Despite being released with little fanfare just over a week ago, Google's latest giant leap forward in mapping technology is already angering privacy campaigners and fuelling a new and mischievous internet craze in which sunbathers, snoggers, traffic criminals and assorted weirdoes are becoming reluctant web celebrities.
Unlike existing satellite imagery, which gives a bird's-eye view of the landscape, Street View - a 'beta' (test) function added to five major US cities in Google Maps - allows users to view city blocks from the perspective of a driver or pedestrian.
Thousands of still photographs are weaved by ingenious Google software into a 360-degree digital cityscape, giving users the tools to move, virtually, along city streets looking to the left and right at will.
After mastering the (still slightly clunky) controls, it's possible to
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
A new product brings new problems for the search engine giant, says linton chiswick |
| |
navigate through downtown New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver, looking in windows and people-watching.
Street View is a futuristic function but it's made possible by some very old-fashioned grunt-work. Where Google Maps' satellite view was enabled by simply licensing existing imagery, Street View involved sending real people to take photographs of every block within the five cities.
In San Francisco, Google staffers were the photographers, cruising the city in a van. Elsewhere, Google hired a company called Immersive Media, whose proprietary 11-lens camera was driven around the city streets on a Volkswagen Beetle.
Clearly a giant and ambitious project, this aspect of Street View took more than a year to complete. So it's perhaps unfortunate that the feature was finally announced at a 
|
