Google street view will always be quantity over quality in my opinion. It simply wouldn't be cost effective for google to spend much time on beautiful artistic photography on a per location basis.

As long as you focus on 'high-end,' i think there will always be business available. Thoughts?

I agree with MDS.

They will never be able to deliver the quality of work that specialist panographers(?) can.
They wouldn't undertake all the special features that KRpano allows its users to create either such as floorpnas, embedded video and sound etc.
Equally, what benefit will a shop keeper get from a low rez pano in their shop? True they would get some exposure but the user would not be able to engage in the product range or anything of any sales benefit to the shopkeeper.
In retail at least the product range can change from day to day, week to week as can the layout of the store, promotional point of sale literature etc. so that in not very long the store could bear no resemblance to the Google pano and I doubt Google will be coming back very often.

Anyway, if worst comes to worst then we can all go and work for Google

T12

Tangent12

In my opinion creating panos for the web is no different from web design in general. There are lots of ways to get a free website for your business but it comes with cons. Free websites don't come with customizable domain names, mail accounts, etc. They also have limited customization capabilities, if you even know how to customize them.

On the other hand, there a lots and lots and lots of professional web design/development companies who create low/med/and high end websites on a large $ range.

Just because there is competition on the 'low' end market doesn't mean the end of custom panography, etc. It just means that the level of service must be higher than what google 'may' do for free. Creating high quality panos isn't well suited for high volume low cost in my opinion, especially with a small 1-5 man company.

So essentially, if panos are created by google, they will be the equivalent of a free website for your business as opposed to hiring and professional company to create a more customized and engaging experience.

Just my thoughts

Street view is doing an excellent job at getting people used to panorama photography. I think it is a big plus for us. The only things is I wish their mouse control for click-and-drag panning worked in the opposite way ! I always find myself dragging the view in the wrong direction.

Ideally I'd like to be able to put a client's hotspot into the Google street-view scene that would launch my own more detailed panorama.

This is why you always need continue to learn and find ways to add value or slightly change your business model. I agree that Google's entry into interiors is a mixed blessing. They will help people become familiar with the technology and accept it, but for many customers free or very low cost is good enough for them to accept. We need to keep learning, innovating, improving, and automating. You could potentially view these google customers as qualified and up sell them more sophisticated content. If you sit still you will be programming pascal on an Apple IIe instead of doing something exciting and fun.