Is Google Street View good or bad?

[FrodosPet]

I love Google Maps Street View. By merely dropping a little yellow icon on a map, I can be instantly transported to many places across the country or around the world, to have a nice little walkabout. For example, supposing I want to visit an authentic Thai cafe:

http://goo.gl/maps/QCEEf

I really enjoy the Street View experience. But I have heard complaints that it is an invasion of privacy. People have been spotted in places they did not want to be spotted. And they definitely screwed up when they collected wifi information.

My opinion is, if you are out in public, there is no practical expectation of privacy. But I am curious about the opinions of others. By taking virtual vacations through Street View, am I enhancing my connection to places and people around the world, or am I feeding some corporate privacy invading monster?

[jberryhill]

1. Is the internet good or bad?

[KittyWampus]

17. Pr0n- need I say more?

playing up to your snarky side here...

[jberryhill]

32. Side?

It's snark all the way through, m'fraid.

[Warpy]

2. I rather like it and I don't often look at people or license plates

and think that's likely typical. It's been fun to go back to former residences and see how they've changed over the years. It's also been good for exploring places I might like to go some day, if the cat dies before I get tucked up in a nursing home.

The Thai place looks nice. There's one near me that isn't all that different.

[hollysmom]

3. before I leave my house to get to a new place

I like to look at street view so I will recognize the place and not pass it. One thing I have found is that when driving through rich neighborhoods is that they are invisible. not possible to look up. Annoying that they have that and I don't know how to get it. ad we are talking about regular streets, public streets not gated communities. So what if I only see shrubs, why are they better than me?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

20. You can ask google to blur you out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/07/remove-google-street-view_n_5563939.html

[JI7]

4. with phone cameras which are instantly uploaded and shown to the public

i think expectation of privacy in places like this is kind of unrealistic .

most people who do these searches will do it for directions and personal interest in locations

[JaneyVee]

5. Faces get blurred on street view.

[snooper2]

46. negative, you street view the house I just bought you can see previous owners

just standing on the sidewalk gawking at the car LOL. Plus I know which one of them was the smoker in the garage. Caught you GRANDMA LOL

[JaneyVee]

47. Really? Wow. Usually blurred. In 2012 I found myself...

I was street viewing my block in manhattan scrolling down the street and there I was on my bicycle, face blurred. It was shocking to find myself in a city of 10million and plus I'm always working. They must have come around on a sunday at 3pm.

[djean111]

6. On the street view for my house, the next door neighbor is shown standing in

her open garage, looking at the Google van, nothing blurred at all. She was getting ready to drive to the store.
All, evidently, for someone else's convenience.
I think they should blur faces and license plates.
I guess that pretty soon, some will say hey, STFU about camera drones over your back yard, if you leave your home at all, people have a right to take pictures of you and put them on the internet.
Question - is it okay to somehow bring down a drone over one's back yard? Because I would, if at all possible. Don't care who it belongs to.

[RockaFowler]

36. You can see my husband clear as day for our address

I do think it's funny. He looks right at the camera, too.

Friends and family like to send us the picture a lot thinking hubby is at home right now or something!!

Oh and the pictures are now about 2-3 years old. There are a few things we don't even have anymore that are in that picture of our house. My mom's picture of her house is almost 8 years old - before she even bought the house.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. The cameras are high enough to look over fences so local burglars can check out your grill.

[FSogol]

18. Do the local burglars covet your grill?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

43. They brought up the "looking over fences" thing in Japan....

But then, they're a tad short.

[bvf]

8. Interesting question.

"By taking virtual vacations through Street View, am I enhancing my connection to places and people around the world, or am I feeding some corporate privacy invading monster?"

You're doing both. It's a genius business model, no?

You get to see cool pictures of maybe where you'd like to be in exchange for having to respond to constant lures to give up more information about yourself than you might realize, or worse.

Welcome to the future.

[Shankapotomus]

9. Millions of world tourists

post billions of photos online every year of every place and street you can imagine with no one and nothing in the background blurred out. How is what Google is doing with street view any different?

