Google Street View

Late last week I was introduced to something that was both really cool and really disturbing, the street view function on Google maps. I was amazed that Google was able to upload a street view of the streets in many cities around the United States and Europe. If you have not seen this function, it provides you with a view of the street like you were driving in a car. This can be quite helpful if looking for directions to a friends house and you want to know what to look for, so it is a nice extension of what Google maps was able to provide. I suppose this function was completed by having a car with a camera mounted on the roof drive around the city taking a 360 degree photograph of the street every 15 feet or so. This function is quite impressive when you consider all of the storage space required to maintain this data.

However, I find this function a little disturbing and after some soul searching I think it is connected with the fact that it is one thing to locate your house or apartment from zooming in on a satellite photo. The satellite photo feels "safer" because we recognize it as a satellite photo and there is some distance involved. The street view function is rather disturbing because it means someone drove past my residence and took pictures without my knowledge and personal approval. This leads me to feel a sense of violation because it shows my residence, yet I had no sense of providing permission to show my house in this format for the world to see!

I am not suggesting that Google did anything illegal, because they were on public land and it really is not all that different from providing a satellite photo in which you can zoom into your own residence. It just feels like a violation of my space and it is just a little "oogie" (sorry no technical defintion exists for this 'word').

What do you think of this function?

David