November 22, 2007

Google Maps Street View Heads Overseas

Duncan Riley

26 comments »

omg.jpgGoogle’s occasionally controversial Street View product is heading outside of the United States.

Google Street View cars have been spotted in the United Kingdom in September and in Canada, where the privacy aspects of Google capturing street images resulted in a lot of talk as to whether it was legal or not to walk down the a street in Toronto, take a picture and post it on the internet.

Australia looks likely to be the 4th Google territory with a Google Street View car spotted in Sydney, according to the SMH. Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin confirmed the sighting, saying that the images taken will be added to Google Maps some time next year.

The Street View program has not been without its critics in the United States as well, particularly when Google has shown pictures of people entering adult book stores and doing other things they’d rather not have on the internet.

Google Maps Street View competes with Microsoft’s Streetside and startup Everyscape, the latter also taking pictures inside of buildings as well as from the outside.

image credit: SMH/ Sebr on Flickr)

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  1. Rodrigo

    Lol, i was thinking about “Google Car”, when i saw this headline… =]

  2. Omar

    “OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN”

    Is this a serious tech news reporting website or a regurgitation of memes? I will not be suprised when I see lolcats on this blog (mostly by Duncan) - Mike will probably make up a fake guest poster in his writing.

  3. Steve Ballmer

    TerraserverEarth .9b is much better! You can even go inside buildings real time!

  4. TechBanyan

    Integrating these views into the blog can be a good way to make Rockstar sites.

    Following the concept of Quick Reaction Teams as pointed here - “How To Make Your Site Popular” http://www.techbanyan.com/archives/37 has been helping a lot of people.

  5. Duncan Riley

    Omar (#2): meh. You can haz noz humor :-)

  6. Aaron

    Weirdly enough I just saw one in Perth, Western Australia - and came home to this story.

  7. Duncan Riley

    Aaron
    I wonder if they’ll come down as far as Bunbury so I can take pics :-)

  8. Aaron

    Hmm somehow I doubt it Duncan ;) This was in Maylands - Corner of 7th Ave/Guildford Rd
    http://www.google.com/maps?ie=.....7&om=1
    Watch this space ey.

  9. Duncan Riley

    Aaron
    I know, wishful thinking :-)

  10. testicular cancer treatment

    Big brother is watching you.

  11. AW

    “The Street View program has not been without its critics in the United States as well, particularly when Google has shown pictures of people entering adult book stores and doing other things they’d rather not have on the internet.”

    That is stupid. This is no different from some random jackass doing the same thing.

    Here’s a Protip: if you’re embarrassed about going to an adult store, cover your face when you walk in, or order via the ‘net. You’ve got just as good odds of someone taking your picture as an associate recognizing your face and telling everyone how you spend your slow Saturdays.

  12. Bloobeard

    Couldn’t Google just apply a face recognition algorithm and replace people’s faces with something else, like smileys maybe ;)

  13. Roland

    A few weeks ago I spotted a TeleAtlas van with several cameras on top near Avenue Louise, Brussels, Belgium.

  14. Justin

    I just saw the Google car in a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia (a city of one million people) driving down a one way street. He had to do a “u-turn” - I wonder if we’ll get the ‘going east’ view or the ‘going west’ view?

    The location of where I saw the car — Hyde Park (Adelaide) - http://maps.google.com/maps?f=.....r&om=1

    j

  15. anon

    The lolcats are only funny when they’re unexpected and relevant. Making everything a lolcat joke is just annoying. Besides, I think we exhausted that gag.

  16. 42mb.com

    They might be peeping their employees too I guess, :)

  17. pukas

    So, what now? The Google Toilet? ;)
    Anyway, peoples faces should by replaced by something like smile.

  18. Duncan Donuts

    Duncan is that you heading into that Adult Library?

  19. Moe Glitz

    Whilst Google Earth, Google Maps and Streetview are highly innovative in giving us online versions of our lovely planet, these services all seem pretty vacant and soulless.

    Both Google and Microsoft - through its Virtual Earth Platform, are simply copying each other in both their designs and their products and services in developing an online earth.
    Neither of their two Earth’s give us anything new and exciting and it all seems a little bit, can I say - pedestrian.

    Perhaps we need a new earth platform that can show both Google and Microsoft, how to produce a better representation of our lovely planet.
    This Third Earth Platform could become a better mirror earth version than any of the other two earthlings.

    Now if only I could find the right people back in London to help me develop my Third Earth Platform Project and win the Battle of the Planets.

  20. Angelina Mina

    gOOGLE IS THE King Every where. Cheers Google !!!

    Angelina Mina

  21. Michael Bartolo

    I was walking down the street infront of my college and saw one of the chevy cobalts with the Google name on the side and some camera on top. This was in Hamilton, ON

  22. Ian Monroe

    The image credit isn’t SMH, its my friends Seb Ruiz’s photo like the SMH says. And they asked permission since the photo is released under the Non-commercial CC license.

    Get it right!

  23. Seb Ruiz

    Yes, as Ian said I would appreciate if the image was linked and credited.
    http://flickr.com/photos/sebr/2051749701/

  24. Daniel

    Yeah, I saw the car on Chicago’s Clark Street about a month ago.