What's the deal with Google Street View?

that's just know what that. Nobody's going to get in that thing again? Right? Yeah? Come on, who are your fooling so today? Before we get into the topic, I guess uh, we need to lead into it and I can think of no better way to lead into it. Then you can listener me. Seriously, you could have thought of fifty different ways lead. We have two listener mails that have to do with today's topic. The first comes from Duncan from Kent, England. You know what that means,

hey eyes. I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say your podcasts awesome. I've been listening for a while now and accumula a few suggestions. It may be a lot to see. What's the deal with Google street View. I hope you guys have a great day and even great summer. From Duncan ps Max Rule. Duncan actually sent us quite a few suggestions. That was just one of them, but that's what we're gonna talk about today. But we did have an email from someone

else as well, Kimmy. Now Kimmy also gave multiple suggestions, but Kimmi says, hello, I really enjoyed the show and I was hoping to throw a couple of suggestions at you for ideas. I was wondering how Google gets their images for their street view on Google Maps Earth. It seems like an awful lot of pictures to get together, and I was wondering how they went about it. Thank you again for all the information or I'm sorry. Thank you for all the informative podcasts, and I hope there

will be many more in the future. We hope so too, Kimmy. So we're gonna talk about Google street View. Thank you for all the informative podcasts and all those non informative podcasts. What we'd like to do those two. So Google street View is a is a well this this one will hopefully be one of the informative ones. So Google street View started back in two thousand seven, or at least

it was unveiled in two thousand seven, that long ago. Yeah, you know what's strange is that when you think of all the news that's been generated by Google street View, it's amazing to think it's only been around for two years and it started in late May two thousand seven, so not you know, it's it's just gotten past the the two year mark. So basically they decided to strap the camera on the back of a car and drive

it down the street. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay, So they put a camera that can take high definition photos. It takes a lot of them and uh in three sixty right, So they're actually cameras facing in different directions, And what they do is they drive down the various streets with this camera running. It's constantly taking photos. Um

and it GEO tags these photos. There's a GPS system on these these cars that allows Google to actually put the photos together in the right way, because I mean, if you just took pictures going down the street, you wouldn't necessarily know like, oh wait, you know what if they what if they're out of order. How can I does the Windy's come before the McDonald's, or you know

which direction am I going in? So you need to have some information like the direction you're facing, the geotagging, all that kind of stuff in order to create a useful map. And it's really a big panoramic image for all the cities that are that have been involved in Google street View. And uh, I think there's been about

a hundred of them so far worldwide. And they started in the United States, actually started in California, which should come as no surprises since that's where the headquarters for Google happen to be and the Google Plex. Yes, and uh, I believe San Jose was the very first UM city to to encounter the Google street View vehicles. UM and yeah, so I mean there's nothing really special, uh in the in their methodology. They just, like we said, drive down

the street and they take lots of photos. UM. These photos they then meshed together to create these panoramic images

that are known as Google street View. Now, even at the very beginning, there were some issues with this UM in June two thousand seven, so it had been active for just a couple of weeks, and said that within hours of the photographs of downtown San Francisco and New York hitting the internet, bloggers were posting images of people their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing, and urinating in public. Hopefully not all at the same time. That would be

a really awkward criminal sunbathing and urinating while being arrested. Um, I imagine those are three different categories of people. Wait you you can cut me, but make sure you you know, I need to flip over here, you know what, I'm just gonna go with horrible, horrible jokes. If I keep on,

I'm gonna yeah. Yeah, So you know, wire dot Com went ahead and started collecting these and started showing them off, and uh, they're actually quite a few sites on the web now are people collect and show funny images that

were they're captured by Google street View. But even at that early stage, back in two thousand and seven, there were obviously some issues with the Google street Views raised some questions like privacy and um, you know, do you have any expectation of privacy when you're out in public? Should you? Should you? Does Google have a responsibility to to mask people's profiles so that they aren't easily identifiable

when they're out in public. I mean, after all, if I were walking down the street, there's nothing stopping me from taking photos of any public place or or location, I could just you know, whip out the camera and start taking photos left and right. You have that right in the United States and in most other countries where Google street View is. And in fact, that's been Google's defense in a lot of these cases, saying it's there's

