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View Full Version : Does Google Have a Picture of your home?



billbenson
08-27-2008, 06:40 PM
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
08-27-2008, 06:55 PM
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
08-27-2008, 08:05 PM
They haven't been down my street yet. Traverse City must still be too small.

Blessed
08-27-2008, 11:03 PM
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
08-27-2008, 11:51 PM
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
08-28-2008, 12:51 AM
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
08-29-2008, 02:27 AM
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
08-29-2008, 02:46 AM
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
08-29-2008, 01:33 PM
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
08-29-2008, 02:51 PM
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.

vangogh
08-29-2008, 09:42 PM
It is alarming, but it's also really useful. It just depends on where you happen to be sitting at the moment. As a user I've been able to learn more about different neighborhoods prior to visiting, which helped me find my way around, but as someone in a neighborhood do I want it to be so easy for other people to get that information about where I live.

KristineS
08-29-2008, 10:27 PM
I guess there's two ways to look at it. For us, from a business standpoint, it was nice, because we could see the neighborhood, the traffic, the whole deal without having to go out to the actual site. So it does help narrow things down.

From the standpoint of a homeowner though, do I really want people to be able to see my street, and to know what the things around my house look like? You could make the argument that most burglers aren't that high tech, but it still could compromise security.

vangogh
08-30-2008, 01:30 AM
I thought about the security thing, but it isn't really anything someone couldn't get on their own. I suppose you could say by searching Google someone could find targets for further investigation.

I think it's more a privacy thing. It just feels creepy to have pictures of your backyard online without your permission. There have also been a number of cases where people were captured in embarrassing situations. Google will remove some images, but again you have to first know they're there, at which point it's a little late.

Leatherneck
08-30-2008, 04:11 AM
I have used it several times in my bussiness. It helps me too locate the houses where I have too make the estimate. Some tumes it gives me an idea of the possible Landscape and terrain I might have too deal with. It helps to give me a heads up. It also lets me see what type of nieghbor hood I'm dealing with. There are some places I wouldn't work if you paid me double.

I do sub contract work from time to time and some of the jobs I'm better of not knowing what they look like untill I get there, otherwise I might have to turn too many down. There have been many times where I felt like just driving when i get there. When you Sub contract a job the contractor tends too give the subs all the crap jobs, because he saves the better jobs for his own crews.

pete
08-30-2008, 10:50 AM
They have a good view of all my trees, but not the house. Never the house.
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cbscreative
08-30-2008, 12:17 PM
I think pretty much everyone seems to have the same reaction. It's useful, yet also borders on invasion of privacy. On the plus side, I could see it being used to prevent fraud, but that would require that buyers do a little research with it. This might not stop the really sophisticated scammers out there, but if you were to "check up" on someone that is not being honest, it could help prevent you from getting ripped off.

At the same time, it may also be unfair in some cases. For example, there are brokers who use their expertise and knowledge to connect buyers with sellers. They often provide a legitimate service that benefits both parties, but could effectively operate out of a small office in a low rent district. Some potential clients could be turned off by this where they would otherwise not care if it weren't so easy to check. This could feasibly spoil a business deal that would otherwise have gone smoothly since the quality of service is unaffected by the looks of the office location. I doubt this would be a major problem, but it could be enough to have some impact.

The city I live in is plenty large. Grand Rapids, MI is the second largest in the state, so we have several areas of town with very old manufacturing plants that have been converted to low rent offices and warehouses. Most of these are not pretty to look at, but some areas are getting renovated. If no one was using these buildings, they would be even worse sitting abandoned. I know of many of these businesses that effectively operate there to save money because their business model does not require them to be fancy. I can see where the ability for anyone to do a virtual tour could be unsettling, especially when it's a potential new customer who normally wouldn't care, but is looking just because it's easy to do now.

Basically, it's good for business, yet it's bad for business. Time will tell how it gets used or misused. It's mostly the misuse that causes concern.

**end editorial**

vangogh
08-30-2008, 12:38 PM
@Mak - Makes sense that you'd find the service useful. I can see how it would be beneficial to know in advance what the terrain looked like in order to prepare an estimate.

@Steve - I think a lot of what's happening online also gets into this same issue of being useful at the loss of potential privacy. Think of how search engines and ISPs are tracking our movements in order to display ads they think will be more relevant.

On the one hand I completely understand why they want that information and in all honestly if the system can work they way they ideally want it's also useful for us. If I'm going to see ads they might as well be ads I have a higher chance of being interested in.

On the other hand I'd rather there not be a permanent record somewhere of all the sites and pages I visit online. Not that I worry so much about people knowing the other sites I visit, but I think I have a right to keep that information private. Should my accountant know that I'm all of a suddent visiting the sites of other accountants in the area? Should your employer be allowed to know you're looking at job sites to see what's out there?

Leatherneck
08-31-2008, 08:41 AM
This is a interesting thread. I have heard of some complaints, but I never stopped to think how this could effect so many people in different ways. Like some one mentioned before I think time will play out the out come, on how it is accepeted by the over all census.

vangogh
08-31-2008, 10:51 AM
I don't think it's going to go anywhere. Too many people like the images, including me. I find them very useful at times. There are a lot of privacy concerns with different online tracking. Some will probably be kept at bay for awhile, but if the technology is there sooner or later it all likely gets adopted.

lav
09-06-2008, 02:11 AM
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 streetWow I actually wondered how they did it, that seems like a huge job, even my parents house in Coonabarabran (Country town in Aus) is there. I didnt think they would bother with a little place like that.

