Google Street View was first introduced in the United States on May 25, 2007, and until November 26, 2008, featured camera icon markers, each representing at least one major city or area (such as a park), and usually the other nearby cities, towns, suburbs, and parks. Many areas that had coverage were represented by icons. Key additions In 2005, Street View project begins, Google employees start the first tests using a van equipped with cameras on the roof in the San Francisco area. On May 25, 2007, Street View was announced. On May 30, 2007, at the Where 2.0 Conference, Immersive Media Company was identified as the contractor that captured the imagery for four of the five cities initially mapped by Street View, using its patented dodecahedral camera array on a moving car. Immersive Media continued to do image capture for Street View until Google developed its own capability to do so. Since July 2007, Google has used imagery that belongs exclusively to Google. On April 16, 2008, Street View was fully integrated into Google Earth 4.3. On May 5, 2008, Google improves its quality, the captures become in high quality. On May 12, 2008, Google announced that it was testing face-blurring technology on its photos of the busy streets of Manhattan. The technology uses a computer algorithm to search Google's image database for faces and blurs them, according to John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps. On June 10, 2008, two other features included in the update were an effective mask of the "Google Car" and the application of face-blurring technology on all photos, which effectively lowered the resolution across all photos, even the formerly impressive high resolution images of San Francisco. Also, many nearby metro areas were included, but they did not receive their own camera icons. On July 2, 2008, Google Street View was introduced in France and Italy, providing the first service outside the United States and the debut of Google's new 4th Generation Cameras. On this day, 19 camera icons were added, mostly showing small towns and areas along the Tour de France route and part of northwestern Italy. On August 4, 2008, 28 icons of major metropolitan areas of both Australia and Japan were added to Google Street View. Included in the update were approximately 40 new U.S. hub cities. On November 26, 2008, the Street View button and all the camera