nothing illegal about what we're doing. We we keep to public roadways, and therefore we can take all the photos we want roadways for now, except they're starting to deviate from the roadways. And well, not only that, but they're also instances where they have driven on roads where there were no trespassing signs and private property signs up. Uh. And yet Google street View cars have gone through these communities and taking taking photos. Um. And there's at least

one instance where that really was uh an issue. Um. It was in Minnesota. There was a town there, a gated community, and it was private. It was a private gated community that the citizens of that community actually owned the streets, so they were private roads, they weren't public. And yet Google street you drove through this community, took photos uploaded them. They were part of Google street View.

Eventually they did take down those photos. Um because redents of north Oaks said, we don't want our pictures there, we don't want our community up on the internet. And eventually Google did take them down. And in fact, there is a process you can go through. If you find a photo to be objection bowl for some reason or another, you can you can click on a little link and report it to Google and assuming that you have a legitimate reason for bringing down that photo, Google will actually

take it down and will eventually replace it with something else. Yeah, you know. Uh, there have been some high profile names who have written in to say please take my house down. Among them, Sir Paul McCartney of his London house asked Google to remove his pictures of his home. I think he specifically said let it be okay and uh So, anyway, when I meant a few minutes ago to about we were talking about how they were deviating from the path

Google street view and now employs tricycles. Not tricycles like you know, the kind with the little bell and the streamers. I just I just envisioned all these like little hellions on big wheels really cool, be awesome. Can you imagine the photos to come back? No, I can't actually anyway, but no, they're they're more like those uh those ice cream carts because they have a big box on the

back between the two back wheels. And uh, you know the the Google street View camera, which is basically a giant pole with the panoramic cameras mounted on the top. They have to be a certain height to really get the you know the Google street View effects, which actually which is not like the ken Burns effect. That's an entirely different animal, but that actually did cause some issues

in other countries. That's that height ca so people jump ahead. Yeah, the street view the street view trikes are traveling on paths like in parks and college campuses, places where the cars may not travel. Um, so I'm sure that that will cause a fresh round of complaints. That's that's kind of still a fairly new thing as at the time we're recording this, uh in January, So um wow, going back, you know, we're not like we ever get accused of

spreading misinformation anything anyway. Yes, and it's going and we could have been back to the future anyway, No, it is. It is June, and the tricycles are still sort of a new thing. Yeah, they are a new thing. And um and I'm sure that we're going to see some interesting and creative ways that students are going to find, uh to insert themselves into these photos, because that has already become something of a a thing, a meme if you will, on the internet, is finding ways of inserting

interesting pictures into Google street View. Now, it's a little tricky because usually Google does not announce when it's going to go through a certain community, so you know, you kind of have to be at the ready all the time if you really want to do something. And once in a while they'll work with someone and and plan ahead so they can do something particularly special. But there have been plenty of spontaneous uh displays, let's say, of

people trying to to sneak in something into Google street View. Um. I saw an image not that long ago of a young lady, I would say, of the college age, who was obviously in the process of displaying her chest to the Google street View car, perhaps going through the streets of New Orleans doing during It looked to me like it was going past the college campus. Tell you the truth, but the the young lady was not quick enough on the draw, so to speak. So there were there were

no um, well, there's no way to say it. There were no boobies. There were no boobies in the photo. There was it was clearly pre booby revelation. So um. But you know what, ladies, keep on trying because I'm sure one of you will eventually succeed. And I know that that kind of fame is sort of thing that I'll make you proud for the rest of your life. Stay classy tech stuff. All I'm saying I wouldn't do it. I mean, I'm not gonna judge you if you do

do it. But he there as gotta be better ways to spend your time, like and there's There have been some really cool displays, not like these goofy little like flash Um Girls Gone Google street View. The one of the cool ones was an art project in Pittsburgh, the Street with a View project. Are you familiar with this one? This one? I don't know. You've probably seen some of the images and just didn't know it was part of

this this um this project. So this was a project that uh that Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley came up with back in two thousand and eight, and they knew that Google was coming through this neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and they wanted to create a series of tableau for the street View car to capture as it drove down this very narrow street. And so they created several different scenes, not just you know one. So the street View ended up passing a high school marching band in the middle

