Ottawa (ECN) - Google Street View is now available in Canada. Announced last spring, Street View is now available in a dozen Canadian cities and their surroundings including Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Halifax, Vancouver and Calgary.

The service, which was launced yesterday, lets users see 360 degree images of different locations on a virtual map. The images were taken in the spring. In Quebec, the service is limited to downtown and the borough of Sainte-Foy-Sillery-Cap-Rouge.

Two and a half years after the official launch of Google Street View in the United States, now the famous search engine is officially launching its Canadian version of the project.

Google Street View allows you to physically see the streets of some cities. Google allows the application of 11 Canadian cities including Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

This use is becoming increasingly popular with tourists because it is made easy to identify in advance a physical place such as Toronto's CN Tower.

This service raises criticism from some users who claim a right to privacy. Since 2007, license plates and faces are scrambled using a software.

Those who wish may still request an image be removed.

Google has published a video on this subject to explain to users how to proceed.