Street View? Just watch this space

Mar 26 2009 by Lewis Harrison, The Journal

OFFICES in Britain ground to a halt last week as workers hunched over monitors to take a peek at their neighbourhoods on Street View, Google’s latest technological marvel.

If you somehow missed all the buzz, Google Street View is part of Google’s Maps service, and allows you to browse through the streets of 25 UK cities – including Newcastle – as though you’re actually walking down the road yourself.

Acting with trademark speed, the bloggosphere and twittersphere spotted a number of unusual, funny and plain bizarre sights within hours of Street View’s launch, giving us a fascinating snapshot of life in a pre-recession Britain.

Amusing finds included a slightly worse-for-wear chap chundering onto the pavement (http://tinyurl.com/c7cd5l) and a teabreak (that’s the correct collective noun, isn’t it) of builders ogling girl band The Electric Dolls (http://is.gd/oby9).

More unusual spectacles included Wally of Where’s Wally? fame (http://tinyurl.com/dfr7df), a huge shark coming out of a house in Oxford (http://bit.ly/UYwip), and an even rarer sight, a fully-operational Woolies (http://tinyurl.com/cysab8).

Alongside these funny finds emerged a number of complaints about privacy from various publications and watchdogs, who claimed the service was some kind of ‘burglar’s charter’. Which it isn’t. The photos of houses aren’t live or particularly recent or detailed, so would prove of little value in helping criminals .

Nor is it completely harmless, as some supporters of the service claim. Google blurs out the faces of people its cameras photograph and says it will remove images if people request them to do so, but there’s still potential for people to be embarrassed or worse.

Given that it’s proven so controversial and currently doesn’t seem to offer much besides providing the odd bit of fun, you could be forgiven for wondering exactly why Google went to the expense and trouble of undertaking this astonishing photographic feat.

Google claims it will help business owners promote restaurants, hotels and so on. I can buy that.

For me, though, the real reason Google has done this is that it further strengthens its hold on how we search for, well, anything really.

Just as Google has made a fortune from search, I’m sure it will find a way to make money through Street View.

Lewis Harrison is communications manager at Codeworks, the North East’s centre for digital innovation.