July 20, 2009 • 28 mins
Google Street View, which offers panoramic views of a selection of streets around the world, debuted in 2007. Discover how Google gets those impressive pictures -- and what tricycles have to do with it -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello there, everybody,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
and I'm an editor here at how Stuff works dot com.
Sitting next to me looking at pictures of your house
(00:22):
right now, as senior writer Jonathan Strickland, you need to
mow your lawn and take down that old hammock. Yeah,
that's just know what that. Nobody's going to get in
that thing again? Right? Yeah? Come on, who are your
fooling so today? Before we get into the topic, I
guess uh, we need to lead into it and I
can think of no better way to lead into it.
Then you can listener me. Seriously, you could have thought
(00:49):
of fifty different ways lead. We have two listener mails
that have to do with today's topic. The first comes
from Duncan from Kent, England. You know what that means,
hey eyes. I'm sure I speak for a lot of
people when I say your podcasts awesome. I've been listening
for a while now and accumula a few suggestions. It
may be a lot to see. What's the deal with
Google street View. I hope you guys have a great
(01:10):
day and even great summer. From Duncan ps Max Rule.
Duncan actually sent us quite a few suggestions. That was
just one of them, but that's what we're gonna talk
about today. But we did have an email from someone
else as well, Kimmy. Now Kimmy also gave multiple suggestions,
but Kimmi says, hello, I really enjoyed the show and
I was hoping to throw a couple of suggestions at
(01:30):
you for ideas. I was wondering how Google gets their
images for their street view on Google Maps Earth. It
seems like an awful lot of pictures to get together,
and I was wondering how they went about it. Thank
you again for all the information or I'm sorry. Thank
you for all the informative podcasts, and I hope there
will be many more in the future. We hope so too, Kimmy.
So we're gonna talk about Google street View. Thank you
(01:51):
for all the informative podcasts and all those non informative podcasts.
What we'd like to do those two. So Google street
View is a is a well this this one will
hopefully be one of the informative ones. So Google street
View started back in two thousand seven, or at least
it was unveiled in two thousand seven, that long ago. Yeah,
you know what's strange is that when you think of
(02:11):
all the news that's been generated by Google street View,
it's amazing to think it's only been around for two
years and it started in late May two thousand seven,
so not you know, it's it's just gotten past the
the two year mark. So basically they decided to strap
the camera on the back of a car and drive
it down the street. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay,
So they put a camera that can take high definition photos.
(02:36):
It takes a lot of them and uh in three
sixty right, So they're actually cameras facing in different directions,
And what they do is they drive down the various
streets with this camera running. It's constantly taking photos. Um
and it GEO tags these photos. There's a GPS system
on these these cars that allows Google to actually put
the photos together in the right way, because I mean,
(02:59):
if you just took pictures going down the street, you
wouldn't necessarily know like, oh wait, you know what if
they what if they're out of order. How can I
does the Windy's come before the McDonald's, or you know
which direction am I going in? So you need to
have some information like the direction you're facing, the geotagging,
all that kind of stuff in order to create a
useful map. And it's really a big panoramic image for
(03:22):
all the cities that are that have been involved in
Google street View. And uh, I think there's been about
a hundred of them so far worldwide. And they started
in the United States, actually started in California, which should
come as no surprises since that's where the headquarters for
Google happen to be and the Google Plex. Yes, and uh,
I believe San Jose was the very first UM city
(03:44):
to to encounter the Google street View vehicles. UM and yeah,
so I mean there's nothing really special, uh in the
in their methodology. They just, like we said, drive down
the street and they take lots of photos. UM. These
photos they then meshed together to create these panoramic images
(04:04):
that are known as Google street View. Now, even at
the very beginning, there were some issues with this UM
in June two thousand seven, so it had been active
for just a couple of weeks, and said that within
hours of the photographs of downtown San Francisco and New
York hitting the internet, bloggers were posting images of people
(04:25):
their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing, and urinating in public.
Hopefully not all at the same time. That would be
a really awkward criminal sunbathing and urinating while being arrested. Um,
I imagine those are three different categories of people. Wait
you you can cut me, but make sure you you know,
I need to flip over here, you know what, I'm
(04:47):
just gonna go with horrible, horrible jokes. If I keep on,
I'm gonna yeah. Yeah, So you know, wire dot Com
went ahead and started collecting these and started showing them off,
and uh, they're actually quite a few sites on the
web now are people collect and show funny images that
were they're captured by Google street View. But even at
that early stage, back in two thousand and seven, there
(05:08):
were obviously some issues with the Google street Views raised
some questions like privacy and um, you know, do you
have any expectation of privacy when you're out in public?
Should you? Should you? Does Google have a responsibility to
to mask people's profiles so that they aren't easily identifiable
when they're out in public. I mean, after all, if
(05:30):
I were walking down the street, there's nothing stopping me
from taking photos of any public place or or location,
I could just you know, whip out the camera and
start taking photos left and right. You have that right
in the United States and in most other countries where
Google street View is. And in fact, that's been Google's
defense in a lot of these cases, saying it's there's
nothing illegal about what we're doing. We we keep to
public roadways, and therefore we can take all the photos
(05:52):
we want roadways for now, except they're starting to deviate
from the roadways. And well, not only that, but they're
also instances where they have driven on roads where there
were no trespassing signs and private property signs up. Uh.
And yet Google street View cars have gone through these
communities and taking taking photos. Um. And there's at least
(06:13):
one instance where that really was uh an issue. Um.
It was in Minnesota. There was a town there, a
gated community, and it was private. It was a private
gated community that the citizens of that community actually owned
the streets, so they were private roads, they weren't public.
And yet Google street you drove through this community, took
(06:36):
photos uploaded them. They were part of Google street View.
