Minnesota Town Vanishes From Google Street Images - Will Employees follow?
by
Brett Bumeter
Remember that kind of cool feature in Google Maps that also makes your skin crawl every time you think about it? I’m not talking about the spy satellite view of your backyard that was just detailed enough to prompt Dick Cheney to have his own house pixelated out of existance.
No I’m referring to the Street View program that gives something that feels like a 360 degree view from any position on many streets in America.
Well, some cities apparently have some laws against this creepy, nifty feature and so they are being removed.
The city of North Oaks, Minn., can no longer been seen using Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps Street View.
Minutes of the City Council’s Jan. 10 meeting indicate that Google sent a driver in a camera-equipped vehicle to record images of the city’s streets last summer, in violation of the city’s trespassing ordinance. Mayor Tom Watson then contacted Google representatives and asked that they remove Street View of North Oaks images from Google Maps.
“All data files will be destroyed and not used by any Google companies or subsidiaries,” the meeting minutes states. Google was not immediately able to confirm that removed North Oaks images have actually been deleted.
“Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” said a Google spokesperson via e-mail. “While the Street View feature enables people to easily find, discover, and plan activities relevant to a location, we respect the fact that people may not want certain images featured on the service. We provide easily accessible tools for flagging inappropriate or sensitive imagery for review and removal.”
Minnesota Town Vanishes From Google Street Images — Google Maps — InformationWeek
I suspect that there might be a pair of PhDs and the lawyers from their department looking for work some where in Boston soon over this screw up. Maybe Google hadn’t heard of due diligence before or maybe they don’t mind shuffling a few people out of the company and adding to the available pile of Boston resumes.
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