Google will continue to take pictures of the streets of Britain and put them online for its controversial Street View mapping service, the head of Google Maps has told The Times.
John Hanke said the feature was already widely used in the UK and dismissed concerns that it might help burglars plan where to strike. The company plans to provide coverage of most of the country by the end of next year.
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."
Google Street View, which was introduced in Britain last month, 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 travelling 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 were calls for the service to be dismantled. Earlier this month 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 said that Google believed it was acting within the law and that the benefits of the service outweighed concerns about its intrusiveness. "Public debate is very healthy and that is a good thing. The reason we are doing it is because we think it has a lot of benefits."
Asked about the villagers of Broughton, he said: "It is their community. People should work through what the real risk is. My request is that we not buy into some of the negative hype and really think about what Street View is and where it fits into society."
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.
"Generally the side of openness is one that serves us well as a society, in terms of enriching our lives by better information and better choices," he said.
Google promotes Street View as a useful tool for househunting, planning holidays or working out where to meet friends. Mr Hanke said that combined with the Google Maps service, it was a "reasonable proxy" for going there yourself.
Mr Hanke said: "For me it is a really simple idea - Street View allows you to do something from your desktop that you used to have to get in your car and drive around to do. It is taking people off the road, burning less fuel and saving people time. It is about giving people powerful information so that they can make better choices."
For instance, it relieved the anxiety of booking the right hotel in the right location, he said. "It is almost like Star Trek where in an ideal world you would just go to the transporter room and transport yourself there, materialise out of the ether, walk around with you tricorder/camera, investigate the place and then beam back and tell your wife, it's perfect and then book it."
Mr Hanke has previously had to fend off controversy about the security implications of the "overhead" imagery of Google Maps. 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 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 he expected 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."
Street View began as a side project for Google co-founder Larry Page. In the early years of Google, before it became a public company in 2004, he investigated how to stitch together photos taken from a moving car and asked Google engineers to come up with systems to put the pictures together and create a mapping service.
Mr 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. The service acts as the ground level layer for Google Maps and Earth which uses satellite imagery to allow users to "fly" to wherever they want in the world and view the terrain, the buildings and the streets.
Street View was launched in the US in May, 2007, and has gradually been expanded to include more cities around the world, more streets, and also some rural areas. it is available for countries including France, Italy, Spain, Australia and Japan.
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 next year. Mr Hanke said: "As a company we may not make 100 per cent of everybody happy in all situations but I don't think you can live your life as an individual or as a company not wanting to step on anybody's toes. We have to chart a course between the benefit that can come from something and adhering to social mores and the law."
Source:the times
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