In Europe, Google Street View began on 2 July 2008 with the route of Tour de France being covered in parts of France and Italy. The service has since expanded to many European countries, while at the same time has been controversial in some countries due to laws and privacy concerns.

Following the introduction of Street View in the United States, there was talk of bringing the feature to Europe as well, but there were concerns over the legality of the feature due to stricter laws in most European countries than those of the United States regarding photography.

The first views anywhere outside the United States were introduced on July 2, 2008, when the Tour de France route was added. Nineteen camera icons, each indicating part of a French city or town and Cuneo, Italy, were included.

On October 14, 2008, camera icons were introduced in six French cities, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Paris and Toulouse. At the same time, all other icons that had been introduced in France on July 2, as well as the one in Cuneo, Italy, were removed, representing the first time in Street View's history that a camera icon that once marked a place was removed. However, the amount of coverage that France had since July 2 was not diminished.

On October 27, 2008, four Spanish metropolitan areas were added to the list of growing street view locations in Europe: Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Valencia.

On October 29, 2008, Italy received four camera icons for the localities of Florence, Milan, Rome and Lake Como.

On March 18, 2009, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands were added. In the case of Great Britain, only major centres were uploaded and even coverage of those city centres was incomplete. For example, Edinburgh was missing Street View images of two of its key thoroughfares: Princes Street and the Royal Mile (although portions of both were visible from adjoining streets that had been imaged).

In May 2009, Google Germany released a list of German cities that were to be scanned or rescanned in May and June 2009.