Google Lets Android Apps Tap into Street View

Street View, Google's eye-level images showing more and more of the real world, is now available for Android software to use. That ability comes with the new Google Play Services 4.4, an update to the company's multipurpose software resource that lets Android app developers tap into a range of Google features. With the change, announced Wednesday night, a restaurant-review app could show street-level views of the restaurants

The Google Play Services software is an important part of Google's effort to let programmers create fuller-featured apps -- and to draw them and their users more deeply into the Google ecosystem. For example, those programmers can link into documents stored at Google Drive, present Google Maps, see Google-supplied advertising, and use Google Wallet for purchasing. The Android operating system's importance to Google lies largely in its ability to drive users to these services and others such as Gmail and YouTube.