As much as I'm trying to scale back my reliance on Google for anything, street view is also a great way to practice reading a second language by trying to decipher street signs in different languages as you move along in street view.

[bvf]

11. A good argument in favor.

But what are you willing to give Google in return?

Kudos for trying to reduce your reliance, btw.

[Shankapotomus]

12. Thanks

I actually went as far as buying a website domain and hosting under my own name to have a place to keep the online content I upload under some semblance of my own control. But I dread getting all the junk email to my paid hosting email address so I still have a Gmail account for when I don't want to give out my actual email.

But now that you brought it up, I don't see why I can't cut ties right now.

I'd be interested in knowing how Google free you are and how you manage.

[bvf]

23. Well, I might have created a gmail account years ago,

but I haven't touched it in years. No updates, downloads or refreshes. (If it exists, I created it for reasons similar to yours.)

Currently I'm annoyed by the pre-loaded apps on my Samsung Galaxy, which frequently remind me that I need to create a Google account to use. I won't.

Other than that, I avoid social media, with scant exception. I fully realize that that is not a serious option for people my daughter's age, but over the last generation or two, the idea of having hundreds (or thousands) of friends has seriously twisted the meaning of the word.

I do my best to make her aware of that--that corporate entities will often fuck with the language to their advantage. Nothing new there, but it's fascinating to see how we all adapt to technology.

/rant

[HereSince1628]

10. I got a call from a California area code, the person claimed to be at a WI rural property

doing survey for the US Census Bureau. That was a cold call with no prior letter indicating a contact would be made as is supposed to happen according to the USCB website.

The person on the phone described a very good match to what's in the google map street view pic...tall corn standing in a field along a long length of gravel drive going up to a wooded area. But that person was confused because they couldn't see a house--the drive turns abruptly at the end of the field just before the building.

Now, if the person had been present as she said, she would have able to move her location a few yards so the corn didn't block the view and she would have had a clear sight of the building.

It all seemed quite odd and got more so as she pushed questions about things that would have been visible to a person actually at the property. I broke off the call and told her I would answer survey questions if they were mailed to me. I never saw a survey in the mail.

I'm pretty convinced the person used the street view pic in attempting to convince me she was somewhere that she wasn't.

[bvf]

13. A second-rate hack attempt.

Good for you for calling then on it with your offer to communicate in writing, which evidently scared the person off.

[Catherine Vincent]

14. Blurred faces

I recently looked up my sister's house and her son was spotted in the garage about to play basketball. I thought it was cool.

[ScreamingMeemie]

16. My uncle is walking their dog in the street views of their house.

Up until last year the street view of my house showed it half constructed with the construction crew taking a lunch break in the garage.

[bigwillq]

22. You can see my neighbor

in the street view of my street.

My car is NOT in its spot in the driveway so I was probably at work.

[sendero]

15. I am street view..

.... I'm neither good nor bad. I'd give up my halo for a horn, and the horn for a hat I once had.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

19. That's weird. I used to be able to 'street view' my street.

A year or two back there was a 'google street view' car roaming my neighbourhood, so I printed out a colourful 'Google Invaded My Privacy!' sign on my front door and left it up for a few hours. Figured I'd be able to see it the next time they updated the street view on my neighbourhood. Trying it now, 'street view' is simply greyed out as an option on all of the houses I tried on my side of the street.

[marions ghost]

21. I dont like it

but I guess I'm in the minority.

There are some people out there that I dont want to know where I live or what it looks like.

[treestar]

24. No, it's of the public streets

That invades no privacy.

[LiberalElite]

25. I like it -

I took a virtual tour of where I grew up and hadn't been in 25 years. Any pedestrians in the photo were blurred out. Also, you can see where you're going before you go there which can be very helpful.

