Google recently launched Street View in Canada, includ­ing major cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, Mon­treal, Van­cou­ver, among oth­ers. Google Street View first launched in May 2007, it allows users to vir­tu­ally nav­i­gate neigh­bour­hoods. The tech­nol­ogy behind Street View is inter­est­ing, last sum­mer Google cars equipped with direc­tional cam­eras on their roofs cap­tured the images by dri­ving down city streets, and there are Google tri­cy­cles for those hard-to-reach locations.

Street View has come under fire since it’s launch, peo­ple think it is infring­ing on the pri­vacy of those found in its images. Google has said in a state­ment that it has “gone to great lengths to ensure Cana­di­ans pri­vacy”. I guess that is what they mean when faces and car license plates are blurred out in its images, to ensure that you can’t iden­tify any­one. You can also report a prob­lem to Google if there is image there that you would like taken down. They will also remove images that peo­ple find offensive.

I per­son­ally think Google Street View is really neat. Since when was it ille­gal to take a pic­ture of some­thing and put it on the inter­net? That’s all this is. They claim the images are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of what the pub­lic would see walk­ing down the street, hence the name. The images are panoramic, high qual­ity 360-degree views. Street View is a really neat way to vir­tu­ally travel through neigh­bour­hoods to see what they look like, it can be prac­ti­cal tool in plan­ning pre­view­ing future trav­els and look­ing up dri­ving direc­tions, etc, the list goes on. You can also play ‘Where’s Waldo?’ and look for your­self in the images, I did not find myself sadly.

This topic has taken on a lot of news atten­tion that’s for sure and con­tro­versy, Google Street View cap­tured images of the recent Toronto garbage strike, show­ing the one play­ground full of garbage! Isn’t that the way we want the world to see us eh? Also images have been found of peo­ple com­ing out of strip clubs, peo­ple sun­bathing in their yards, and peo­ple sleep­ing near garbage bins. Also lots of web­sites have popped up with peo­ple post­ing the fun­ni­est images that were found cap­tured on Google Street View like peo­ple being arrested on the side of the street, and peo­ple hav­ing sex apparently!

What do you make of Street View, harm­less fun or Orwellian sur­veil­lance night­mare? And what are the most inter­est­ing images you have found so far?

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