Google is a remarkable company and one whose services very few people, if any, could not use to their benefit in one manner or another. Their corporate motto has been a sort of abridged Hippocratic oath: ‘Don’t Be Evil’. This is largely a response to some of the corporate practices of other software companies, whose name won’t be mentioned, because I’m not entirely sure they don’t have a Death Star equipped with a laser to vaporize those who speak ill of them.

But Google’s friendly image has been under fire lately. Largely due to privacy and copyright concerns. In my opinion the copyright issue is a non-issue and won’t be of any consequence. The privacy front is a little different, but some of the concerns seem ridiculous to me.

Americans are particularly concerned about privacy. By and large, we like to be left in peace and just do our thing. The Fourth Amendment enshrines a great deal of privacy in our constitution but is mainly focused on citizen’s privacy from the government. Increasingly the privacy concerns are due to corporations and private businesses having a great deal of information about individuals. While these are legitimate concerns, I think the fuss over Google Street View is just silly.

Google Street View allows you to take a walking tour through town and view it from, well, the street. It only is available for a few cities right now, but Google hopes to make it everywhere they have Google Maps. I’ve used Google Maps many times and found it quite useful. I’ve also used Google Earth, mainly to waste time looking up every address I’ve lived at and where my friends are, but I’ve also found it useful to send pictures of where I live in relation to the nearest tube stop to my family for their visit.

The Street View is created by using a camera mounted to a car that takes pictures in a 360 degree radius. It’s possible to walk through town and zoom in on things of interest. The London Paper just had a story about people who are all hot and bothered by this. There were pictures of sunbathers in thongs in a park off Escondido road in San Francisco, the caption sensationally cried out: ‘Two Sunbathers’ Privacy Is Invaded.’ Really? Their privacy was invaded in a park off of Escondido road? Other pictures were of a fight caught on the street and a woman climbing into a truck with her thong hanging out her pants. Then there is the picture of a man coming out of a brothel, a woman who could see her cat through her living room window and a lawyer who demanded that Google remove a picture of him smoking on the street. Apparently, his wife thinks he quit.

All of these complaints and outcries are based on privacy. All of these complaints are also absurd. When you are out on the street or in a park, you have no expectation of privacy. Presumably for women sunbathing in thongs or letting them hang out in public it is one thing to have it seen by a local and quite another to have it viewed by somebody in, say, London. Should a woman be more concerned that a car driving by was able to see in through her window allowing somebody in Nepal the opportunity to notice and zoom in on it, or the fact that maybe every other person on that street in San Francisco is able to see it as well?

I say, bring on the Street View. I would love to be able to walk La Mujer through my old neighborhood in Seattle. Or take a stroll down the streets I grew up on and see how things have changed. I would love to have the opportunity to virtually walk the area my hotel is in before I book it for a holiday. If the Google car comes into my neighborhood and I’m caught on the street, scratching my butt or adjusting my thong, well, I was doing it on the street. A tourist could have just as easily snapped that picture as a rolling car and posted it on a blog like this.

But that might never happen, not just because I don’t wear thongs, but because Google Street View is already encountering opposition in Europe. EU law restricts photographs of identifiable individuals for commercial use. I find it perplexing that this is where the line in the sand is drawn given the amount of CCTV cameras everywhere. Oh well, Google can have an intern blur the faces to hide their identities. Whether they will blur the thongs is another question.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.