[RKP5637]

27. Ohhh, I do that too. I go way back in my childhood and look around. I find it

extremely interesting! Some places I can hardly recognize, and then others look just the same. I also look around the family home, now over 100 years old, to see if the buyers are keeping it up, and they are keeping it in perfect condition, just as when we left.

[RKP5637]

26. I use it to see places I could never visit. I also use it to see what's in my neighborhood where

many places are in a web of streets. Also, I look up former houses I've owned to see how buyers are keeping them up and they all are keeping them up nicely. I find it fun and entertaining.

When in public, I have no expectation of privacy. Also, someone mentioned, faces are or can be blurred.

When we've relocated, we've used it to look at neighborhoods where we might want to live. It can save zillions in gas and driving time to take a look around and see if the area looks interesting to go see, particularly IMO when house hunting, etc.

[lonestarnot]

28. Good. I just walk out the door and flip the bird of the day.

[Tracer]

29. While walking my dogs a while ago ...

... the Bing camera car passed us by -- twice -- both coming and going.

However, their site doesn't seem to have their street view up and running.

I love Google street view! I visit places that I used to live, places I've traveled to (or would like to visit).

And my most strange use of street view? When I'm reading a novel that is set in a real place, I'm compelled to sit at the computer with my book and look up the places/streets where the protagonist is. That did get a bit tiresome when one book I was reading involved a cross-country trip!

[Scuba]

30. I use it often ...

Most anytime I'm going somewhere new I'll use it orient myself before I depart. I'm also looking at real estate, and find it especially useful in assessing what is adjacent to/across from/near properties I'm researching.

[NightWatcher]

31. I wish it would've been around when I started as a PI

You can (virtually) walk down streets and oft times see what vehicles are parked in front of a house. That would have been great background info before starting a case. I wish iphones were around back then as well. It's a brave new world.

[jberryhill]

33. I use it a lot for travel

I've chosen hotels based on streetview.

Before taking a trip, I usually take a virtual stroll around the neighborhood to get a sense of where is the market, where is the subway, or what areas might be best avoided - or frequented, as the case may be.

[MineralMan]

34. Last year, when visiting my parents, who were 89 years old

at that time, the conversation turned to my mother's home when she was a child. I asked if she remembered the street address, and she did. Five minutes later, she was looking at her old house on my laptop in Street View. We spend about an hour visiting all of her old familiar places in her childhood home town, most of which looked remarkably as they did all those years ago.

I like Street View. I use it when I'm visiting an unfamiliar place to visualize the place before I go there. It makes the drive easier, since I already know what the parking is like and where the building entrance is for commercial buildings. I have to go to client meetings fairly often, and it really helps keep the process of finding the place I'm supposed to go less stressful.

[OilemFirchen]

35. I'm in two shots on GSV.

Though my face and license plate are blurred, my horns are not.

[demmiblue]

37. Well, it does let you walk inside the TARDIS!

https://www.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=51.492159,-0.19092&spn=0.005291,0.013937&sll=51.492140,-0.193028&layer=c&cid=12502927659667388442&panoid=c9UMhWP_MWm9U0L48xEjYw&cbp=13,291.8,,0,18.86&gl=US&t=m&cbll=51.492132,-0.192862&z=17

[lpbk2713]

38. I live on a "Circle"

The addresses on North and South Xxxx Circle are about the 2100 block,
on West Xxxx Circle they are about the 1700 block. If you do a search for
a certain address using Google Maps it won't always take you to the true
address. Yahoo Maps seems to be correct more consistently.

[dilby]

39. If you do my address you can see me and my girlfriend sitting on the porch.

Our faces are not blurred but the camera is far enough away that you can't see our facial features clearly. It's only if you know us would you look at it and say yeah that's you. I don't mind I use Street View all the time when going somewhere I have never been before, let's me know what I should be looking for. I also tell people who are coming to my house to use it to find my house.

[Ykcutnek]

40. I was ecstatic when my street was added.

But I'm not one to hide under the bed from black helicopters, big gubmint, and all kinds of scary people and diseases...