Eventually they did take down those photos. Um because redents
of north Oaks said, we don't want our pictures there,
we don't want our community up on the internet. And
eventually Google did take them down. And in fact, there
is a process you can go through. If you find
(06:58):
a photo to be objection bowl for some reason or another,
you can you can click on a little link and
report it to Google and assuming that you have a
legitimate reason for bringing down that photo, Google will actually
take it down and will eventually replace it with something else. Yeah,
you know. Uh, there have been some high profile names
who have written in to say please take my house down.
(07:19):
Among them, Sir Paul McCartney of his London house asked
Google to remove his pictures of his home. I think
he specifically said let it be okay and uh So, anyway,
when I meant a few minutes ago to about we
were talking about how they were deviating from the path
(07:39):
Google street view and now employs tricycles. Not tricycles like
you know, the kind with the little bell and the streamers.
I just I just envisioned all these like little hellions
on big wheels really cool, be awesome. Can you imagine
the photos to come back? No, I can't actually anyway,
(08:00):
but no, they're they're more like those uh those ice
cream carts because they have a big box on the
back between the two back wheels. And uh, you know
the the Google street View camera, which is basically a
giant pole with the panoramic cameras mounted on the top.
They have to be a certain height to really get
the you know the Google street View effects, which actually
(08:20):
which is not like the ken Burns effect. That's an
entirely different animal, but that actually did cause some issues
in other countries. That's that height ca so people jump ahead. Yeah,
the street view the street view trikes are traveling on
paths like in parks and college campuses, places where the
cars may not travel. Um, so I'm sure that that
(08:44):
will cause a fresh round of complaints. That's that's kind
of still a fairly new thing as at the time
we're recording this, uh in January, So um wow, going back,
you know, we're not like we ever get accused of
spreading misinformation anything anyway. Yes, and it's going and we
(09:05):
could have been back to the future anyway, No, it is.
It is June, and the tricycles are still sort of
a new thing. Yeah, they are a new thing. And
um and I'm sure that we're going to see some
interesting and creative ways that students are going to find,
uh to insert themselves into these photos, because that has
(09:25):
already become something of a a thing, a meme if
you will, on the internet, is finding ways of inserting
interesting pictures into Google street View. Now, it's a little
tricky because usually Google does not announce when it's going
to go through a certain community, so you know, you
kind of have to be at the ready all the
time if you really want to do something. And once
(09:45):
in a while they'll work with someone and and plan
ahead so they can do something particularly special. But there
have been plenty of spontaneous uh displays, let's say, of
people trying to to sneak in something into Google street View. Um.
I saw an image not that long ago of a
young lady, I would say, of the college age, who
(10:08):
was obviously in the process of displaying her chest to
the Google street View car, perhaps going through the streets
of New Orleans doing during It looked to me like
it was going past the college campus. Tell you the truth,
but the the young lady was not quick enough on
the draw, so to speak. So there were there were
(10:29):
no um, well, there's no way to say it. There
were no boobies. There were no boobies in the photo.
There was it was clearly pre booby revelation. So um.
But you know what, ladies, keep on trying because I'm
sure one of you will eventually succeed. And I know
that that kind of fame is sort of thing that
I'll make you proud for the rest of your life.
(10:50):
Stay classy tech stuff. All I'm saying I wouldn't do it.
I mean, I'm not gonna judge you if you do
do it. But he there as gotta be better ways
to spend your time, like and there's There have been
some really cool displays, not like these goofy little like
flash Um Girls Gone Google street View. The one of
(11:11):
the cool ones was an art project in Pittsburgh, the
Street with a View project. Are you familiar with this one?
This one? I don't know. You've probably seen some of
the images and just didn't know it was part of
this this um this project. So this was a project
that uh that Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley came up
with back in two thousand and eight, and they knew
(11:33):
that Google was coming through this neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and
they wanted to create a series of tableau for the
street View car to capture as it drove down this
very narrow street. And so they created several different scenes,
not just you know one. So the street View ended
up passing a high school marching band in the middle
(11:54):
of a performance, UM, a parade, a marathon UM. There
was someone clear moving in or moving out of a
home because there was a big moving car with a
lot of stuff piled up. There was a garage band practicing.
There was a mad scientist lab in a garage where
they were working on a love laser of some sort
um there, and there were reports that there were even
(12:16):
citizens of the neighborhood getting involved. Like they they saw
that something was going on, so they decided to put
on their own little little displays as well, which kind
of blurred the line between fantasy and reality, which was
really what this project was all about. Oh and the
image that that really got a lot of circulation in
the blogs. There was a couple of people out on
the lawn practicing with buffer weapons that you would see
(12:38):
in a LARP, you know, live action role playing buffer weapons.
So these two guys with these big these big shields
and padded swords just wailing the crap out of each other.
And um, yeah, all of that was part of this project.
And it's pretty cool. You can go to the street
with a view projects still up online and see the
images that came from it. You can you can drive essentially,
(13:01):
you know, you virtually drive down the street and see
all these different tableau And uh, I believe you were
you the one who showed me that street view had
found a very hard to find person. Oh yeah I did.
Um Actually, yeah, who to thunk it? Street View found
Waldo there. He was just there on the sidewalks. Shirt
(13:26):
Caane had the whole thing, the glasses. Waldo was right there. Yeah.
I wish I had written down exactly what what town
that was in. I can't remember off the top of
my head. I did email that out um earlier. Funny.
It was funny, and it's it's found some not so
fun stuff too. Um. As the recording of this podcast,
(13:47):
there was a recent report that Google street View helped
capture a couple of ne'er dwells. Yes, some some yes,
some some kids who mugged a teenage Actually I don't
know that they were kids, but they were twins, twins
who mugged the teenager and stole his money and uh
bicycle and yeah, and his mobile phone and um. The photo,
(14:10):
the street view photo photo was taken just before the crime.
And what happened was the kid the victim saw the
street view pictures, saw the twins. Those are the guys
who jumped me. They were able to track them down
and that one of the twins did admit to the crime.
