It Was Announced That Google Street View Was Coming To The UK In January 2009
In case you haven’t heard of Google Street View in the UK before, it is basically an addition to Google’s already impressive mapping services which form their online Google Maps website, Google Maps mobile software, their Google Earth web experience and Google Earth Android and iPhone apps. This added feature of Street View means that as well as seeing a location in map form and from a satellite view, you can now ‘go down to street level’ and navigate around using a 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic interface that allows you to travel virtually around an area.
This is a great way of exploring an area online that you plan on visiting soon (or perhaps talking a friend through a journey and giving them directions) – that way you will be able to make sense of the area when you’re there and spot recognisable landmarks etc.
Or better still using, while using your mobile phone to look at Google Maps for Mobile, you can use Google Street View while you’re actually there making it so much easier to find your way around an unfamiliar city.
The first cities in the UK to be included as part of Google Street View would be London, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh — Google cars equipped will the special cameras for this task had been out and about in these areas in the previous few months, so it was expected that the images captured will be implemented into Google Street View for the UK by Spring 2009.
Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of people who’s had their photograph taken without their permission and then being shown on the Internet, so to ensure concerns over privacy are respected, Google will be obscuring the faces of anyone who will be featured on Google Street View UK. However, that did not prove to be not enough reassurance for some people in the UK at the time, as some people actually stopped the Google car from entering their village of Broughton – you can read more about that below.
For more information and the chance to take a look at some interesting, some amazing and some plain weird images that Google Street View has captured so far in its ground-level images from around the world, take a look at these pages:
- Zath’s Top 7 Strange Google Street View Sights in the UK
- Mashable’s Top 15 Google Streetview Sightings
- The Times 10 Bizarre Sights in Google Street View
- Google Street View Sightings
Google Street View Goes Live In The UK In March 2009
A couple of months passed by since we first covered the fact that Google Street View would be coming our way to the UK sometime that spring, well that day arrived as Google updated their Google Maps online application with their ‘Street View’ functionality and it went live.
Google’s customised cars carry specially mounted video cameras have been capturing footage from all over the UK while travelling 22,369 miles of UK streets and this footage has now been integrated into their popular online mapping service.
All you need to do is zoom into an area on Google Maps until the “Pegman” icon (the person icon located at the bottom right of the map) and then drag the icon onto the map, at which point any streets or roads that this functionality is available for will be highlighted and you can then just drop the icon onto it. You then get a movable 360-degree view of that location at street level, you can then ‘move’ along the roads by using the arrows on the view.
In accordance with privacy concerns, people’s faces, car number plates etc have been blurred out which enables Google to provide us with such a remarkably detailed service. I think this is a really great implementation of web technology which further improves the usefulness of Google Maps, which was already a great online application that also had a recent GPS tracking update called Google Latitude.
I fully expected to see this kind of Google Street View functionality appearing on their mobile phone versions of the software, especially on Google’s first own Android-based devices at the time such as the T-Mobile G1. Just think how much easier this kind of view could make trying to follow directions and navigate around places that you haven’t visited before, especially that 100m or so when you’re looking around to see exactly where your final destination is and what it looks like.
Take a look at this great service for yourself; I’m pretty sure you’ll be impressed by it, see if Google has driven past your house! Or why not take a look at the Top 7 strange Google Street View sights in the UK that we’ve found so far?
Google Street View initially started in the UK and let you explore the following 25 cities: Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton, Swansea, York.
Google Street View ‘Privacy Blockade’ in Broughton (UK) Backfires?
Google Street View in the UK, in the beginning, was nothing if not controversial: while most saw it as a wonderful harmless novelty or useful navigation aid that allowed them to have a better idea of where they were going on trips, others saw it as an infringement of their privacy (despite the fact that faces and number plates are blurred) and felt that it encouraged crime.
But a village in Cambridgeshire called Broughton took it into their own hands, literally. Evidently being highly concerned about the privacy aspect of Street View, people of the village decided to make a human blockade around the Google Street View car when it was spotted cruising around their village. This meant that it could not drive in and take photos of Broughton forcing it to drive away.
