It took months for the imagery to be collected and months to get all the data collated, but Google Street View has finally added Malta to the 83 countries already available.

The Google Street car collecting images in 2016

Google collected its imagery over a few months in late 2016. The Street View car drove 2,500 km across the central and south-eastern parts of Malta and all around Gozo, taking 360 degrees pics of many locations, including heritage and touristic attractions, from Valletta to Victoria.

Read: Google's Street View car to extend its Malta drive

Street View is a popular feature of Google Maps which was launched in May 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide. It allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighbourhood through panoramic street-level images. Streets with Street View imagery available are shown as blue lines on Google Maps.

The Times of Malta on Google Street View

The service has stirred issues of privacy in some countries. Last June, India's interior ministry said it had rejected an application from the tech giant citing security concerns. In 2009, hundreds of pictures from the UK's Google's then-new Street View service have been removed after concerns were voiced about invasion of privacy.

Google applies state-of-the-art technology to help identify and blur individual faces and licence plates on any imagery before it is made public. Once Street View imagery is available online, users can ask for further blurring.

To use Google Street View, drag the icon of a yellow man from the bottom right hand corner to the place on the Google Map that you would like to see.