Google Places Now Takes User Photo Uploads

Following in the footsteps of several other locally-oriented sites, Google Places is now accepting user photos of local businesses. When viewing a Place Page (like the Wild Ginger restaurant in Seattle), you’ll see a new “Upload a photo” link to the right of the Photos & Video content section.

Google’s announcement says the user-uploaded images will be visible on Google.com and Google Earth, in addition to Places/Maps. There’s no indication about how many photos a user can upload (or if there’s even a limit in place).

In the beginning, Google Places only accepted photos uploaded by the business owner in the local business center. In early 2009, Google began scraping other sites and adding photos to its business listings. Now, with the addition of user photos, Google Places becomes a little more like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Urbanspoon and other locally-oriented sites/services. (How soon until Google Places adds check-ins?) Yahoo Local also accepts user photo uploads; Bing Maps does not.