And there you go. Actually, uh, he had to go
to a little effort though, because Google street View blurs
the faces of most of the people in the images. Yeah.
(14:32):
This this came as it didn't always do that. This
came as a result of many people complaining that, you know,
your privacy is not being protected while the Google street
View cars driving on the streets. So let's say you're
walking out of someplace that you'd rather people not know
you're walking out of, like says I was thinking of
things like an adult bookstore or perhaps your mistress's home.
(14:54):
You would not necessarily want everyone to be able to
see that, not your mistress Plott. I'm not suggesting that
you have a miss stress. I'm just yours and the
the universal you universe's mistress just laughing in our juxtaposition
of places we wouldn't want to be seen walking out of.
Oh well yeah, beef jerky versus adult bookstore mistress is
home right, all right? Well, I'm being realistic and you're
(15:15):
being silly. So but people wrote in and said they
really didn't like the thought of And there are other
more innocent things that you might not want people seeing.
They want you wouldn't want to see people to see
you walking out of, say a you know, a doctor's office, necessarily,
because then people are gonna say, hey, what's wrong with you?
Are you all right? If you know, it's none of
their business, you don't want them to know that necessarily.
(15:37):
So Google did take these these words to heart, and
they created an algorithm that detects faces and then blurs them.
It's not flawless. And license plates to plates as well, Yes,
also blurs those out most of the time. Yes, And
also people who aren't actually people, but you know images
(15:58):
that look like faces, right right, So you may see
a mural on a wall that's all blurred out because
Google that they all grow them is detected as a face. Um.
And also every now and then you'll see something really
really strange, Like you'll see someone walking down the street
and they don't appear to have a head. That's because
the cameras. It's it's where two different pictures, two different
images have been joined together, and of course the subject
(16:21):
is moving, as is the car, so that you're the
subject is not in the exact same place he or
she was when the first photo was taken. And so
when the two photos are joined together, you might get
something odd. So whenever there's a joint, you're gonna possibly
see some weird stuff if something was moving within the frame,
the same thing that you get when you look at
the Gigapan photos, the Giant Panorama photos. Yeah. Now it's
(16:44):
it's fun to look at the pictures of uh, you
know what's going on up and down the street as
you you know, as the car was traveling. Um. I
particularly this sort of ties all these things together. Uh.
One of my favorites is a series from Europe where
the street you car was going under a particularly low
bridge and of course that pole has mounted up pretty high,
(17:04):
so you have all these pictures of you know, the
bridge coming up and then all of a sudden you
have pictures of the bumper of the car because it
knocked the pole right off the top of the car,
and maybe just the sky. Oh yeah, yeah, you know.
Now we can go to Mars Lens cat through Google
street View. Uh. But you know there's a lot of
sites actually that have all kinds of uh images that
(17:28):
are weird, things intentionally shot or things they were just
you know, accidents like that, and uh, you know Europe actually,
Europe is a place that's sort of difficult for Google
street View because there are a lot of privacy advocates
that are anti street view, especially in Germany, and there
there's some there's some good reasons behind that. I mean,
there's there's a couple of villages in England that object
(17:50):
to Google street View because they say that it would
allow criminals to case their houses from the comfort of
their own home. They wouldn't have to you know, they
wouldn't be you know, you wouldn't you would never notice
like that strange person who is lurking in a car
and has been sitting there for like five or six
minutes and you're wondering Okay, as this person checking out
my home to see if there's a way to break in,
you would never see that person because they could just
(18:11):
sit at home and look at that same image from
their computer and assuming they could find a way in
from the front, you know, or maybe the back if
if you have a road going right behind, or you know,
if you're on the corner lot or something. Um, then
there's a legitimate argument there saying, you know, you have
provided uh, these these people a chance to really look
(18:32):
at my house and possibly find a way in. Uh.
And some of the villages that that really objected to
Google street View. In fact, one of them, a a
group of sitisens formed a human chain and surrounded the
Google street View car would not allow it to go
into the village. Um. You know, they they point out
and says we've had a string of robberies and we
don't want it to get worse. Now, you could argue
(18:52):
that anyone at all could walk down the public street
and take photos and achieved the same thing. But then,
of course you've got the chance that since we'll see
that person just say hey, what what you doing exactly? Um? Yeah,
And they also wouldn't know when you were coming or going,
and you know, so lazy criminals really anyway, Um, but yeah,
(19:16):
and you were renting the height of the camera in Japan, uh,
they were asked to Google was asked to lower the
cameras because there are fences and the cameras would shoot
right over the fence and into people's yards, and they
didn't want The common complaint I heard was that now
people can see that, you know, my laundry as it's
hanging up. I'm thinking, well, they see it all the
(19:37):
time when it's on you. But I don't know, Maybe
maybe I'm just too practical that way. They probably didn't
want to get caught sunbathing, or getting arrested or urinating,
right right, all three of the same time. You know what,
I am not gonna lay out the challenge for text
stuff listeners, try and go out there and get Google
street you to take an image of them being arrested, sunbathing,
(19:59):
and urinating at the same time. But all you stuff
you shoulder, here's a direct challenge. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding that I don't I don't want any
phone calls saying, hey, this guy needs you to bail
him out because you're the one who convinced him to
get arrested. Yeah, yeah, well, um yeah, And in a
lot of these cases too, especially in countries where uh
(20:20):
whole governments have gotten involved in telling Google to stop
taking pictures or at least start trying harder to protect privacy. Um,
Google is is keeping images the originals pre blur um
for a less time. They're basically keeping them long enough
to blur them and then getting rid of the originals. Um.
(20:41):
And uh, you know, basically, they're they're trying to be
more diligent about blurring out identifiable personal information such as
faces and the license plate numbers of cars and and
things like that, trying to make themselves, I guess, a
little bit more friendly to organizations and company, right, people
who might object to them and complain to the government.