of a performance, UM, a parade, a marathon UM. There was someone clear moving in or moving out of a home because there was a big moving car with a lot of stuff piled up. There was a garage band practicing. There was a mad scientist lab in a garage where they were working on a love laser of some sort um there, and there were reports that there were even

citizens of the neighborhood getting involved. Like they they saw that something was going on, so they decided to put on their own little little displays as well, which kind of blurred the line between fantasy and reality, which was really what this project was all about. Oh and the image that that really got a lot of circulation in

the blogs. There was a couple of people out on the lawn practicing with buffer weapons that you would see in a LARP, you know, live action role playing buffer weapons. So these two guys with these big these big shields and padded swords just wailing the crap out of each other. And um, yeah, all of that was part of this project. And it's pretty cool. You can go to the street with a view projects still up online and see the

images that came from it. You can you can drive essentially, you know, you virtually drive down the street and see all these different tableau And uh, I believe you were you the one who showed me that street view had found a very hard to find person. Oh yeah I did. Um Actually, yeah, who to thunk it? Street View found Waldo there. He was just there on the sidewalks. Shirt Caane had the whole thing, the glasses. Waldo was right there. Yeah. I wish I had written down exactly what what town

that was in. I can't remember off the top of my head. I did email that out um earlier. Funny. It was funny, and it's it's found some not so fun stuff too. Um. As the recording of this podcast, there was a recent report that Google street View helped capture a couple of ne'er dwells. Yes, some some yes, some some kids who mugged a teenage Actually I don't know that they were kids, but they were twins, twins who mugged the teenager and stole his money and uh

bicycle and yeah, and his mobile phone and um. The photo, the street view photo photo was taken just before the crime. And what happened was the kid the victim saw the street view pictures, saw the twins. Those are the guys who jumped me. They were able to track them down and that one of the twins did admit to the crime. And there you go. Actually, uh, he had to go to a little effort though, because Google street View blurs the faces of most of the people in the images. Yeah.

This this came as it didn't always do that. This came as a result of many people complaining that, you know, your privacy is not being protected while the Google street View cars driving on the streets. So let's say you're walking out of someplace that you'd rather people not know you're walking out of, like says I was thinking of things like an adult bookstore or perhaps your mistress's home. You would not necessarily want everyone to be able to

see that, not your mistress Plott. I'm not suggesting that you have a miss stress. I'm just yours and the the universal you universe's mistress just laughing in our juxtaposition of places we wouldn't want to be seen walking out of. Oh well yeah, beef jerky versus adult bookstore mistress is home right, all right? Well, I'm being realistic and you're

being silly. So but people wrote in and said they really didn't like the thought of And there are other more innocent things that you might not want people seeing. They want you wouldn't want to see people to see you walking out of, say a you know, a doctor's office, necessarily, because then people are gonna say, hey, what's wrong with you? Are you all right? If you know, it's none of their business, you don't want them to know that necessarily.

So Google did take these these words to heart, and they created an algorithm that detects faces and then blurs them. It's not flawless. And license plates to plates as well, Yes, also blurs those out most of the time. Yes, And also people who aren't actually people, but you know images that look like faces, right right, So you may see a mural on a wall that's all blurred out because

Google that they all grow them is detected as a face. Um. And also every now and then you'll see something really really strange, Like you'll see someone walking down the street and they don't appear to have a head. That's because the cameras. It's it's where two different pictures, two different images have been joined together, and of course the subject is moving, as is the car, so that you're the subject is not in the exact same place he or

she was when the first photo was taken. And so when the two photos are joined together, you might get something odd. So whenever there's a joint, you're gonna possibly see some weird stuff if something was moving within the frame, the same thing that you get when you look at the Gigapan photos, the Giant Panorama photos. Yeah. Now it's it's fun to look at the pictures of uh, you know what's going on up and down the street as you you know, as the car was traveling. Um. I

particularly this sort of ties all these things together. Uh. One of my favorites is a series from Europe where the street you car was going under a particularly low bridge and of course that pole has mounted up pretty high, so you have all these pictures of you know, the bridge coming up and then all of a sudden you have pictures of the bumper of the car because it knocked the pole right off the top of the car, and maybe just the sky. Oh yeah, yeah, you know.

