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Smile, you're on Google camera
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By Todd Ruger, Herald Tribune
Originally Published June, 14 2008 at 12:04 AM
Updated June, 14 2008 at 12:04 AM
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Anyone with an Internet connection can now take a virtual tour of
almost every road in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties as part
of a mapping feature from Google.
And these are not just photos on the Web. They are street-level,
360-degree panoramic images that give a view comparable to standing on
the road and turning in a circle. Cars are in driveways. Pedestrians
are walking along Main Street. The images were captured recently by a car equipped with a globe-like camera on its roof. The
Street Views give users of Google Maps the ability to find an
intersection, and then see what it looks like before they go there. Previously
only available in major cities such as Miami, Denver, Tampa and San
Francisco, the area from Bradenton to Marco Island was one of 37 areas
to which Google added the Street View feature this week. You can find them at maps.google.com. Southwest
Florida was selected for the feature because of its population size and
large amount of tourism, and because of its draw for people who are
interested in poking around a beautiful place, said Google spokeswoman
Elaine Filadelfo. Google also added 10 new parks and recreational
areas to Street View, including Everglades National Park, the Florida
Keys and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. In Sarasota,
the streetscapes include photos of people going about their day -- dog
walkers and a meter maid parked behind a car on Main Street in Sarasota
and golfers playing Rolling Green Golf Club. A virtual drive down Lakewood Ranch neighborhoods even lets users see what people threw out with their garbage that day. The
images are so detailed that Street View has caused controversy in
several cities, including San Francisco, where the street camera shot a
photo of a woman in her underwear. The Pentagon banned Google
Maps from taking any images of military facilities, and a private city
in Minnesota recently had Google remove the whole town from Street View. In the Street View maps for Southwest Florida, the company has blurred all the faces. Google's
software even blurred the face of an inflatable snowman in the front
yard of a house in the 1800 block of 9th Avenue West in Bradenton. Those
major privacy concerns have been addressed, and it is legal for anyone
to drive down a public street and take photos, said Rebecca Jeschke of
the Internet-privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation. "You're
used to getting a certain amount of anonymity in your life," Jeschke
said. "But when it's captured like that and preserved forever, it
is intimidating." Google has a process to remove images from
Street View, and the company receives a limited number of requests from
people who do not want their houses shown. There are also limits to where Google's cameras can go. An image of U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan's house, for example, is not available because his community is gated.
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