How would you feel if a picture of your home suddenly popped up on Google? Well that could soon become a reality with Google's StreetView camera cars being spotted snapping photos around the UK recently in places such as Cardiff, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Leeds and Edinburgh.A Google spokesperson told The Telegraph: "We're taking photos to bring the StreetView product to Europe, including driving in the UK, ... Our users have been asking for the service ever since we launched in the US and we're very excited about bringing it to Europe."
Online debates focusing on the privacy issues of such a move have already sprung up, but Google has stated that it will be respecting local privacy laws and will also be applying automated face-blurring to the photos, so you don't have to worry about looking your best if the car passes by.
Worries concerning the enforcement of privacy laws for StreetView were investigated by a bigmouth reporter last year, however, Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer made it clear at the time that the designers have devised a simple process that allows anyone to contact Google to have images removed. The public may also be relieved to know that the Google cars are not particularly discreet and are easily spottable by passersby.
A business minded use for StreetView has popped up in the form of real estate tie-ins. An example of this is when Trulia integrated StreetView with their property searches in April. This could be great for buyers that have little time to look at the area surrounding properties, as you can read the "amazing views" In the description the take a peek at StreetView to see if the location lives up to its claims.
The US has been a massive testing ground for Google application, with stories detailing incidents such as StreetView cars entering private property not being too uncommon to the blogsphere. These teething problems should hopefully mean that the UK avoids such hassles and, although no time scale has been given as to when this will become live, our curious bigmouths are eager to see a ground level, 360 view of our offices.
