12
Apr
Google’s picture-snapping cars have been cruising Australia’s suburbs since late last year, with pictures of thousands of homes expected to be uploaded to the internet with Street View’s launch [expected within months].
While Google has defended the project, the internet company baulked when The Weekend Australian requested the personal details and addresses of the group’s key figures to allow the paper’s photographers to take pictures of their homes. ‘Providing those details would be completely inappropriate,’ said Google spokesman Rob Shilkin.
- what a ripper of an idea by the Weekend Australian (or was it copied from somewhere else?)!
- the quotation above’s from here; the image above from here shows a Google Street View car in Sydney
- The Weekend Australian managed to find out the information it wanted and more; it doesn’t say whether it used Google to do so; the online version of the story, unlike the dead tree one, contains no photographs; the latter had, among others, photos of executives’ residences
—— ( reblogged via stumblng)
I’ve been seeing these cars in Brisbane and Toowoomba since late last year. Every freaking time I see one, I either can’t catch up to it to take a photo or don’t have a camera with me. I spoke about it on the ABC Queensland Evenings show the first day they arrived in Queensland which was when I first saw one. From the listener feedback I can say people are really freaked out by it. Google’s Australian spokesman Rob Shilkin spoke on the ABC 612 Mornings show on Thursday after I was initially booked to explain what it is and he got nailed in the interview. He really floundered and you could tell they just don’t get why people are freaked out. Even though he says they’ll have uber privacy controls for Australian Street View images there was indignation in his voice that Google should be called into question on this technology.
via stumblng