Oxford is in it, but my road isn't

I am stunned by the shear amount of data google must have.

I notice that faces are "smeared", but numberplates aren't, I assume the faces are to do with privacy, but numberplates aren't covered by this?.

This data collection is a hell of a task, and must be costing google a fortune, not only in data acquistion and storage, but shear man power needed to collect, collate and parse all this data.

Seriously impressed with all this.

Quote from danowat :

I am stunned by the shear amount of data google must have.

I notice that faces are "smeared", but numberplates aren't, I assume the faces are to do with privacy, but numberplates aren't covered by this?.

This data collection is a hell of a task, and must be costing google a fortune, not only in data acquistion and storage, but shear man power needed to collect, collate and parse all this data.

Seriously impressed with all this.

Me too, it really is amazing.

Number plates should be blurred - but aren't at some distances. They use automatic face and number place detection to blur them, and I think you can mark images if you find them unsuitable etc.

Ahhh, fair enough, just a quick virtual stroll down a local high street in Norwich shows a ton of unblurred numberplates!!!.

Regardless, its a seriously impressive undertaking by Google, I really can't get over in words how impressed I am.

Great Ancoats Street in Manchester has flying saucers!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps? ... 713,,0,-27.54716981132076

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Great Ancoats Street in Manchester has flying saucers!

Or raindrops on the panoramic lense protection globe.

It is possible to see Japan also . Damn i want to go there

Is this Scawen's house?

Virtual stalking FTW.........

Creepy..

So is that true?

No idea, I think searching for peoples houses online is one of the last things I'd ever do........

i cant seem to get this working, where should the button be?

Drag the little yellow man to a street et voila

Heard on the radio that people where complaining (and I think rightly so in some cases) that it impedes privacy as you can sometimes see into people's houses.

They show nothing that joe public can't already see by walking down a street, so IMO, these privacy calls are BS.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Heard on the radio that people where complaining (and I think rightly so in some cases) that it impedes privacy as you can sometimes see into people's houses.

That is what Curtains are for people!!!!

This is nothing more than a photographer taking pictures in a public place...people really need to get a grip. .

Something I wrote on another forum I visit regarding nice cars on display:

Maybe, but as Google say, it's no different to walking down the street itself. If you were a thief you'd only look at a place close to you (why bother viewing random places in the off chance there's a nice car there), so you might as well just walk there.

BBC claim 'dozens' of pictures have been removed - which out of the probable millions of pictures Google took, isn't much, just stuff like people going into sex shops etc.

Someone suggested Google should have taken 2 sets of pictures at different times incase there were issues with one of the photos - sure because I'm sure it hasn't already cost millions to implement this, so just doubling the budget should be fine. Idiots.

I know some of these cases may be a bit fickle but I'm sure there are some genuine ones. Anyway, apart from that, I'm a bit unsure as to why people would want to see their town (or another town, for that matter) on a street level.. surely that's the point of going there in the first place?

Perhaps Google should get its priorities straight. That would be sorting on the Youtube based music industry and getting 80% of the music back online.

I can, and have done, do quick and dirty site surveys on a house using gmaps and multimaps birds eye view.

Now with the addition of streetview, I can easily "count bricks" on certain surveys without even leaving the office.

There must be hundreds of applications for this type of data.

There's no point getting paranoid about it, the photos of Oxford are at least 6 months old. There are perfectly good uses for this kind of thing, for example I've just looked at my house for next year to try and size up the drive a bit better (rather worringly small given the number of sheds we're planning to dump on it) but thankfully I've also been able to check that there is on road parking, a lot easier than going there.

Quote from danowat :

There must be hundreds of applications for this type of data.

Indeed. We'll be implementing this on a property sales website that I part own and manage. I understand findaproperty.com already have ties with Google and will also be using it.

I think it'll very useful for us - especially as it costs next to nothing to implement, yet adds good value to the service.

I find it very useful for when I plan a trip somewhere I have not yet been before. I simply check out the destination in Google Maps with aerial photos and now Streetview to get acquainted with the area. Since then I've never become lost.

I'm kinda glad they're not gathering streetview images over here, otherwise you'd see a lot more of these...

They've found Wally...already