(21:03):
And you may wonder why does Google even do this
at all. Well, it's because their their mission is to
organize the world's information. And you might think, yeah, exactly,
But you might think, hey, I thought that just applied
to the Internet. Well, Google does not seem to think so.
Google thinks of the world's information as the world's information.
So really the Internet was just how they got started
(21:25):
that's kind of crazy, don't you think it's It's cool
in a way. But yeah, so I can see why
people would object. I mean, think about it this way.
If you, let's say the Google street View happens to
be going down your street the same week that you,
you know, you've just put off mowing the lawn for
one more week because you just it's it's super hot.
You you wanted to see if the heat right wave
will break, but right now your lawn looks really crappy.
(21:50):
Then later on, you decided to put your house up
for sale, and you put up an ad, and someone
decides to check out Google street View to see what
that house looks like. And they happen to see your
house back when you didn't mow that lawn, and it's
all shaggy and nasty, and everyone's thinking, you know, I'll
just keep looking for another house. And they're not really
seeing your house the way it actually is. They're just
(22:10):
seeing it at one moment in time. But that moment
could represent, you know, their their moment of deciding whether
or not they want to even pursue buying your house. Yeah,
I've heard that argument made, So there you go. I'm
not gonna give you my address, so you can't. There's
no way you're gonna I'm not going to share that.
I don't want people looking at my house on Google
street you. If you're curious to see if they've been
(22:32):
down your street, you can tell on Google Maps there's
a blue line um that that shows you the streets
that they have actually gone and taking pictures down. And
I've actually found Google street you to be incredibly useful,
especially on my my phone, my smartphone, because um, I
I tend to travel by foot quite a quite a bit,
(22:53):
and uh, when I go to a different city, I'll
often pull on the Google street you to make sure
that I am facing the right direction because of ocasionally,
you know, if I'm in a new city, I don't
necessarily have my bearings. I don't necessarily know which way
is north, although my phone does have a compass um
so I might not know the right direction to walk
in to get to wherever I'm going. You know, I
might take a train somewhere, but then I'm like, all right,
(23:14):
well where do I go from here? Is just go
north on the street, but I don't know which way
north is. Google street is very useful because you can
actually follow the route and see the landmarks that are there,
and it makes getting around a lot easier, you know,
if you're if you're one of those people who uses
visual landmarks like I do. Yeah, that's that's Uh. People
seem to object to it less when they're they're mapping
(23:35):
uh you know, downtowns and and places where they're not
residential locations corporate locations, um, you know, because they it
is useful to find your way around, um. And it's
kind of useful for archival purposes too. I've seen before
and after pictures represented in a couple of ocations of
places that have closed obviously recently. Um, so that that's
(23:58):
kind of neat to to, you know, sort of get
that nostalgic. Oh yeah, I remember when the street used
to look like that. But yeah, yeah, when it comes
to residential streets, it's a much more contentious issue. Yeah.
I'm looking forward to the time where they start doing
Google street View for historic era they just reconstruct the town. Well,
you know they've done that with Google Earth, where they've
(24:19):
built they've built these three D models of ancient cities
and put them on Google Earth, so you can actually
view like ancient Rome on Google Earth and see what
the streets are are We're like back then. Now, granted
you're looking at computer models, you're not looking at photos.
Obviously no one was around back then to take photos.
Turns out, um, they they didn't have the technology. They're
actually people around, they just didn't have any cameras, right.
(24:43):
So anyway, Kimmy Kimmy was also asking about, um, how
how Google Earth gets all of its photos because Google
street View they get their photos from these cars driving around.
But well they launched the cars into space. Yeah, no,
that's not how it works. Um, what what Google Earth
does but a camera on the Space shuttle on the
top and fly it around. No. What Google Earth does
(25:07):
is they get a very small hedgehog and a very
large rubber band. No, no, that's not what happens. What
Google Earth does is they purchase satellite imagery from a
couple of different companies. These are companies that obviously have
satellites out in orbit around the Earth, and they are
taking high resolution photos satellite images of the Earth, and
(25:27):
Google just purchases them and then put them together and
um updates them every so often. So if you look
at Google Earth and you look up at a specific
location something. Let's let's say that there's been a building
that's that's just been built within the last year. If
you look at the image on Google Earth, you may see,
you know, either a different thing where that building is,
(25:49):
or perhaps just an empty lot um. You won't necessarily
see the most current photo because these you know, satellites,
they only take images every so often over a certain area.
So the images tend to lag behind by a couple
of years on Google Earth. But that's all they get them.
They get them from these satellite companies. Well, that was
(26:09):
a lot less dramatic than I was hoping for. So
the hedgehog is screaming through the stratosphere taking photos furiously. Yeah,
you should see re entry. Talk about screaming. I only
say there's a flash based game where you launch a
hedgehog to Mars, which is why that I thought immediately
occurred to me. It's awesome. Okay, that's very cute little hedgehog.
(26:30):
He enjoys it. Yeah, he's waving the whole So well,
I guess that pretty much wrapped up Google Street, you
don't you think, Thank god? Alright, So, um, if you
guys have any other questions, if you have any suggestions
for episodes or comments, criticisms, that sort of thing. You
can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at
(26:50):
how stuff works dot com. Do you want to put
in the disclaimer one more time? I'm going to put
in the disclaimer that if you have a technical support issue,
we're probably not the best people to come type, because one,
we're really busy doing all kinds of other things like
writing and editing. Um, and to tech support questions are
the kind of things that you need somebody to walk
through the process, whether you're figuring out why your computer
(27:11):
can't see your hard drive or or where all your
data went after you spilled the container of grape juice
on your machine. So um, you know, you probably should
contact an actual tech support professional, especially if you're in
a hurry. Uh. Not that we don't love hearing from you,
but those are the kinds of questions that are much
harder for us to ask because you know, we can't
find that in some technical articles, and we're not we're
(27:34):
not necessarily experts on every technical system that has ever
come out. Oh fine, go ahead and tell them no,
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the way. But otherwise, write us at tech stuff at
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(27:56):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello there, everybody,
and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
and I'm an editor here at how Stuff works dot com.
