Does Google Have a Picture of your home?

[billbenson]

go to maps.google.com and type in your address. Roads outlined in blue have had a google van drive by taking images of the street. My house is at the back of a subdivision on a dead end street. If you type in my address you can see my house. You can also take a virtual drive down the street.

This is great if you are trying to find an address or are house hunting. Its bad if, like me you are a one man show and try to appear like a large company. Any purchasing agent, client, or supplier can easily see that I work from my house. Not to mention stalkers, or other undesirables who want a look at your place. Using a UPS Store for an address won't work either. They will have a picture of the store front.

I've tried a number of places and they have a lot indexed. A friend lives in a condo complex in Clearwater FL. Within the last week he appeared. They drove through his condo complex parking lot. I've checked addresses in FL, CA and a couple or rural cities in the Midwest. All have been 70% imaged.

Give it a shot. Type in your address and if a picture appears click on it. The arrows on the white line allow you to take a virtual drive down the street. If you click in the other areas of the picture you can look to the side on the street. Streets with blue outlines are the ones that have been imaged.

Pretty much like big brother.

[cbscreative]

Yeah, my kids pointed this one out to me a few weeks ago. It's kind of cool, yet I also share your mixed feelings about it. And yes, they've been down my street (though the images are at least a couple years old). They've even been down remote dirt roads in Australia. It seems like a very ambitious and labor intensive project to me. It has to be costing a fortune, and it would also be high maintenance to repeat this every few years.

[KristineS]

They haven't been down my street yet. Traverse City must still be too small.

[Blessed]

they haven't made it down my street yet either... I'm not trying to appear to be a big business so for business purposes it won't hurt me but I still don't like it.

[Evan]

Luckily not yet of where I am.

As others have mentioned, it's a mixed bag. For the right purposes, it can be a great resource.

[vangogh]

They've had images of where I live for awhile. It's behind a fence so it's a little hard to see.

[orion_joel]

Yep, they have a picture of my house on there, which is on a outer suburb of Brisbane Australia. So they are getting through a lot of different places.

[vangogh]

They've also been criticized at times for going down private roads to get pictures that they shouldn't be taking. There's a way to get them to remove the picture, but you have to know about it first.

It's kind of cool to have those images so you can really see things on a map, but sometimes it also feels a little creepy to know how many things we think are at least somewhat private are finding their way online.

[cbscreative]

Yeah, if everyone had honorable intentions, I would say this is nice. But we know that's not true, especially on the Internet. I think "creepy" is often a good way to describe it.

[KristineS]

We're setting up a new plant in a major city, and I got to see the entire neighborhood on Google maps. You could see what all the businesses were, see the cars going by, the whole thing. It was a little alarming.