Official Street View Website

For Google's official website on Street View locations (present and future) and much more, go to:

Monday, June 15, 2009

Tons of News

Sorry for the delay; I try not to blog on Sundays.


Changing the Rules: To appease the strict privacy rules of the European Union, Google has agreed to stop holding the original (non-blurred, non-edited) Street View video files. However, this would mean there is more chance for error in the pictures, and these errors are nearly impossible to fix. Be prepared for thousands of coverage gaps in the middle of European streets. Read more here.
Google Trike Update: Two main new locations were added from Google Trike imagery this week: Disneyland Paris and a bicycle trail in Monterey, California. Read more here and here.

4 comments:

Mr Truth said...

These British are so hypocritical.

First they are under 24/7 surveillance any place by government controlled cameras yet they don't allow street view which ISN'T live and is only static images.

Make up your minds Britain do you want privacy or not?

If you ban street view you might as well ban the other surveillance cameras which are MUCH more intrusive and wrong.

claudia64 said...

Mr. Truth, this article isn't about Britain banning Street View. In fact, Britain's data protection agency is on board with Google and there are no issues currently - the Google cars have been busy snapping photos for the service, so no problem there.

What this particular blog post is about is the European Union requiring Google to take extra steps to ensure citizens' privacy, i.e. keeping raw photos for a limited period of time and notifying residents before the Street View cars drive through an area. This is probably a reasonable request.

On a related note, if the latest news is to be believed, Switzerland is asking Google to go to some unreasonable lengths (IMO) by actually securing the permission of every person who appears in their photos. Sounds to me like they'd need someone in the car and on the street to get everyone's written permission. In a large city, this would probably make acquiring the photos nearly impossible, and will probably force Google to scrap plans for a Street View service in Switzerland. I wonder if this is really the Swiss data protection people's plan - to make it so Google cannot afford to comply with their overly strict rules. These people are reportedly not thrilled with the whole SV idea anyway.

Mr Truth said...

I am NOT stupid you know!

What I am saying is that it's dumb for Britian to ban Street view when they already have 1000s of cameras 24/7 elsewhere.

Please re-read my statement.

In fact what I said has EVERYTHING to do with this article.

Ohhhhhhhhhh I get it now. (slaps self on forehead) Your one of those Brits who are confused about privacy. Welllllllll excuse me!

Now go along and take a reading class fellow user.

Mr Truth or tries to be. said...

Ohhhh it's about the Europan Union. I thought they were the same thing as Britians goverment.

Anyways it's still stupid about having live cameras everywhere and NOT allowing street view.


I am against live cameras strongly though I am not against street view cause the images are stale and are no different then what any professonial photographer can take.

Actually the images are a bit sub-par from a professonial photographer.

My camera could take better,detailed pictures and you can even hardly see the screen to take them with too. :P to them.