Sitting next to me looking at pictures of your house
(00:22):
right now, as senior writer Jonathan Strickland, you need to
mow your lawn and take down that old hammock. Yeah,
that's just know what that. Nobody's going to get in
that thing again? Right? Yeah? Come on, who are your
fooling so today? Before we get into the topic, I
guess uh, we need to lead into it and I
can think of no better way to lead into it.
Then you can listener me. Seriously, you could have thought
(00:49):
of fifty different ways lead. We have two listener mails
that have to do with today's topic. The first comes
from Duncan from Kent, England. You know what that means,
hey eyes. I'm sure I speak for a lot of
people when I say your podcasts awesome. I've been listening
for a while now and accumula a few suggestions. It
may be a lot to see. What's the deal with
Google street View. I hope you guys have a great
(01:10):
day and even great summer. From Duncan ps Max Rule.
Duncan actually sent us quite a few suggestions. That was
just one of them, but that's what we're gonna talk
about today. But we did have an email from someone
else as well, Kimmy. Now Kimmy also gave multiple suggestions,
but Kimmi says, hello, I really enjoyed the show and
I was hoping to throw a couple of suggestions at
(01:30):
you for ideas. I was wondering how Google gets their
images for their street view on Google Maps Earth. It
seems like an awful lot of pictures to get together,
and I was wondering how they went about it. Thank
you again for all the information or I'm sorry. Thank
you for all the informative podcasts, and I hope there
will be many more in the future. We hope so too, Kimmy.
So we're gonna talk about Google street View. Thank you
(01:51):
for all the informative podcasts and all those non informative podcasts.
What we'd like to do those two. So Google street
View is a is a well this this one will
hopefully be one of the informative ones. So Google street
View started back in two thousand seven, or at least
it was unveiled in two thousand seven, that long ago. Yeah,
you know what's strange is that when you think of
(02:11):
all the news that's been generated by Google street View,
it's amazing to think it's only been around for two
years and it started in late May two thousand seven,
so not you know, it's it's just gotten past the
the two year mark. So basically they decided to strap
the camera on the back of a car and drive
it down the street. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Okay,
So they put a camera that can take high definition photos.
(02:36):
It takes a lot of them and uh in three
sixty right, So they're actually cameras facing in different directions,
And what they do is they drive down the various
streets with this camera running. It's constantly taking photos. Um
and it GEO tags these photos. There's a GPS system
on these these cars that allows Google to actually put
the photos together in the right way, because I mean,
(02:59):
if you just took pictures going down the street, you
wouldn't necessarily know like, oh wait, you know what if
they what if they're out of order. How can I
does the Windy's come before the McDonald's, or you know
which direction am I going in? So you need to
have some information like the direction you're facing, the geotagging,
all that kind of stuff in order to create a
useful map. And it's really a big panoramic image for
(03:22):
all the cities that are that have been involved in
Google street View. And uh, I think there's been about
a hundred of them so far worldwide. And they started
in the United States, actually started in California, which should
come as no surprises since that's where the headquarters for
Google happen to be and the Google Plex. Yes, and uh,
I believe San Jose was the very first UM city
(03:44):
to to encounter the Google street View vehicles. UM and yeah,
so I mean there's nothing really special, uh in the
in their methodology. They just, like we said, drive down
the street and they take lots of photos. UM. These
photos they then meshed together to create these panoramic images
(04:04):
that are known as Google street View. Now, even at
the very beginning, there were some issues with this UM
in June two thousand seven, so it had been active
for just a couple of weeks, and said that within
hours of the photographs of downtown San Francisco and New
York hitting the internet, bloggers were posting images of people
(04:25):
their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing, and urinating in public.
Hopefully not all at the same time. That would be
a really awkward criminal sunbathing and urinating while being arrested. Um,
I imagine those are three different categories of people. Wait
you you can cut me, but make sure you you know,
I need to flip over here, you know what, I'm
(04:47):
just gonna go with horrible, horrible jokes. If I keep on,
I'm gonna yeah. Yeah, So you know, wire dot Com
went ahead and started collecting these and started showing them off,
and uh, they're actually quite a few sites on the
web now are people collect and show funny images that
were they're captured by Google street View. But even at
that early stage, back in two thousand and seven, there
(05:08):
were obviously some issues with the Google street Views raised
some questions like privacy and um, you know, do you
have any expectation of privacy when you're out in public?
Should you? Should you? Does Google have a responsibility to
to mask people's profiles so that they aren't easily identifiable
when they're out in public. I mean, after all, if
(05:30):
I were walking down the street, there's nothing stopping me
from taking photos of any public place or or location,
I could just you know, whip out the camera and
start taking photos left and right. You have that right
in the United States and in most other countries where
Google street View is. And in fact, that's been Google's
defense in a lot of these cases, saying it's there's
nothing illegal about what we're doing. We we keep to
public roadways, and therefore we can take all the photos
(05:52):
we want roadways for now, except they're starting to deviate
from the roadways. And well, not only that, but they're
also instances where they have driven on roads where there
were no trespassing signs and private property signs up. Uh.
And yet Google street View cars have gone through these
communities and taking taking photos. Um. And there's at least
(06:13):
one instance where that really was uh an issue. Um.
It was in Minnesota. There was a town there, a
gated community, and it was private. It was a private
gated community that the citizens of that community actually owned
the streets, so they were private roads, they weren't public.
And yet Google street you drove through this community, took
(06:36):
photos uploaded them. They were part of Google street View.
Eventually they did take down those photos. Um because redents
of north Oaks said, we don't want our pictures there,
we don't want our community up on the internet. And
eventually Google did take them down. And in fact, there
is a process you can go through. If you find
(06:58):
a photo to be objection bowl for some reason or another,
you can you can click on a little link and
report it to Google and assuming that you have a
legitimate reason for bringing down that photo, Google will actually
take it down and will eventually replace it with something else. Yeah,
you know. Uh, there have been some high profile names
who have written in to say please take my house down.
