkes creates distilled time-lapses of cityscapes and landscapes using a novel form: He takes roughly 1,500 images over 30 hours of the same shot, later layering them together to reveal the scene's shift from day to...

Sexy radishes, big-time LOL

This kind of high-quality content is exactly the reason why Al Gore invented the internet. Open this post see the best collection of sexy radishes in the world!

Watch a montage of space-based Earth views as astronauts discuss their overview experiences

As of 2023, more than 600 astronauts and 63 space tourists have seen Earth from space, experiencing a life-changing perspective shift as they view the entirety of our home planet.

Visit these offbeat attractions in each US state

Skip the lines, avoid the crowds, go against the grain: That's the spirit of this list of the 50 coolest offbeat attractions in every US state. From Alaska's museum of hammers to Wyoming's thermal pools, you can find somewhere a little different to...

Visit global national parks from your living room

Get your fill of incredible scenery with this collection of 17 different virtual tours of national parks. Catch the Northern Lights over Abisko National Park in Sweden, or explore the famous red sand dunes of Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.

Contest honors street photographers who freeze fleeting moments

The Pure Street Photography Awards has been connecting and commending international photographers for their talents and storytelling since 2020. See precious moments like an alley game gone rogue, cows bumping heads, and kids flying kites in the gallery.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.