Google's Streetview now includes interior panoramas.

I was looking up a restaurant in Seattle, and realized that now Google Streetview can show you the interior of selected locations.

Here's the restaurant interior. (I was looking at it because the proprietor is raising money for a cookbook.)  

And here's a nearby hat shop I never knew existed. 

If they don't work, google map downtown seattle, and hover the Streetview icon (the little yellow 'pegman,' is apparently what he's called) over an area of downtown on maximum zoom, and look for a yellow dot over an interior. 

Of course the aim of showing interiors is to attract customers, as google says in soliciting these photos. So now you'll have even more ways to pick a hotel at an unfamiliar destination, restaurants, and doctor's offices and who knows what else. 

Anyway, this makes me ask a bunch of questions, and maybe you can answer them. Why does this interior world not connect seamlessly with the outside street? You can navigate out the door of an establishment, but that world stops and you need to zoom out to map view to reconnect with the regular exterior Streetview. 

Don't you think there will be great uses for these interior shots in a hundred years? Since you can view historical satellite images on google earth, I'm sure that historical archives of these interior shots will soon be available at a click.  Now these sort of interiors wil be on google earth and easily accessible. You can look into a store and see all the items on a shelf.  I find it hard remembering what things I could buy at the store that are no longer available, like Playbox cookies.

 But now you'll be able to browse historical store shelves. Imagine 20 years from now taking a virtual stroll through a familiar store and seeing all the items on the shelves from years ago. Lots of possibilities. 

Here's how to look at historical satellite images, though they neglect to tell you until the end that you have to enable "Historical imagery" under the 'View' tab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vwHGG1dgujc

But I digress - back to the social implications of interior photos. 

And why do these businesses have their interior photographed empty? Wouldn't it sell better if they were full of people? Google would blur out the faces, so there aren't privacy issues. 

And what are the limits on this exercise - will Google absorb real estate photos of interiors and keep those on file? 

The amount of data they keep is increasing exponentially - first maps was just the depiction of the flat surface, then it was 3D, then it included the ocean floor, then streetview, then updated street view over time, now interiors.  And you can tell from the multiple panoramas they take of each interior location that there is no concern about the amount of data they are storing.  

It reminds me of when google traffic went from municipal data for a few large cities to street-by-street live traffic from crowd-sourced data from people's GPS-enabled phones, and google now uses such data to predict your arrival time when giving directions.

UPDATE

...A few years after posting this I watched an interesting google lecture on the history of google maps, and how the interface advanced over time. I found it interesting.