(07:19):
Among them, Sir Paul McCartney of his London house asked
Google to remove his pictures of his home. I think
he specifically said let it be okay and uh So, anyway,
when I meant a few minutes ago to about we
were talking about how they were deviating from the path
(07:39):
Google street view and now employs tricycles. Not tricycles like
you know, the kind with the little bell and the streamers.
I just I just envisioned all these like little hellions
on big wheels really cool, be awesome. Can you imagine
the photos to come back? No, I can't actually anyway,
(08:00):
but no, they're they're more like those uh those ice
cream carts because they have a big box on the
back between the two back wheels. And uh, you know
the the Google street View camera, which is basically a
giant pole with the panoramic cameras mounted on the top.
They have to be a certain height to really get
the you know the Google street View effects, which actually
(08:20):
which is not like the ken Burns effect. That's an
entirely different animal, but that actually did cause some issues
in other countries. That's that height ca so people jump ahead. Yeah,
the street view the street view trikes are traveling on
paths like in parks and college campuses, places where the
cars may not travel. Um, so I'm sure that that
(08:44):
will cause a fresh round of complaints. That's that's kind
of still a fairly new thing as at the time
we're recording this, uh in January, So um wow, going back,
you know, we're not like we ever get accused of
spreading misinformation anything anyway. Yes, and it's going and we
(09:05):
could have been back to the future anyway, No, it is.
It is June, and the tricycles are still sort of
a new thing. Yeah, they are a new thing. And
um and I'm sure that we're going to see some
interesting and creative ways that students are going to find,
uh to insert themselves into these photos, because that has
(09:25):
already become something of a a thing, a meme if
you will, on the internet, is finding ways of inserting
interesting pictures into Google street View. Now, it's a little
tricky because usually Google does not announce when it's going
to go through a certain community, so you know, you
kind of have to be at the ready all the
time if you really want to do something. And once
(09:45):
in a while they'll work with someone and and plan
ahead so they can do something particularly special. But there
have been plenty of spontaneous uh displays, let's say, of
people trying to to sneak in something into Google street View. Um.
I saw an image not that long ago of a
young lady, I would say, of the college age, who
(10:08):
was obviously in the process of displaying her chest to
the Google street View car, perhaps going through the streets
of New Orleans doing during It looked to me like
it was going past the college campus. Tell you the truth,
but the the young lady was not quick enough on
the draw, so to speak. So there were there were
(10:29):
no um, well, there's no way to say it. There
were no boobies. There were no boobies in the photo.
There was it was clearly pre booby revelation. So um.
But you know what, ladies, keep on trying because I'm
sure one of you will eventually succeed. And I know
that that kind of fame is sort of thing that
I'll make you proud for the rest of your life.
(10:50):
Stay classy tech stuff. All I'm saying I wouldn't do it.
I mean, I'm not gonna judge you if you do
do it. But he there as gotta be better ways
to spend your time, like and there's There have been
some really cool displays, not like these goofy little like
flash Um Girls Gone Google street View. The one of
(11:11):
the cool ones was an art project in Pittsburgh, the
Street with a View project. Are you familiar with this one?
This one? I don't know. You've probably seen some of
the images and just didn't know it was part of
this this um this project. So this was a project
that uh that Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley came up
with back in two thousand and eight, and they knew
(11:33):
that Google was coming through this neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and
they wanted to create a series of tableau for the
street View car to capture as it drove down this
very narrow street. And so they created several different scenes,
not just you know one. So the street View ended
up passing a high school marching band in the middle
(11:54):
of a performance, UM, a parade, a marathon UM. There
was someone clear moving in or moving out of a
home because there was a big moving car with a
lot of stuff piled up. There was a garage band practicing.
There was a mad scientist lab in a garage where
they were working on a love laser of some sort
um there, and there were reports that there were even
(12:16):
citizens of the neighborhood getting involved. Like they they saw
that something was going on, so they decided to put
on their own little little displays as well, which kind
of blurred the line between fantasy and reality, which was
really what this project was all about. Oh and the
image that that really got a lot of circulation in
the blogs. There was a couple of people out on
the lawn practicing with buffer weapons that you would see
(12:38):
in a LARP, you know, live action role playing buffer weapons.
So these two guys with these big these big shields
and padded swords just wailing the crap out of each other.
And um, yeah, all of that was part of this project.
And it's pretty cool. You can go to the street
with a view projects still up online and see the
images that came from it. You can you can drive essentially,
(13:01):
you know, you virtually drive down the street and see
all these different tableau And uh, I believe you were
you the one who showed me that street view had
found a very hard to find person. Oh yeah I did.
Um Actually, yeah, who to thunk it? Street View found
Waldo there. He was just there on the sidewalks. Shirt
(13:26):
Caane had the whole thing, the glasses. Waldo was right there. Yeah.
I wish I had written down exactly what what town
that was in. I can't remember off the top of
my head. I did email that out um earlier. Funny.
It was funny, and it's it's found some not so
fun stuff too. Um. As the recording of this podcast,
(13:47):
there was a recent report that Google street View helped
capture a couple of ne'er dwells. Yes, some some yes,
some some kids who mugged a teenage Actually I don't
know that they were kids, but they were twins, twins
who mugged the teenager and stole his money and uh
bicycle and yeah, and his mobile phone and um. The photo,
(14:10):
the street view photo photo was taken just before the crime.
And what happened was the kid the victim saw the
street view pictures, saw the twins. Those are the guys
who jumped me. They were able to track them down
and that one of the twins did admit to the crime.
And there you go. Actually, uh, he had to go
to a little effort though, because Google street View blurs
the faces of most of the people in the images. Yeah.
