Today Google published a new update in Lithuania, finally bringing new pictures that were waiting to be released for years.
Lithuania was one of those countries without any update since their first release. The country was added to Google Street View in January 2013 with imagery taken in 2012 and since, despite of cars driving and collecting data, no update happened.
This long wait is finally over. Imagery from 2014 to 2021 is now available along with the 2012 coverage. This added a few new roads and highways along with the first gen 4 coverage of the country.
The following map roughly shows where the gen 4 data is available. As you can see it is quite incomplete yet, however more areas received gen 3 imagery taken between 2014 and 2019 (not visible on this map).
Like many other countries that received their first gen 4 update, it seems the new data was published in small trapezoidal areas. This example shows a small area west of Kaunas where it is clearly visible. This means a lot of coverage still waits to be published all over the country.
It is unknown if more data will be published in the next months or if continuous updates are enabled in Lithuania. Google currently drives cars in the country so the coverage will be monitored to detect potential updates with 2022 imagery.
Edit 2021/07/18: gen 4 imagery is now available in many areas. The empty areas still received new imagery from 2014-2019 but it is gen 3 data instead.
This update may be a good sign for other countries stuck in the past despite of Google cars driving, like Croatia or Finland. Remember to follow us on Twitter or Instagram and join our Discord server to get the latest news.