But as good as this idea was, they invoked the wrath of the internet community. More specifically the fans of Google Street View in the UK who had encouraged each other to do what a car cannot, they actually walked into the village and took photos themselves before posting them online. They managed to mobilise themselves very rapidly through the use of Twitter amongst other social networking sites.
Some even took it one step further by also indicating (in a very tongue-in-cheek way) on the photos where would be good places for ‘burglars to strike’. Thus making a mockery of the main problem that the locals had: that it would be a ‘burglars dream’. Obviously, that kind of attention is the exact opposite of what the villagers initially wanted, and you can’t help but think that they were pretty annoyed.
Whilst this may seem like an amusing story (and an over-reaction) it did re-raise some serious points on how much of an intrusion Google Street View could be, and whether or not it should be allowed. I think I am with the majority of the UK when I say that I don’t see too much of a problem with it, with the benefits far outweighing any potential negatives — but do people have the right to stop Google taking the photos?
After all it is completely legal, and isn’t something that a single person (with too much spare time) couldn’t do… but evidently, some people disagree. This came at a time that the first wave of Google Street View related court cases was coming through — both those related to people against Google themselves and the host of divorce cases that had been filed against husbands found at strip clubs, sex shops and female friends’ houses; is ignorance, not bliss?
Tell us what you think! Do you think it’s an infringement of our privacy? Do people have the right to stop cars in the street? Or really was this a massive overreaction?
But despite all of this the villagers themselves achieved nothing apart from highlighting themselves in the public eye, set their village up as a target for criminals and ridicule from internet bloggers alike.
Google Street View (UK) Cleared Of Privacy Concerns In 2009
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) gave a verdict on the legality of Google Street View going live in the UK, and fortunately for Google (and the millions of people that find the service useful and entertaining), it is one that says the online service including the continuing expansion should not be stopped.
This follows claims by many people that it should not be allowed for many different reasons — the most common two being that it infringes people’s privacy, and that it facilitates crime by allowing potential burglars to map out their route and identify weak spots without leaving their home.
However, the ICO ruled that although it carries a small risk of privacy invasion removing Google Street View would be “disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment”. It is definitely encouraging to see a watchdog use some common sense — listening to the quiet majority rather than the very vocal minority.
And in all fairness the minority has been very vocal — you will probably remember when the residents of Broughton created a blockade to physically stop the car taking the pictures for Google Street View from entering the village, claiming that it facilitated crime and infringed their privacy.
However, Google has always claimed that they operated within the law, and in addition to the automatic face blurring manual blurring and the removal of some images has taken place — the speed of which this was done did not go unnoticed by the ICO.
In fact, the ICO verged on the complimentary, and said that it was passers-by being caught on TV cameras and that we should not “turn the digital clock back” — and this kind of optimism for advancing technology will be warmly welcomed not just by Google but the tech-community in the UK as well.
So despite the 79 official complaints, Google Street View will still be with us here in the UK, but unfortunately, I don’t think this will be the last that we hear of the problem. As more and more areas are covered by the system more and more people will take objection to it, and you can expect to see this crop up again next time it is updated.
Not only will that keep the problem in our minds, but the first set of court cases being filed on the basis of evidence found in Google Street View are starting to go through the law system — not just the ones trying to sue Google (although most if not all of these were thrown out) but also others based on the fact that people were identified.
The most famous example is probably the one of a wife in America claiming for a divorce after seeing he husbands car outside a friend’s house when he said he was on a business trip; the car was identifiable by its distinctive hubcaps! Although for every incident of this type there are many other strange and/or funny Google Street View (UK) sightings!
But hopefully Google will be able to refine the process, and although I doubt it this ruling should put to bed any unrest from the general public regarding this problem. Personally, I think this is a big step forward, and it is encouraging to see this ICO embracing progress and not listening to those that shout the loudest.
The UK is not the first, and will certainly not be the last to reap the benefits of the Google Street View service with dozens of nations coming before with very few if any real complaints thus far. In its defence over privacy issues, Google had this to say…
“Google has gone to great lengths to safeguard privacy while allowing all British users to benefit from this feature…Google UK has consulted extensively with many privacy and community groups in developing the feature and privacy safeguards.”