(14:32):
This this came as it didn't always do that. This
came as a result of many people complaining that, you know,
your privacy is not being protected while the Google street
View cars driving on the streets. So let's say you're
walking out of someplace that you'd rather people not know
you're walking out of, like says I was thinking of
things like an adult bookstore or perhaps your mistress's home.
(14:54):
You would not necessarily want everyone to be able to
see that, not your mistress Plott. I'm not suggesting that
you have a miss stress. I'm just yours and the
the universal you universe's mistress just laughing in our juxtaposition
of places we wouldn't want to be seen walking out of.
Oh well yeah, beef jerky versus adult bookstore mistress is
home right, all right? Well, I'm being realistic and you're
(15:15):
being silly. So but people wrote in and said they
really didn't like the thought of And there are other
more innocent things that you might not want people seeing.
They want you wouldn't want to see people to see
you walking out of, say a you know, a doctor's office, necessarily,
because then people are gonna say, hey, what's wrong with you?
Are you all right? If you know, it's none of
their business, you don't want them to know that necessarily.
(15:37):
So Google did take these these words to heart, and
they created an algorithm that detects faces and then blurs them.
It's not flawless. And license plates to plates as well, Yes,
also blurs those out most of the time. Yes, And
also people who aren't actually people, but you know images
(15:58):
that look like faces, right right, So you may see
a mural on a wall that's all blurred out because
Google that they all grow them is detected as a face. Um.
And also every now and then you'll see something really
really strange, Like you'll see someone walking down the street
and they don't appear to have a head. That's because
the cameras. It's it's where two different pictures, two different
images have been joined together, and of course the subject
(16:21):
is moving, as is the car, so that you're the
subject is not in the exact same place he or
she was when the first photo was taken. And so
when the two photos are joined together, you might get
something odd. So whenever there's a joint, you're gonna possibly
see some weird stuff if something was moving within the frame,
the same thing that you get when you look at
the Gigapan photos, the Giant Panorama photos. Yeah. Now it's
(16:44):
it's fun to look at the pictures of uh, you
know what's going on up and down the street as
you you know, as the car was traveling. Um. I
particularly this sort of ties all these things together. Uh.
One of my favorites is a series from Europe where
the street you car was going under a particularly low
bridge and of course that pole has mounted up pretty high,
(17:04):
so you have all these pictures of you know, the
bridge coming up and then all of a sudden you
have pictures of the bumper of the car because it
knocked the pole right off the top of the car,
and maybe just the sky. Oh yeah, yeah, you know.
Now we can go to Mars Lens cat through Google
street View. Uh. But you know there's a lot of
sites actually that have all kinds of uh images that
(17:28):
are weird, things intentionally shot or things they were just
you know, accidents like that, and uh, you know Europe actually,
Europe is a place that's sort of difficult for Google
street View because there are a lot of privacy advocates
that are anti street view, especially in Germany, and there
there's some there's some good reasons behind that. I mean,
there's there's a couple of villages in England that object
(17:50):
to Google street View because they say that it would
allow criminals to case their houses from the comfort of
their own home. They wouldn't have to you know, they
wouldn't be you know, you wouldn't you would never notice
like that strange person who is lurking in a car
and has been sitting there for like five or six
minutes and you're wondering Okay, as this person checking out
my home to see if there's a way to break in,
you would never see that person because they could just
(18:11):
sit at home and look at that same image from
their computer and assuming they could find a way in
from the front, you know, or maybe the back if
if you have a road going right behind, or you know,
if you're on the corner lot or something. Um, then
there's a legitimate argument there saying, you know, you have
provided uh, these these people a chance to really look
(18:32):
at my house and possibly find a way in. Uh.
And some of the villages that that really objected to
Google street View. In fact, one of them, a a
group of sitisens formed a human chain and surrounded the
Google street View car would not allow it to go
into the village. Um. You know, they they point out
and says we've had a string of robberies and we
don't want it to get worse. Now, you could argue
(18:52):
that anyone at all could walk down the public street
and take photos and achieved the same thing. But then,
of course you've got the chance that since we'll see
that person just say hey, what what you doing exactly? Um? Yeah,
And they also wouldn't know when you were coming or going,
and you know, so lazy criminals really anyway, Um, but yeah,
(19:16):
and you were renting the height of the camera in Japan, uh,
they were asked to Google was asked to lower the
cameras because there are fences and the cameras would shoot
right over the fence and into people's yards, and they
didn't want The common complaint I heard was that now
people can see that, you know, my laundry as it's
hanging up. I'm thinking, well, they see it all the
(19:37):
time when it's on you. But I don't know, Maybe
maybe I'm just too practical that way. They probably didn't
want to get caught sunbathing, or getting arrested or urinating,
right right, all three of the same time. You know what,
I am not gonna lay out the challenge for text
stuff listeners, try and go out there and get Google
street you to take an image of them being arrested, sunbathing,
(19:59):
and urinating at the same time. But all you stuff
you shoulder, here's a direct challenge. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding that I don't I don't want any
phone calls saying, hey, this guy needs you to bail
him out because you're the one who convinced him to
get arrested. Yeah, yeah, well, um yeah, And in a
lot of these cases too, especially in countries where uh
(20:20):
whole governments have gotten involved in telling Google to stop
taking pictures or at least start trying harder to protect privacy. Um,
Google is is keeping images the originals pre blur um
for a less time. They're basically keeping them long enough
to blur them and then getting rid of the originals. Um.
(20:41):
And uh, you know, basically, they're they're trying to be
more diligent about blurring out identifiable personal information such as
faces and the license plate numbers of cars and and
things like that, trying to make themselves, I guess, a
little bit more friendly to organizations and company, right, people
who might object to them and complain to the government.
(21:03):
And you may wonder why does Google even do this
at all. Well, it's because their their mission is to
organize the world's information. And you might think, yeah, exactly,
But you might think, hey, I thought that just applied
to the Internet. Well, Google does not seem to think so.
