Google Maps becomes “Go Ogle Maps”

Given the detail with which Google Maps' new Street View lets users “view and navigate within 360 degree street level imagery” of selected streets in selected US cities, concern for people’s privacy implications has been raised.

Google’s explanation for the service certainly does make sense, and makes it sound like a very useful service indeed. Google says that: “By clicking on the "Street View" button in Google Maps, users can navigate street level, panoramic imagery. With Street View users can virtually walk the streets of a city, check out a restaurant before arriving, and even zoom in on bus stops and street signs to make travel plans”.

Wow, that does sound cool, especially as more and more cities worldwide are added to the mix, and the content is mashed up in many different ways online. But almost immediately, people started looking at the photographs closely, and started noticing things that the people in the photos concerned might not have wanted published to the world.

Online reports of a man picking his nose, another scaling a wall, yet another at the entrance of a strip joint have been found and discussed, while the hunt is on to see what else the photos contain. The discovery some photos allow web surfers to see inside homes through open windows has also caused alarm.

Google says it has options for users who find photographic information about themselves or their properties that they would like removed, and in a statement reported by the Associated Press, Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said "This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world."

Google also claim the images were taken in a public place from a cameras specially mounted onto cars that travelled the streets, as well as buying similar imagery from another company.

While Google is offering to take down material people are unhappy about, it’s a bit like the DMCA excuse – the rights holders need to find out they’re being infringed before they can do anything about it, as Google takes all care but no responsibility.

The rather logical suggestion has been made that Google simply blur people’s faces, open windows or other sensitive information, but naturally, this would result in a lot of blurred sections on the photos concerned, and you can imagine Google probably doesn’t want that to happen.

Ultimately, Google might have to take multiple photos from multiple cars travelling one behind the other, in the hope to get enough of the ‘same’ photo to be able to mix them all together and remove all the people from it. Technology to do this type of hyper intelligent automatic photo editing was demonstrated by Microsoft at their Australian Tech Ed conference in 2006, and no doubt demonstrated elsewhere as well.

Given Google’s massive computing power, this might be feasible – but it would make cities look like ghost cities as Tom Cruise had to face in the movie Vanilla Sky. Still, if open windows could be closed (or simply blurred or replaced with a similar image of a closed window) and people removed, at least the photos would look relatively normal, as opposed to having people blurred out everywhere.

Other companies have tried this in the past, notably Amazon with their A9 search engine, although they have now scrapped the project, and Microsoft who has introduced a similar service for their competing mapping project, with Microsoft doing their best to keep nipping at Google’s heels in every way they can.

Google’s new Street View mapping service certainly does add a whole extra level of usefulness to their mapping service, especially as it grows to cover cities worldwide. But if public opinion has anything to do with it, the unintended ‘Go ogle’ feature of seeing faces, seeing into homes, seeing license plate numbers and other private detail on Google Maps is one feature that’s likely to disappear.
Source :http://www.itwire.com.au