It has come in handy for me on a few occasions though.

vangogh
09-06-2008, 02:29 AM
It's actually really useful. I use Google Maps a lot more since they added it. It can be a little creepy if you think about their vans driving around taking pictures, but as long as they stay off private roads and keep the people out of the pictures it's really not a big deal.

lav
09-06-2008, 09:22 AM
There would have to be 100's or more of these googlemobiles driving around to get that many pics. It would be a good job for people who like to travel and see new places (absolutely every possible place).....

"What do you do for a living?"

"Ahhh I drive a googlemobile"

I have thought about putting a massive sign on our building roof for google earth but I noticed that the image they have is from back in 2004. Does anyone know how often they update their satellite images?

vangogh
09-06-2008, 11:57 AM
I think they primarily pay college students something like $10/hr to drive around. They do pay a lot of people to collect the images.

People have decorated their roofs with advertising for Google. I remember seeing some examples of it awhile back.

billbenson
09-06-2008, 08:03 PM
I forget if it was said earlier in this thread, but they don't seem to be giving exact addresses. Put in your address and they show the house down the street.

They aren't doing the UK, but are doing Australia. Curious?

pete
09-07-2008, 09:08 AM
No more skinny dippin' in the hot tub?
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vangogh
09-07-2008, 12:47 PM
Bill I noticed that too. They generally seem close on the address, but often they're a few houses up the road.

Pete just check for vans with cameras strapped on top before getting in the hot tub. Unless you're not shy, in which case the van check is less important.

KristineS
09-08-2008, 03:41 PM
I hadn't thought of that. Not that I'm known for skinny dipping in the hot tub, or even have a hot tub for that matter, but it is kind of creepy to think that you could be captured doing whatever it is you're doing when Google comes by.

Of course, my town is pretty small, so it will probably be one of the last to be recorded.

vangogh
09-08-2008, 10:53 PM
Some embarrassing pictures have apparently made it online. No skinny dipping that I'm aware of. If you let Google know they remove the images, but still someone has to see them in order to know to ask to have them removed.

pete
09-09-2008, 08:13 AM
Civilian GPS is not exactly accurate. I sold vehicle tracking systems to fleets and found that a truck parked overnight and it's location recorded every few minutes would appear to move nearly a city block while actually parked with the keys removed. So yes. a couple of houses off is normal. Or the other side of the street, etc.
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cbscreative
09-09-2008, 09:38 AM
Good point, pete, and the accuracy of military GPS is classified.

For all the tech junkies here interested in trivia, one of the main elements of GPS was invented in the 1940's, but had no practical use until GPS was invented. The atomic clock can accurately measure time in billionths of a second. So the atomic clock was a cool toy that didn't impact society for decades because no one really needed that kind of accuracy.

Then along comes GPS. No matter where you are on this planet, you are in view of at least 3 GPS satellites. These satellites can triangulate your position by measuring the response time of a beam using an atomic clock. Now, being able to accurately measure in billionths of a second has a practical use.

Now if Google can bring us this new toy, imagine what our government is capable of. Smile.

Steve B
09-09-2008, 11:11 AM
Can someone give me a sample address where I could see a house that is so close up it could potentially show something embarassing? The few addresses I've typed in will only show the top of someone's house. I haven't seen anything with enough detail to make me concerned, but maybe I just haven't found an address that was done in enough detail. For instance, on my parent's house, I can see that there was a car in the driveway. But, I couldn' tell the color or make or anything like that.

Leatherneck
09-09-2008, 12:01 PM
Steve, I think you might be looking at the google arial view map. Try street view where the streets are highlighted in blue on the map and it will bring you down to ground leval where you can even do a drive by with the arrows on the street. It is real neat.

Steve B
09-09-2008, 12:13 PM
Wow. You were right Mak. I looked up an address where I used to live and I can see they changed the colors of the shutters and what kind of car the new owners drive. That's amazing.

It was off two houses by the way. I only knew that because I used to live there. I'd like to use this for business so it can help me find houses, but it won't be any good if it gives me the wrong house.

vangogh
09-09-2008, 12:33 PM
Unfortunately it's not perfect. I've noticed it's usually off by a few houses. On the bright side it can help you know you're in the right neighborhood. I like looking at Street View when I'm driving some place new. The familiarity of seeing the images helps me know I'm at least close to the right place.

pete
09-09-2008, 12:56 PM
Takes all the fun out of gettin' lost.

Whatever happened to "seat of the pants"?

We had a state senator in VA 15 or 20 years ago who was against blood tests for alcohol because they "took all the fun out of drinkin' and drivin'."

True!
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vangogh
09-09-2008, 01:08 PM
I hope he's no longer a senator.

pete
09-09-2008, 06:57 PM
Died last week. But that did cost him the election back around '92.

He was from the Eastern Shore of VA. where the chances of getting run over by a tractor or a chicken bus are greater than getting hit by a car.
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