“The blurring technology is continually improving but sometimes this means we get some false positives – in some cases, you can find we’ve blurred the face on a poster or the face of Colonel Sanders on the KFC signs,”
Clearly, they’ve had to face several restrictions since implementing the service, but so far it has only been a roaring success. Ed Parsons, Google’s geospatial technologist, promoted its success in a short statement, “Street View takes mapping to a level not possible before. And with so many practical applications it’s no wonder that over two-thirds of people who had tried the service said they would use Street View again.”
So what are your opinions on Google Street View service in the UK? With the blurring technology in place and protecting privacy do you still have issues with it? Particularly now it’s expanding so rapidly. Do you use the service regularly?
Google Street View (UK) Gets ‘Path View’ In May 2009
Well, Google announced a further addition to Google Street View, it will now be adding a “Path View” by deploying special ‘Google Trikes’ that will carry the now familiar Street View camera around footpaths in specific locations which will be voted for by the public at Street View Suggestions.
There are five categories of places that are being voted upon which have been chosen by VisitBritain:
- Castles
- Coastal Paths
- Natural Wonders
- Historic Buildings and Monuments
- Stadiums
Presumably by involving the public in voting for which places should be covered by this “Google Path View” scheme, they will know which places are of most interest and perhaps side-step more issues over privacy?
Interesting that Google is already diversifying their Street View service in this way at such an early stage given that it has actually covered so little of the actual roads in and around town/cities in the UK and Europe. It does make me wonder just how far they will continue to go with their Street View service, to what level will they actually capture imagery, will it be of all the cities, towns or villages?
What do you think about this idea? Would you like to be able to check out and get your bearings of various tourist attractions/football stadiums/public arenas before you actually visit them with a virtual tour? Or would this spoil the experience for you? Does this give you any more thoughts on the topic of Google Street View privacy concerns?
Google Street View Now Covers Almost Whole Of UK In March 2010
Initially, Google Street View was fairly controversial with many people complaining about invasion of privacy and such issues. However, those concerns have not stopped Google from expanding the service, because as of 11th March 2010, you lucky (or unlucky depending on which side of the fence you’re sat) people in the UK will have access to a total 96% of all roads, streets and avenues across the isles.
The infamous camera cars have been out and about over the last year busily snapping up everything from busy city streets to little lanes in the middle of God knows where there have even been some Google Path View images captured using specially equipped trikes.
The Google Street View mapping service in the UK has been somewhat of a success since its initial release around a year ago. According to recent statistics regarding the service, 1 in 5 people uses it to find their next house! As well as the 60% majority which use it to actually find their way and others use it to spy on foreign countries, perhaps a holiday destination. But all in all, Google Maps has seen a 30% increase in users since the street view arrived.
The UK is not the first, and will certainly not be the last to reap the benefits of the Street View service with dozens of nations coming before with very few if any real complaints thus far. In its defence over privacy issues, Google had this to say…
“Google has gone to great lengths to safeguard privacy while allowing all British users to benefit from this feature…Google UK has consulted extensively with many privacy and community groups in developing the feature and privacy safeguards.”
“The blurring technology is continually improving but sometimes this means we get some false positives – in some cases, you can find we’ve blurred the face on a poster or the face of Colonel Sanders on the KFC signs,”
Clearly, they’ve had to face several restrictions since implementing the service, but so far it has only been a roaring success. Ed Parsons, Google’s geospatial technologist, promoted its success in a short statement, “Street View takes mapping to a level not possible before. And with so many practical applications it’s no wonder that over two-thirds of people who had tried the service said they would use Street View again.”
So what are your opinions on Google Street View in the UK? With the blurring technology in place and protecting privacy do you still have issues with it? particularly now it’s expanding so rapidly. Do you use the service regularly? I personally don’t drive so the only use I have found for it for me, is keeping a track on changes in the area in which I grew up, which was limited to the expansion has my highest approval.
Virgin Trains Launch A Google Street View-Based Zombie Game In August 2010
There are many ways to try and boost publicity for your company: advertising, word-of-mouth and offers are all great examples, but Virgin Trains decided to go for something a little different and use Google Street View. This meant that they were offering you the chance to shoot up zombies on your own local street as part of their Virgin Trains’ ‘Don’t Go Zombie’ campaign.
