08 July 2008

Up close with the Google Street View Spiders

Despite the concerns over Google Street View privacy practices, Google has sent its fleet of diesel spiders to crawl the European cities and roads.

Earlier this week, we reported Google cars being spotted around the UK. Today, we are excited to offer photographic evidence of our own that the cars have been snapping photos near the bigmouth headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland.





















The cars are equipped with cameras, able to take 360º photos while moving at a normal speed, a GPS receiver that matches each photo with a geographical location and a laptop which apparently could help to check the quality of the images and control the basic setup of the equipment.

The first launch of Street View imagery in Europe has been the Tour de France route. Have you ever dreamt of traversing the challenging L'Alpe-d'Huez without collapsing along the way? Now, the yellow jersey is a click away.


The controversial mapping service stirred some resentment on the other side of the pond, and it looks like it's set to do that same here - despite assurances from Google that privacy is a top concern. The search giants blur faces of any individuals featured in their Street View photos, but the blurring technique is lacking for some.

What's more, the differing laws on UK shores mean that what is acceptable in the US isn't always acceptable here and Google may find the images it's busy collecting won't be useful until all privacy issued have been resolved. One the other hand, we're quite enjoying being on the other side of the camera here at bigmouthmedia.

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