I actually like to enjoy life and that requires not seeing everything as an assault on some abstract idea.

[marions ghost]

41. There are some scary people out there

--once you've been the target of one as I have, it changes your perspective on this.

I don't think you have to be especially paranoid, you just have to have experienced an abuse of this. There are some drawbacks, and I don't have any idea how you'd stop it. Maybe individuals could opt out of street view? That would be fair.

[whatthehey]

45. I'm missing the added risk

If someone is a danger to you they can drive down your street any time they like to see your house. A remote hassler is not much risk to you unless they come close enough to do the same. Is the perceived risk somebody randomly browsing street view who sees a pic that happens to include a person, works up a massive rage against them for some reason and THEN comes to the house? Is that very likely? Is ther something else that adds risk I'm missing?

[marions ghost]

48. No not random

--things gone wrong mentally with a person who entered my family. In this case the deviant personality, ie. predator/abuser was a woman. Remote became near. It would have been a lot simpler if the location was not pictured. The risk is real. But if you don't believe it's risky, carry on. You would have to experience it.

[whatthehey]

53. So she did not know where you lived without street view?

I'm sure the abuse part is very real and very troublng. Just can't quite see how an internet picture changes anything with somebody who already knows where you live and can bother you there, or is of any use to anybody who doesn't and can't. It is what difference street view makes to risk that escapes me.

[dilby]

42. Here is a cool interactive site that shows the power of Street View with HTML5.

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

[FrodosPet]

56. That was saw wheat!

Thank you for the link.

[dilby]

58. Yeah I was pretty impressed with it when I first saw it 2 years ago.

I still keep it because the street view is only getting better so it's fun to look at places of my childhood with some fun music in a movie format.

[whatthehey]

44. I tried mine

I had never thought to do so before, having only used this for things like checking out appointment venues etc.

It appears for me at least the license plate blurring is default as I never requested it. It also sems like this is a little over 2 yrs old. The plants look like Fall and I traded that car in last August. Unless anyone already knows where I live (where privacy is moot), I see no privacy risk.

EDIT - apparently this site does not handle Dropbox links like others. Unless anyone can help me get it right the illustration is a bit useless - sorry!

[seveneyes]

49. Is reality true or false?

Is logic either?

All beginnings have an end.

[ozone_man]

50. It could be good or bad.

If you like your privacy, it's sort of bad, and can be very bad depending on the situation. It falls into the area of civil liberties questions, like phone call privacy, NSA issues, rights to personal privacy... I do use google maps and even street view at times. I think we are approaching 1984, if we aren't there already. Beyond in many ways. If I were the NSA I would promote iPhones and such, give them away almost, create and hype a social media, and then the data will be free for the taking. Converting potential lions to lambs.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/

[malokvale77]

51. You talk about being in public...

but what if you are just caught in your own yard not looking too good?

[FrodosPet]

57. Any time I am caught on camera...

...I'm not looking too good.



(If only I were as handsome as this little smiley)

[malokvale77]

60. I was thinking about my daughter...

She is a beautiful redhead, who got caught on google in her pajamas and uncombed hair, filling the bird bath in her front yard.

That image remained on google for a year. She was quite upset. Enough so to move into the deep woods, with a very long private drive that google can not violate.

I found a vehicle parked at an address where the person swore they had never been. That relationship ended rather quickly.

I have no personal opinion as to the good or bad of google street view.

[Renew Deal]

52. Overall it's good.

I don't think there are privacy issues with driving down the street.

[Recursion]

54. Is writing good or bad? (nt)

[FrodosPet]

59. Yes

Exactly.

[magical thyme]

55. bad. it creeped me out to have a co-worker who is also a realtor

zoom in on my house while we were at work. He could see my horse out in her pasture.

I don't think that being in "public" should mean stepping outside my door into my no longer private backyard at the wrong moment.

[LeftInTX]

61. I found out my son lives in a fire-trap of a dump - LOL

On top of store front in Brooklyn. (The place caught fire last year)