The inevitable tie up between property selling and Google Street View is now with us.
A few estate agents have started to implement Google Street View on their websites, with one quoting “the facility will enable buyers to get a realistic feel for the surrounding area, particularly when researching local amenities and public transport stops.” Google even promotes Street View as a useful tool for househunting.
John Hanke, who was co-founder and CEO of Keyhole, a global mapping company that was acquired by Google in 2004 and which became Google Earth, oversaw the introduction of Street View which now comprises tens of millions of photos.Hanke has told The Times that Google will continue to take pictures of the streets of Britain and put them online for its controversial Street View mapping service.
Street View UK includes 25 leading cities and Google intends to cover the majority of cities and towns in the country by the end of 2010. Google Street View, which was introduced in Britain in May, gives 360-degree views of big cities at street level, allowing people to take virtual tours from their computers or mobile phones.The company’s camera-equipped cars have been traveling around British streets since last year. The cars take images only on public roads and produce a seamless panoramic view of a particular street on a particular day. Street View automatically blurs out images of people's faces and car registrations, although the technology is not perfect. Anyone wishing to have images removed can contact Google which says most requests are processed within hours.
Claims that the online feature is an invasion of privacy have combined with fears that it provides easy information for burglars and there are still calls for the service to be dismantled.
Hanke said the feature was already widely used in the UK and dismissed concerns that it might help burglars plan where to strike.At the offices of Google Maps and Earth in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, Mr Hanke said: "We know it is really popular and people are using it broadly and I am totally convinced that they are not all using it to plan robberies. I tend to think that societies like ours come down on the side of information being good for the economy and good for us as individuals."
In April villagers blocked a Street View car from entering Broughton in Buckinghamshire, claiming it was intrusive. Privacy International, a pressure group, has sent a formal complaint about the service to the Information Commissioner's Office, citing more than 200 reports from members of the public who were identifiable on Street View images. The group has asked for the service to be suspended. Mr Hanke has previously had to fend off controversy about the security implications of the "overhead" imagery of Google Maps, when terrorists in Mumbai used mapping programs to help plot their attacks. Google also replaced images of a British base in Iraq after military objections. A Republican legislator in California has also drafted a bill calling for Google to blur out all schools, places of worship, government buildings and medical facilities because of the security risk.
Mr Hanke said Street View was part of the trend for people to use social media, like YouTube, Flickr or Facebook to publish online their descriptions and images of the world around them. “We expect the Street View controversy to die down in the UK once people understood the technology and the limitations of the service better”. He pointed out that the Street View images will only be updated at most once a year and probably once every two years.
"It is not real time, you can see that there is a red vehicle in front of a house on a certain day. But can you check on Street View to see if there is anyone at home? No, because it is one image taken at a certain point in time. It does not tell you anything about whether the car is there now or whether it is there every day."
When it comes to buying a house it’s all about location, location, location.
So having the ability to look around the area without leaving your front room is a huge positive. Surely all online estate agents will eventually offer Street View on their websites. It will be interesting to see how the facility affects business.
Extracts taken from an article by Mike Harvey from the Times.
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