Google is bringing its "street view" technology indoors. With the launch of the
Google Art Project,
announced at a press conference in London this morning, Google jumps
into the online art arena with tools that will allow web surfers to
move through 17 of the most prominent art galleries in the world, with
the option to look more closely at individual art works, including some
that will be digitized so exhaustively that individual paint strokes
and hairline cracks in the surface will be visible.