The Earth Is Square

Well, first off we have Frank and his post about Google telling it's people when the street view vehicle is coming by.. and some dork asking his girl to marry him (he must not know that most public announcements of "marry me" never get a yes).

Then James counters with his post about Google ruining street view.  He does have some points, and some good counter points get raised.  But in my opinion.. I don't really see street view being useful past the initial "wow! look at that!" stage.  I have not really used or looked at street view since it first came out, I have not seen anyone make any really amazing uses of it as well.  What you find 97% of the time is people posting about a cat they saw, someone doing something to someone else, someone taking a leak down a back alley.. all really vanilla stuff to be honest.

But for my post... I am just wondering what Google is thinking (they have the "More money than brains" syndrome I think.. though in this case you switch storage for money.  Some friends of mine in Australia are just amazed that google finds a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.. worthy of having street views of it.

Here you can see the road in the middle of nowhere, nothing around but trees and dirt roads.

And here is the street view of said middle-of-newhere road.

So, you just have to wonder just how many TB's of imagery data there are showing trees in detail.

On a mailing list I am on, a member in the UK was in Cambridge a few weeks back and spotted the Google Street View car and caught a video of it coming down the street and passing him by.

One thing I noticed in the video... Google seems to be keeping a low profile on this.. there is no "Google" all over the car like they are seen in the US.

I came acrost this story/blog post on the BBC News website today.  Last week Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, wrote a letter to Google asking about Google privacy privacy protection standards will be up to the task at hand.

You may be aware that Privacy International has stated, both privately to Google legal staff and to the media, that we are concerned about a number of potential violations of national law that this technology may create.

- Simon Davies
Director
Privacy International

The reply from Google is online today.

You correctly note, however, that we had publicly committed to respect other countries' privacy laws and norms, if and when we did launch outside the US. Yesterday's launch therefore not only brought the value of Street View to new shores and new users, it also demonstrated our commitment to meet the privacy challenges of the product.

-Jane Horvath
Senior Privacy Counsel
Google

While Google says they are ready to go and that the system is working fine, they do admit some faces and license plates are missed because of a combination of reasons.

I think at this point it is more of a "Wait and See" game.

I have a new computer setup that I already have WorldWind and GISExplorer on, so went today to download and install Google Earth for it.  But since it is currently off network I went to download and will just copy the install file over via a thumb drive..

Errr, NOT happening.  Where is the downloadable file?  What is this "Google Updater" they think I should have instead?  When I want to download an application.. I want to download the bloody application!  (You can see how long it has been since I installed a new Google Earth )  So, complaining asside, I re-run the network and take a computer offline to bring the one I want to use online and install.

Next "Bad Google" comes up.. it never asked me WHERE I want to install Google Earth!  It wants me to install an app on the OS partition.. argh!

I know their "motto" is "Don't Be Evil" .. but I think it should be "Don't Be Smart" instead.. this is some dumb thinking from Google.  Trust me.. I know better than Google on how I want to download and install my software.

Kind of funny how people are missing something very important with the CNet Article about "Google Ocean".. (Never mind the fact you could view 3D oceans way back in 2004 when WorldWind was released), the screen shots that CNet shows use GeoMapApp and GeoMapapp, to anyone that reads my blog would know, is built on WWJava and leverages the same data as WorldWind uses as well as multibeam and predicted topography compiled by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University.

About the only difference between a Google Ocean and what is already usable now, is KML placemarks.  Unless Google is going to spend millions to re-map the ocean bottoms.. the data will be the same for all virtual globes.

Ok, so read a couple of blog posts on this lawsuit. And I am amazed how people are taking Google's side so easily.  When really, if the people bring the lawsuit are correct, Google did trespass onto private property in order to gather the imagery.

Sorry, I have to agree with the lawsuit in this regard, it is not about how they didn't use the links on the Google site to remove the imagery.  It is about Google trespassing to get what they want.