Smile :) You're on Google Street View!

Smile :) You're on Google Street View!

If you see a strange-looking car crawling down your street, a long pole protruding from its roof, then hurry and tidy up your garden. The car is the Google Street View vehicle, and perhaps your home is being photographed right now. If it is, soon close-up views of your home will be available on the Internet for anyone to see. And by the way, if you were outside when the camera passed by, then you're in the picture, too.

With Google Street View, you can now explore hundreds of cities and towns all over the world. You just zoom into any street, look around, and then take a virtual stroll through the neighbourhood, viewing houses, trees, cars and people as if you were there. Street View began in the United States in May 2007, and was launched in Great Britain in March 2009. It's now available in other countries, including the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

How is it done? In the UK, for instance, for nearly a year an entire fleet of Google vehicles drove down 35,998 kilometres of British roads. Fitted with panoramic cameras using advanced imaging technology, each camera snapped a picture every 3-5 seconds. Then the tens of millions of individual images they had captured were "pasted" together digitally to simulate a continuous journey.

Since being launched, Street View has been intensely criticised as an invasion of privacy. It seems that not everyone is overjoyed at having their property exposed for all to see. In one affluent village in southeast England, residents formed a human chain to prevent the vehicles from entering, fearing the images would be used by burglars. Parents are said to be especially concerned about pictures of their children outside schools.

There have been plenty of incidents where people were caught on camera in embarrassing situations. One woman, for example, was photographed as she was leaning out of her window with a man. When her angry husband confronted her, it turned out the man was only a contractor. Another image shows a man climbing a fence. Is he a burglar, or did he just forget his keys?

Google retorts by saying that what you see on Street View is exactly what you'd see walking down the street. Moreover, special Street View technology automatically blurs faces and licence plates so that they cannot be recognised. Every image also contains a link which can be clicked by anyone who wants to have an image removed, and it will be taken off as quickly as possible.

There's no denying that Street View can be useful, whether you are looking for a house to buy, are planning a trip and want to see the hotel you'll be staying at, or feel like having a nostalgic look at your childhood home. In these days of blogging, Youtube and Facebook, it seems the urge to satisfy our curiosity is more pressing than our desire for privacy.

(Source: Viewpoints For Bachillerato 2. Student's Book. Burlington Books)