Now we can go to Mars Lens cat through Google street View. Uh. But you know there's a lot of sites actually that have all kinds of uh images that are weird, things intentionally shot or things they were just you know, accidents like that, and uh, you know Europe actually, Europe is a place that's sort of difficult for Google street View because there are a lot of privacy advocates that are anti street view, especially in Germany, and there

there's some there's some good reasons behind that. I mean, there's there's a couple of villages in England that object to Google street View because they say that it would allow criminals to case their houses from the comfort of

their own home. They wouldn't have to you know, they wouldn't be you know, you wouldn't you would never notice like that strange person who is lurking in a car and has been sitting there for like five or six minutes and you're wondering Okay, as this person checking out my home to see if there's a way to break in, you would never see that person because they could just sit at home and look at that same image from their computer and assuming they could find a way in

from the front, you know, or maybe the back if if you have a road going right behind, or you know, if you're on the corner lot or something. Um, then there's a legitimate argument there saying, you know, you have provided uh, these these people a chance to really look at my house and possibly find a way in. Uh. And some of the villages that that really objected to

Google street View. In fact, one of them, a a group of sitisens formed a human chain and surrounded the Google street View car would not allow it to go into the village. Um. You know, they they point out and says we've had a string of robberies and we don't want it to get worse. Now, you could argue that anyone at all could walk down the public street and take photos and achieved the same thing. But then, of course you've got the chance that since we'll see

that person just say hey, what what you doing exactly? Um? Yeah, And they also wouldn't know when you were coming or going, and you know, so lazy criminals really anyway, Um, but yeah, and you were renting the height of the camera in Japan, uh, they were asked to Google was asked to lower the cameras because there are fences and the cameras would shoot right over the fence and into people's yards, and they didn't want The common complaint I heard was that now

people can see that, you know, my laundry as it's hanging up. I'm thinking, well, they see it all the time when it's on you. But I don't know, Maybe maybe I'm just too practical that way. They probably didn't want to get caught sunbathing, or getting arrested or urinating, right right, all three of the same time. You know what, I am not gonna lay out the challenge for text stuff listeners, try and go out there and get Google street you to take an image of them being arrested, sunbathing,

and urinating at the same time. But all you stuff you shoulder, here's a direct challenge. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding that I don't I don't want any phone calls saying, hey, this guy needs you to bail him out because you're the one who convinced him to get arrested. Yeah, yeah, well, um yeah, And in a lot of these cases too, especially in countries where uh whole governments have gotten involved in telling Google to stop

taking pictures or at least start trying harder to protect privacy. Um, Google is is keeping images the originals pre blur um for a less time. They're basically keeping them long enough

to blur them and then getting rid of the originals. Um. And uh, you know, basically, they're they're trying to be more diligent about blurring out identifiable personal information such as faces and the license plate numbers of cars and and things like that, trying to make themselves, I guess, a little bit more friendly to organizations and company, right, people who might object to them and complain to the government. And you may wonder why does Google even do this

at all. Well, it's because their their mission is to organize the world's information. And you might think, yeah, exactly, But you might think, hey, I thought that just applied to the Internet. Well, Google does not seem to think so. Google thinks of the world's information as the world's information. So really the Internet was just how they got started that's kind of crazy, don't you think it's It's cool in a way. But yeah, so I can see why people would object. I mean, think about it this way.

If you, let's say the Google street View happens to be going down your street the same week that you, you know, you've just put off mowing the lawn for one more week because you just it's it's super hot. You you wanted to see if the heat right wave will break, but right now your lawn looks really crappy. Then later on, you decided to put your house up for sale, and you put up an ad, and someone decides to check out Google street View to see what

that house looks like. And they happen to see your house back when you didn't mow that lawn, and it's all shaggy and nasty, and everyone's thinking, you know, I'll just keep looking for another house. And they're not really seeing your house the way it actually is. They're just seeing it at one moment in time. But that moment could represent, you know, their their moment of deciding whether or not they want to even pursue buying your house. Yeah,

