Google Maps Street View

[Dave]

I'm surprised that no one has yet begun a thread on this here. It has spawned all kinds of discussions.

Are you captured on it?
My daughter is. That will now forever be her claim to fame.

Are you one of the people who object to it? And why?
I can understand if you are the man captured being arrested, or the drunken man being sick outside a pub, but I cannot see a different between someone taking a photograph and this. It isn't against any law to take a photograph and that is all it is - a snapshot. There are cctv cameras taking video of us in London 50 times/day! That is far more sinister.

On the radio, I heard someone who was comforted by seeing their dead grandmother at the window of their old house. It is certainly great for people wishing into move to a new area, or searching for a business, or to find your hotel in a foreign country. I think it is an excellent tool.

I can understand if you can actually see inside someones house, or understand the concern of woman hiding from her abusive husband in a refuge, but you only need to ask and the image is removed by google.

Have you seen any of the funny and unusual things?
Such as those people on Tottenham Court Road, London all dressed as C3P0!

Or the builders on their break standing watching the photo shoot for some modeling magazine.

You can even see some of the other camera cars captured by each other.

In fact, so many people were finding odd things, maybe you were one of those taken in by the viral email April's Fool joke of the photoshopped cows on Westminster Bridge in London?

 

[UltraCulture]

I'm not caught but my car is, that's about it.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest, unlike adulteress husbands.

I've seen a picture of some bloke a little worse for wear outside a bar somewhere, bent over staring at the contents of his stomach.

I saw yesterday that the camera car had pictured a police car following it down a bus lane, tut tut.

 

[Harpo]

 

[HareBrain]

My mum's car is still parked outside her house on Street View, even though she died in 2016. I find it quite comforting to visit occasionally and I'll miss it when it's updated.

 

[HoopyFrood]

My mum is on it, mowing the lawn (which shows how old it is, there's no lawn there now).

My cat was on it for a while, sitting in the upstairs window of my house.

On the radio, I heard someone who was comforted by seeing their dead grandmother at the window of their old house.

I did just the other day go searching for my sister's hairdresser shop that she ran, hoping she might have been caught on there so I could see her doing her thing at work, but it's too far away from the road unfortunately.

 

[Elckerlyc]

How often are these views updated? The current one of my house is dated March 2021. And I can confirm this, because it shows my new car (well, new to me) and also the bench in my front garden which I thrashed last year April or May because it threatened to collapse under its own rotten weight.
But only weeks ago I saw that car driving down the street again. It might have caught me staring at it from the kitchen window. It's not online yet.

 

[Danny McG]

It still shows a view of my house from 2010

 

[Brian G Turner]

Ours house shot updated last year by the looks. A little sad at that, as the previous one showed me in the front garden, sat by the pond, when I was still healthy. Now the garden looks empty.

 

[Harpo]

The street view car has revisited my island for the first time in fifteen years, and a prank has gone viral

Revealed: The story behind viral Isle of Lewis 'hammer attack' on Google maps

The duo were captured by the street view car as it drove past them on a island road.

www.pressandjournal.co.uk

 

[Vladd67]

As you travel down a street in our village using street view there is a cafe that closed around 10 years ago one view shows it open you advance a click down the road and it is empty sign removed obviously closed, next click forward it's back again.

 

[Danny McG]

Ours house shot updated last year by the looks. A little sad at that, as the previous one showed me in the front garden, sat by the pond, when I was still healthy. Now the garden looks empty.

I think I might have seen that.
Were you wearing a little pointy hat and holding a fishing rod?

 

[Pyan]

As you travel down a street in our village using street view there is a cafe that closed around 10 years ago one view shows it open you advance a click down the road and it is empty sign removed obviously closed, next click forward it's back again.

There's a similar situation on a new estate near me - the Google car went all around it during construction, and then again when it was completed, but without going into any of the smaller side roads. Now you can 'drive' up a complete landscaped and occupied estate, but turn into a side road and it all reverts to a building site. Even better, as you 'drive' out of the under-construction side road, it magically becomes complete and occupied.

 

[Dave]

I didn't realise that they did that (updated the main roads but not the side roads) so I can see the same thing on my own street - it's spring 2021, during final COVID lockdown and very quiet, four new houses are missing, my old car is there (now scrapped), scaffolding is up on the end house, a wall and a rose bush that are now no longer present (it died in 2023) - and then you turn the corner and - it's sometime this last summer 2024, trees in full leaf, a bridge re-painted, different scaffolding up. I've found a gap though, a short section around a corner that doesn't exist at all.

 

[Biskit]

I've just been to look at our place and the picture is so old that the car on the drive hasn't been driven since 2013. We actually still have it, sitting in one of the fields.

However, the Google Map satelite view is more recent and I would have been in it if they had taken it a few seconds earlier or later. It shows our van backed up to the hay barn with the door open, so I am almost certainly in the barn stacking a bale at that moment.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I ocassionaly use streetvieew to scout a route if I'm going somewhere I've not been before. I quickly hop along from one possible tricky point to another. Where I would leave a motorway or where I knew I was going to make a turn off one trunk road to another. 'Aha! I'll need to be in the left lane well before that point there...'
What it doesn't do (does it?) is tell you the pitch of the road; uphill downhill both look dead flat on it. There needs to be a false horizon pitch indicator on it like those in airplane cockpits.

 

[Dave]

Regarding the updating of only some streets thing, as part of the ongoing roadworks at the A3/M25 junction, they have been building a new road bridge over the A3 to gain access to RHS Wisley. Wisley announced yesterday that this was now open, but I'm still unclear about the access to and from the A3 in both directions. I looked at Google Street View, obviously they don't have a very recent photo, but the strange thing is that on one carriageway they have old pre-roadworks with an old pedestrian bridge, and on the other carriageway they have mid-roadworks with diggers and the mounds of earth. It is very odd if you cross from one side to the other.

I've now found another bridge, Blackhorse Lane in Croydon, where the road is closed, but you pass through the barriers and turn back to see it miraculously open with a newly repaired bridge. (That happened several years ago.)

What it doesn't do (does it?) is tell you the pitch of the road; uphill downhill both look dead flat on it.

No, Streetview doesn't do that, and I agree that it really should, but if on the normal map, you click on "layers" and then "satellite." then on some views (but not all) I think you can get down to a surface viewpoint (Google Earth does this much better but is no longer free to use.) If you click "terrain" instead it will give you shading on the map (though not really the same thing.)

 

[Pyan]

Where I would leave a motorway or where I knew I was going to make a turn off one trunk road to another.

Exactly this - it's so much easier if you recognise the road signs and general approach to a critical junction.

 

[Pyan]

What it doesn't do (does it?) is tell you the pitch of the road; uphill downhill both look dead flat on it.

I was sure that it does show pitch, so I checked near me:

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