Google thinks of the world's information as the world's information.
So really the Internet was just how they got started
(21:25):
that's kind of crazy, don't you think it's It's cool
in a way. But yeah, so I can see why
people would object. I mean, think about it this way.
If you, let's say the Google street View happens to
be going down your street the same week that you,
you know, you've just put off mowing the lawn for
one more week because you just it's it's super hot.
You you wanted to see if the heat right wave
will break, but right now your lawn looks really crappy.
(21:50):
Then later on, you decided to put your house up
for sale, and you put up an ad, and someone
decides to check out Google street View to see what
that house looks like. And they happen to see your
house back when you didn't mow that lawn, and it's
all shaggy and nasty, and everyone's thinking, you know, I'll
just keep looking for another house. And they're not really
seeing your house the way it actually is. They're just
(22:10):
seeing it at one moment in time. But that moment
could represent, you know, their their moment of deciding whether
or not they want to even pursue buying your house. Yeah,
I've heard that argument made, So there you go. I'm
not gonna give you my address, so you can't. There's
no way you're gonna I'm not going to share that.
I don't want people looking at my house on Google
street you. If you're curious to see if they've been
(22:32):
down your street, you can tell on Google Maps there's
a blue line um that that shows you the streets
that they have actually gone and taking pictures down. And
I've actually found Google street you to be incredibly useful,
especially on my my phone, my smartphone, because um, I
I tend to travel by foot quite a quite a bit,
(22:53):
and uh, when I go to a different city, I'll
often pull on the Google street you to make sure
that I am facing the right direction because of ocasionally,
you know, if I'm in a new city, I don't
necessarily have my bearings. I don't necessarily know which way
is north, although my phone does have a compass um
so I might not know the right direction to walk
in to get to wherever I'm going. You know, I
might take a train somewhere, but then I'm like, all right,
(23:14):
well where do I go from here? Is just go
north on the street, but I don't know which way
north is. Google street is very useful because you can
actually follow the route and see the landmarks that are there,
and it makes getting around a lot easier, you know,
if you're if you're one of those people who uses
visual landmarks like I do. Yeah, that's that's Uh. People
seem to object to it less when they're they're mapping
(23:35):
uh you know, downtowns and and places where they're not
residential locations corporate locations, um, you know, because they it
is useful to find your way around, um. And it's
kind of useful for archival purposes too. I've seen before
and after pictures represented in a couple of ocations of
places that have closed obviously recently. Um, so that that's
(23:58):
kind of neat to to, you know, sort of get
that nostalgic. Oh yeah, I remember when the street used
to look like that. But yeah, yeah, when it comes
to residential streets, it's a much more contentious issue. Yeah.
I'm looking forward to the time where they start doing
Google street View for historic era they just reconstruct the town. Well,
you know they've done that with Google Earth, where they've
(24:19):
built they've built these three D models of ancient cities
and put them on Google Earth, so you can actually
view like ancient Rome on Google Earth and see what
the streets are are We're like back then. Now, granted
you're looking at computer models, you're not looking at photos.
Obviously no one was around back then to take photos.
Turns out, um, they they didn't have the technology. They're
actually people around, they just didn't have any cameras, right.
(24:43):
So anyway, Kimmy Kimmy was also asking about, um, how
how Google Earth gets all of its photos because Google
street View they get their photos from these cars driving around.
But well they launched the cars into space. Yeah, no,
that's not how it works. Um, what what Google Earth
does but a camera on the Space shuttle on the
top and fly it around. No. What Google Earth does
(25:07):
is they get a very small hedgehog and a very
large rubber band. No, no, that's not what happens. What
Google Earth does is they purchase satellite imagery from a
couple of different companies. These are companies that obviously have
satellites out in orbit around the Earth, and they are
taking high resolution photos satellite images of the Earth, and
(25:27):
Google just purchases them and then put them together and
um updates them every so often. So if you look
at Google Earth and you look up at a specific
location something. Let's let's say that there's been a building
that's that's just been built within the last year. If
you look at the image on Google Earth, you may see,
you know, either a different thing where that building is,
(25:49):
or perhaps just an empty lot um. You won't necessarily
see the most current photo because these you know, satellites,
they only take images every so often over a certain area.
So the images tend to lag behind by a couple
of years on Google Earth. But that's all they get them.
They get them from these satellite companies. Well, that was
(26:09):
a lot less dramatic than I was hoping for. So
the hedgehog is screaming through the stratosphere taking photos furiously. Yeah,
you should see re entry. Talk about screaming. I only
say there's a flash based game where you launch a
hedgehog to Mars, which is why that I thought immediately
occurred to me. It's awesome. Okay, that's very cute little hedgehog.
(26:30):
He enjoys it. Yeah, he's waving the whole So well,
I guess that pretty much wrapped up Google Street, you
don't you think, Thank god? Alright, So, um, if you
guys have any other questions, if you have any suggestions
for episodes or comments, criticisms, that sort of thing. You
can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at
(26:50):
how stuff works dot com. Do you want to put
in the disclaimer one more time? I'm going to put
in the disclaimer that if you have a technical support issue,
we're probably not the best people to come type, because one,
we're really busy doing all kinds of other things like
writing and editing. Um, and to tech support questions are
the kind of things that you need somebody to walk
through the process, whether you're figuring out why your computer
(27:11):
can't see your hard drive or or where all your
data went after you spilled the container of grape juice
on your machine. So um, you know, you probably should
contact an actual tech support professional, especially if you're in
a hurry. Uh. Not that we don't love hearing from you,
but those are the kinds of questions that are much
harder for us to ask because you know, we can't
find that in some technical articles, and we're not we're
(27:34):
not necessarily experts on every technical system that has ever
come out. Oh fine, go ahead and tell them no,
I kind of just go ahead and get that all
the way. But otherwise, write us at tech stuff at
how stuff works dot com. Remember, you can learn all
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