I've heard that argument made, So there you go. I'm not gonna give you my address, so you can't. There's no way you're gonna I'm not going to share that. I don't want people looking at my house on Google street you. If you're curious to see if they've been down your street, you can tell on Google Maps there's a blue line um that that shows you the streets

that they have actually gone and taking pictures down. And I've actually found Google street you to be incredibly useful, especially on my my phone, my smartphone, because um, I I tend to travel by foot quite a quite a bit, and uh, when I go to a different city, I'll often pull on the Google street you to make sure that I am facing the right direction because of ocasionally, you know, if I'm in a new city, I don't

necessarily have my bearings. I don't necessarily know which way is north, although my phone does have a compass um so I might not know the right direction to walk in to get to wherever I'm going. You know, I might take a train somewhere, but then I'm like, all right, well where do I go from here? Is just go north on the street, but I don't know which way

north is. Google street is very useful because you can actually follow the route and see the landmarks that are there, and it makes getting around a lot easier, you know, if you're if you're one of those people who uses visual landmarks like I do. Yeah, that's that's Uh. People seem to object to it less when they're they're mapping uh you know, downtowns and and places where they're not residential locations corporate locations, um, you know, because they it

is useful to find your way around, um. And it's kind of useful for archival purposes too. I've seen before and after pictures represented in a couple of ocations of places that have closed obviously recently. Um, so that that's kind of neat to to, you know, sort of get that nostalgic. Oh yeah, I remember when the street used to look like that. But yeah, yeah, when it comes to residential streets, it's a much more contentious issue. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the time where they start doing

Google street View for historic era they just reconstruct the town. Well, you know they've done that with Google Earth, where they've built they've built these three D models of ancient cities and put them on Google Earth, so you can actually view like ancient Rome on Google Earth and see what the streets are are We're like back then. Now, granted you're looking at computer models, you're not looking at photos. Obviously no one was around back then to take photos.

Turns out, um, they they didn't have the technology. They're actually people around, they just didn't have any cameras, right. So anyway, Kimmy Kimmy was also asking about, um, how how Google Earth gets all of its photos because Google street View they get their photos from these cars driving around. But well they launched the cars into space. Yeah, no, that's not how it works. Um, what what Google Earth does but a camera on the Space shuttle on the

top and fly it around. No. What Google Earth does is they get a very small hedgehog and a very large rubber band. No, no, that's not what happens. What Google Earth does is they purchase satellite imagery from a couple of different companies. These are companies that obviously have satellites out in orbit around the Earth, and they are taking high resolution photos satellite images of the Earth, and Google just purchases them and then put them together and

um updates them every so often. So if you look at Google Earth and you look up at a specific location something. Let's let's say that there's been a building that's that's just been built within the last year. If you look at the image on Google Earth, you may see, you know, either a different thing where that building is, or perhaps just an empty lot um. You won't necessarily see the most current photo because these you know, satellites, they only take images every so often over a certain area.

So the images tend to lag behind by a couple of years on Google Earth. But that's all they get them. They get them from these satellite companies. Well, that was a lot less dramatic than I was hoping for. So the hedgehog is screaming through the stratosphere taking photos furiously. Yeah, you should see re entry. Talk about screaming. I only say there's a flash based game where you launch a hedgehog to Mars, which is why that I thought immediately

occurred to me. It's awesome. Okay, that's very cute little hedgehog. He enjoys it. Yeah, he's waving the whole So well, I guess that pretty much wrapped up Google Street, you don't you think, Thank god? Alright, So, um, if you guys have any other questions, if you have any suggestions for episodes or comments, criticisms, that sort of thing. You can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Do you want to put

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writing and editing. Um, and to tech support questions are the kind of things that you need somebody to walk through the process, whether you're figuring out why your computer can't see your hard drive or or where all your data went after you spilled the container of grape juice on your machine. So um, you know, you probably should contact an actual tech support professional, especially if you're in

a hurry. Uh. Not that we don't love hearing from you, but those are the kinds of questions that are much harder for us to ask because you know, we can't find that in some technical articles, and we're not we're not necessarily experts on every technical system that has ever come out. Oh fine, go ahead and tell them no, I kind of just go ahead and get that all the way. But otherwise, write us at tech stuff at

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