While the rollout of Google Street View continues in mainland Europe and the US, the UK has fallen a little further down the league table. However, there have been confirmed sightings of “Google cars” which are apparently touring the cities, towns and large villages of the UK. Able to give 360° still shots every few metres these form the basis of the Google Street View service which is coming to the UK by the end of next year.
There have been reported sightings in areas such as Worthing, Bexhill-on-sea, Eastbourne, Southampton, Redding, Buckingham, Ipswich, Chelmsford and Tunbridge Wells. It also appears that Bradford, Bolton and Blackburn as well as Dundee are also very much on the Google radar. Despite the rather discreet photographic service to date we should see a significant increase in the number of “Google car” sightings as the company increases activity ahead of the launch next year.
While there is no doubt that Google Street View has, and continues to, attract significant attention from Internet users around the world, there are still concerns about privacy. Until these concerns are finally put to rest the system will attract controversy and praise in equal measures but as they say in marketing, any publicity is good publicity!