We're watching you

Monday, January 14, 2008

By now, most people have heard of Google. Of course Google is most famous for their amazing search engine which can find pretty much any information you want. If you knew the term, you could even search for unprotected security cameras in various areas and literally take control of them.

However, quite a few people are still unfamiliar with the other services that Google offers. Gmail, which is web-based email, news, shopping and they even try to show you ads that you might be interested in as you search! Probably the neatest piece of application they offer is their ability to make maps and show you satellite images from all over the world! And this is the application I want to ask a few questions about.

People got a little freaked out when they learned people had the ability to look at their house from a satellite image. But now with "Street View", you can literally drive down your street using your web browser. People didn't like this either. In fact it's made some stories over the past couple of months about people seeing funny things that people are doing walking down the road or even invasion of privacy.

I thought it was all quite an amusing bit of news and something fun to play with when you're bored at home. Then yesterday, it was brought to my attention that Seymour was now on Street View and thought it simply unbelievable! There are large cities out there that haven't even been mapped, and yet they have Seymour on the Google Street View map? And sure enough, there it was!

So of course the first thing I do is go and see if I can see my house. Sure enough, there it is! Not only can I see my house but I can see both of our dogs outside in great detail and I can see right into our living room. Kinda freaky! All in all it doesn't bother me because this type of "information" is available to anyone who just drives down our road. You can't even make out the license plate numbers on my wife's car. But it was a neat thing to be able to see your dogs on the internet through google.

So, what do you think? A neat novelty or an invasion of privacy?

1 comments:

katbradley said...

Well, now I gotta go try it!