More about StreetView privacy

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Google has just put up a post on their LatLong blog

with some of their thoughts about privacy expectations in StreetView.

It’s kind of a rambling post (paragraph break, anyone?) and there’s nothing too exciting in there, but here are some snippets:

  • “…we designed a simple process for anyone to contact us and have their image removed.” (note: When viewing an image, click on “Street View Help” at the top and you’ll find a link to report the image.
  • “…people don’t have the same expectations of privacy as they do in their homes.”
  • “…Street View will respect local laws…” (repeated a few more times with different wording)

It seems like kind of a random post, but maybe they felt they should put up an official stance on the privacy issues surrounding StreetView.  Prior to this, I don’t think they’ve done anything but respond to criticism against it (example 1, 2).

Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps, addresses Street View privacy issues

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Freakonomics has an interview with Stephen Chau, the product manager for Google Maps.  Their questions all address the new Street View feature of Map.  In the interview, Chau addresses some of the privacy concerns that have been raised.

Some snippets:

  • “At Google we take privacy very seriously. Street View only features imagery taken on public property and is not in real time. This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
  • ” …we respect the fact that people may not want imagery they feel is objectionable featured on the service. We provide easily accessible tools for flagging inappropriate or sensitive imagery for review and removal.”
  • “We routinely review takedown requests and act quickly to remove objectionable imagery. “

Nothing too groundbreaking in there, but it’s a good read.  You can read the full interview here

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Why did Google create Street View?

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The more I think about it, the more I question why Google spent so much time and money implementing “Street View”. Sure, it’s neat — but isn’t it just a temporary (and unnecessary) step?

With the advancements in 3D buildings in Google Earth (and Virtual Earth, for that matter), making your own “Street View” of any street anywhere is getting easier. For example, look at the comparison shot below in Denver:

Downtown Denver - StreetView vs. Google Earth

Street View looks a bit better if you zoom in tight, but Google Earth is very close. It simply seems to me that Google would be better served improving their 3D models rather than going off on this temporary side project.

Of course, there are three good reasons why they might have decided to make Street View, even with the objections I have.

1 – Good press.

It’s not a big news story to say “the 3D models in Denver are now a little bit sharper than they were before”, but Street View has generated a ton of news hype (and therefore traffic and revenue).

2 – It’s in a browser. Google Earth is a standalone client and not as easily accessible for everyone. Of course, maybe Google Earth will end up in a browser some day and that will be an irrelevant point. However, Google hasn’t indicated that at all so it might never happen.

3- Maybe they’ll be using the Street View data to map onto 3D buildings, and this is just a temporary interface into it.

What do you think? Is Street View just a temporary stop on the way to something else? Or is it the way of the future?

The state of Google Maps

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It’s been quite a week for Google Maps.  Where 2.0 and the Google Developer Day last week brought a flurry of new announcements.   I’ll run through them all for you:

Driving directions for the API

You can now use driving directions on your API maps.  Not only can you do full directions, but you can capture each step and output it any way that you want, or you can include waypoints in there.  It’s quite powerful.

Google Mapplets

As Google puts it, it allows you to create a “mashup of mashups”.  Right now it’s kind of tucked away on their site, but you can find it here.  I liken it very much to the layers feature of Google Earth.  You can take seemingly unrelated content and layer it on top of one another to create a more useful map.  At the Developer Day they showed examples of real estate info, mixed with schools, mixed with crime data, mixed with local transit.  Having the other data available made the real estate info more useful.

As this feature gains popularity it will also become much more useful.

Street View

You’ve undoubtedly heard about this already.   Google just released “Street Views” for Google Maps.  It’s quite slick, allowing you to see tons of street-level imagery, but it’s so far only available in five cities (San Francisco, New York City, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami).  Mike Pegg at Google Maps Mania has a nice write-up about it.

AdSense Integration

Google announced this at Developer Day, but it’s still about a month away.  With just a couple extra lines of JavaScript, Maps mash-ups will be able to contain AdSense placemarks.  They’ll show up on the map automatically (such as the location of nearby hotels) and the developer will get paid if a user clicks through for more info — just like a normal AdSense ad.  The integration looks quite slick, so it’ll be interesting to see how this works once it’s released.

KML support

Google has been ramping up their support for KML files in maps, and that’ll be increasing a few weeks.  Right now, the maps will blow up if you give it more than a few hundred placemarks in a KML.  However, within “a couple weeks” you’ll be able to load massive numbers of files and Google will deal with it.  They’ll show the “most relevant” items when zoomed out, then include more and more as users zoom in.  It’s similar to how most mash-ups work now, but it’ll make the development of those mash-ups much easier, assuming the relevancy is worked out well.

There’s much to be excited about with Google Maps.  If I missed anything, please let me know.