Today Google announced and launched a pretty amazing new feature to Google maps. The Street view.

You may be asking yourself, how do they take a satellite picture from that angle… uhhh yeah… it’s not a satellite photo. Google has broken out of the mold and has hit the streets apparently with the help of a company called Immersive. As you can see from the video and pics it is a pretty amazing tool. They currently only have 5 cities available, but I’m sure there are more to come. So far it’s:Miami, San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and Las Vegas

Joel Burslem points out on the Inman blog that it will have a “great application” in real estate, but I’m not so sure yet… After playing around with it for a while and considering the markets available, and the cities themselves, I see very little value for the residential marketplace. Sure, it is a great tool, but how much residential area is actually represented? It may have value in New York and San Francisco, as there are many city dwellers, but personally, I don’t see it as being practical.

If they bundled it into their current map API, it may be useful, but I don’t think we’re going to see an immediate stampede to use the technology by real estate agents… at least not yet.