The Dubai police have Google Glass and now the city's streets have Google Street View.
The panoramic map service features the major areas and tourist attractions in the city, allowing people from all over the world to experience the jaw-dropping height of Burj Khalifa or see the gargantuan size of Dubai Mall.
Although Google Street View has launched in 3,000 cities across 63 countries since its inception in 2007, Dubai is the first Arab city to feature this service. Which might be surprising to some, given Dubai's penchant for having the latest, biggest and greatest of everything.
Google first captured the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, over two years ago but it has taken much longer to capture all the streets. The process behind Google Street View is exhaustive, to say the least . Some also say that privacy and security concerns may have kept Google from launching the service in Dubai sooner.
The municipality of Dubai is pleased, telling What's On that:
“Tourists are very much interested before they visit Dubai to see what Dubai looks like in real life,” Dubai Municipality said. “When they go to Google Maps and see 360 degrees all around important and popular streets, we think this will be interesting for them.”