The focal point of this campaign was an innovative Google Street View game which sets you walking through routes across any UK streets armed with a Virgin Trains ticket machine (read gun) where at regular intervals along your journey through the real street-view world you could save (read shoot) the “mindless motorist zombies” and humanise them before transporting them onto a Virgin Train (read kill).
Whilst this was all very politically correct (I can’t imagine any company rushing to put their name to Left 4 Dead-like gore) it was still quite fun — and worryingly addictive — something that was mostly down to the fact that there is something quite novel about the ability to play a game on your own streets especially if it involves shooting, I mean ‘ticketing’, zombies!
But if the fact that this was one of the first games to use integration with Google Street View service wasn’t enough, there is also the ability to link it up with Facebook: if caught by the slowly advancing zombie motorists you could get your Facebook profile picture ‘zombified’ to create a zombie avatar that was then launched into the game. You than then attempt to canvas support from your friends by asking them to ‘rescue you’ although the blatant advertising on the part of Virgin Trains may put quite a few people off this.
Annerie Hughes, Head of Marketing, Virgin Trains said: “The new ‘Don’t Go Zombie’ campaign encapsulates our vision of liberating travellers from the drudgery of mind-numbing car journeys. We’re very proud to have created an exciting new interactive Google Street View game, which I’m sure will help increase usage of our trains as well as driving further awareness of the brand.”
This was all a very nice piece of advertising for Virgin, but the really interesting part of all of this is the manner in which they have used the Google Street View service and the possibilities that this kind of interaction entails. Of course at the current moment in time the quality of Street View is not enough to generate anything above the flash quality of this example, but could it be feasible that in the future with better and possibly 3D Street View cameras we could be playing open world games on our real streets?
This was a very nice marketing on the part of Virgin (who routinely excels in this regard), proven by the fact that we at Zath we even ran a competition off the back of it. But to me what is the really exciting part of what this campaign represents is the ability to play an online game in your local area and to “ticket” zombies in your street rather than riding on Virgin Trains… although I can’t imagine this will do their ticket sales any harm at all.
Google Street View Now On All Continents In October 2010
Google only introduced the world to Street View a little over three years ago, in May 2007, and back then it covered just a smattering of cities in the US. Now, not only does it cover the vast majority of roads in the US, but it has branched out covering almost the entirety of the UK despite the occasional privacy blockade and now includes every other continent in the world, including Antarctica!
Google is now even using Street View to improve their other products such as their Android Maps Navigation sat nav system which can show you what junctions actually look like and help make finding your way around unfamiliar places even easier than just seeing them on a bland looking map.
If you want a street view look of Antarctica yourself, you can check it out here. For those of you who live in Brazil or Ireland, you’ll no doubt be glad to know that this update covers you as well, so if you aren’t much of a winter person, you can take a look at something a little closer to home.
If you find any particularly funny sights then be sure to let us know and we’ll do another Google Street View strange and/or funny roundup!
Google Street View WiFi Data Deleted In November 2010 – But Was It Really A Privacy Issue?
When Google Street View went live in the UK it was hailed as many things when it was released ranging from a ‘thief’s dream’ to a ‘flagship for user-friendly technology’ but the service was eventually cleared of privacy concerns after some people set up privacy blockades.
Regardless of your thoughts, it is hard to escape the controversy, but finally, it was announced that the latest saga in the Street View ‘epic’ has ended: Google’s WiFi data is to be deleted.
For those of you for which this story has fallen under your radar I’ll give you a brief recap: earlier this year courtesy of a routine audit by the Hamburg data authority Google admitted that as part of the operation into collecting the data for the Street View service they also accidentally collected information from unsecured WiFi networks around the world.
Whilst the exact amount and species of the data collected has never been fully explained, examples such as snippets of emails, URL’s and passwords were enough to spark real worries given the vast nature of the area travelled by the Street View vehicles, and it has raised real concerns as to how much data (and thus power) large websites (namely Google) should be allowed to obtain and keep.
This matter has rumbled on for most of this year, but today an announcement by deputy information commissioner David Smith said that the data collected would be deleted “as soon as possible” and there would be “no further enquiries into the matter”; as diplomatic as this may sound it is sure to raise anger in the large groups that have been pressuring for the government to fine Google for this ‘breach in privacy’.
