Controversy surrounds Street View’s UK launch

Thursday 19 March 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

As Google Street View launched in the UK and Netherlands, its arrival was met with both excitement and scorn. While many Internet users are delighted with the street-level mapping service – which shows 360-degree photos of our streets – privacy activists got hot under the collar. Unsurprisingly, the press pounced on the most interesting anomalies – such as the face of a man clearly shown leaving a Soho sex shop and a road traffic incident involving a cyclist – that had been captured by Google's roaming camera cars.

Perhaps the controversy could have been better channelled; why was it, for example, that the UK launch of Street View has come a full two years after it was first rolled out in the States? It was also launched in France, Spain and Italy last year. At its press conference, Google claimed that it took over a year to take the millions of images across 22,000 miles of UK streets because the famous British weather hampered the process, with rain and snow rendering its cameras useless.

Initially Street View covers just 25 British cities: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Southampton and York in England; Belfast in Northern Ireland; Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland; and Cardiff and Swansea in Wales.

If you visit maps.google.co.uk, you can zoom in on one of the cities and drag the Street View icon onto a street to view a 360-degree image. You are then able to 'travel' along the street, as Google's camera car has taken images every 5 to 10 metres.

In response to protests from civil rights campaigners who claim Street View amounts to a gross invasion of privacy, Google says that Street View features technology that blurs car number plates and people's faces. Anyone can also contact Google to request that their image – or that of their car or house – be removed.

With Google Maps accessible on mobiles, Google believes that users will find the service extremely useful when out and about, helping them to find locations and plan visits and journeys. A number of leisure and tourism websites are already on the case, using Street View in various innovative ways. Taka a look at fancyapint.com, for example, to help find the best pubs in London. The Tate museum's site is showing how the world has changed since 18th century artists such as Turner were putting oil on canvas. Meanwhile, Mayor Boris is using Street View to promote London's highlights and VisitBritain.com is using the tool to help tourists plan their UK trips. Google says that more cities in the UK and elsewhere in the world will be added to Street View soon.

Perhaps we should remember, though, that this is only a driver's eye view of the UK; there's a hell of a lot of Britain – much of it breathtakingly beautiful countryside – that cannot (thank God) be seen from a car!

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