Take a stroll down Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, waddle with the penguins on Half Moon Island in Antarctica, or take in the rolling green hills in Ireland's Ring of Kerry all from the comfort of your desk chair.

Google on Thursday extended its Street View mapping feature to all seven continents with the addition of the aforementioned countries: Brazil, Antarctica, and Ireland.

"We often consider Street View to be the last zoom layer on the map, and a way to show you what a place looks like as if you were there in person – whether you're checking out a coffee shop across town or planning a vacation across the globe," Brian McClendon, Google Earth and Maps' vice president of engineering, wrote in a blog post.

The Street View imagery for Antarctica includes panoramas of an area called Half Moon Island, Google said. The blue dots visible throughout the continent when dragging the pegman are user-contributed photos, not Street View photography, McClendon clarified.

Street View started in May 2007 with just five U.S. cities. San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver were the first locales users could check out without buying a pricey plane ticket or leaving their home. Now it's available in places all over the world, from the most remote corner to the busiest street. Since Street View's start Google has "expanded [their] 360-degree panoramic views to many more places, allowing you to check out a restaurant before dining there, to explore a neighborhood before moving there, and to find landmarks along the route of your driving directions," McClendon said.

Not everybody is jazzed about the Street View expansion, though. Last week, the Czech Republic banned Google from expanding Street View further into the country because of privacy concerns, while last month, German data protection officials complained that Google was not providing its citizens with enough time to opt-out of Street View.