The reasoning behind the dropping of investigations was briefly explained by the deputy commissioner when he said that there was no indication that the information had “fallen into the wrong hands”, but this hardly answer the idea that a fine would encourage more stringent procedures to be taken in the future to stop these ‘violations of privacy’.
Of course, these enquiries have been global and whilst the UK one has been relatively basic a more persistent investigation in Canada by the respective data commissioner found that amongst other examples of personal information Google had collected lists of the names of people suffering from certain medical conditions.
Of course, this puts the onus on the people owning the WiFi network to protect it if they want to protect their data, and arguably that is the way that it should be. It is not especially hard especially as wireless routers pretty much always come with instructions as to how to protect your network, and the information isn’t that difficult to find.
But that is, of course, my opinion but one that the Government obviously agrees with; that is not to say that there will be no changes in the future as the publicity has definitely made Google rethink how that it handles the data they collect for Google Street View across all seven continents and they have already pledged to offer privacy training to all of their staff something that will hopefully avoid fiascos like this in the future!
Google Art Project – Street View Extends Into Museums & Art Galleries In February 2011
When I was a kid I’d always liked the idea that you could walk around a virtual equivalent of the real world and go inside those virtual buildings that you couldn’t in real life. Whilst that dream will probably never be fulfilled, Google Street View was a massive step forward towards that which is now available all over the world including offering path views and now this announcement from Google is perhaps another.
The latest innovation from the internet giant is entitled “Art Project” and it is special in two ways: firstly it allows you to navigate through certain museums and art galleries using the same 360 degrees technology that we’ve seen on Street View, and also allows you to view some of these pictures in incredible detail.
With the aim of encouraging the appreciation and viewing of more art, this project which was developed as part of the “20%” initiative at Google that allows employees to take a fifth of their time away from their regular day job to work on innovations – the Art Project has incorporated 17 museums in its first release which has been 18 months in the making and has involved unprecedented access to 385 rooms and over 1,000 different artworks.
It certainly is a novel experience to be able to ‘wander’ through the museums from the comfort of your own computer, and whilst it is relatively limited at the moment (only a few rooms can be looked at in each place) it does give a good indication as to what’s to come and does still offer the incentive to then go and see it in real life.
The list of participating museums and galleries includes some very familiar names: from the UK there’s the National Gallery and Tate Britain, whilst the US has the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frick Collection, Museum of Modern Art and Freer Gallery of Art and the rest of Europe boasts 11 offerings including most notably the Van Gough Museum of Amsterdam, the Uffizi of Florence and the Palace of Versailles in Paris.
Another notable feature of this project that I touched on earlier is that a number of paintings (17 to be exact, one for each location) have been captured using technology ‘1,000 times more powerful than the average digital camera’ – gigapixel photo capturing technology – which allows you to view the paintings in stunning detail. Not only can you see right down to the individual brush strokes on these paintings, but Tate Britain’s selection ‘No Woman, No Cry’ also has the ability to view it in the dark, which lets you see the ultra-violet “RIP Stephen Lawrence” that is written across it.
But will Google Art Project actually be popular? I hope so, not least because a lot of effort and money has gone into it. But also I think that it would be nice if the modern world that has been slowly reducing the appeal of art to open it up again and allow people to enjoy it from there own home, and see paintings in real detail that they wouldn’t have been able to before.
Of course, this means that art students don’t have as good an excuse to travel abroad for their studies and we probably won’t see the equivalent of the weird and funny Google Street View images, but I suppose that’s not the end of the world!
What do you think to the prospect of visiting museums and learning about art and history in a virtual world using Google Art Project? Would this just make you want to visit in real life even more?
Simon Barker is the founder and editor of Zath and has over 25 years’ worth of experience of using computers and technology in general. He can normally be found researching or testing the latest in technology products.
He has provided IT consultancy services to both home and small business users for over 15 years, building PCs, fixing hardware/software problems and providing comprehensive training.
Simon always likes to get the best out of the technology products he is using, by both making informed purchasing decisions and also optimising how they are used to get the most benefits possible.
