Google and Disappeared Streets
July 14, 2015
If you spend any time with Google Maps (civilian edition), you will find blurred areas, gaps, and weird distortions which cause me to ask, “Where did that building go?”
If you really spend a lot of time with Google Maps, you will be able to see my two dogs, Max and Tess, in a street view scene.
And zoomed in. Aren’t the doggies wonderful?
The article “The Curious Case of Google Street View’s Missing Streets” is not interested in seeing what the wonky Google autos capture. The write up pokes at me with this line:
Many towns and cities are littered with small gaps in the Street View imagery.
The write up explains that Google recognizes that gaps are a known issue. The article gets close to something quite interesting when it states:
In extreme cases, whole countries are affected. Privacy has been a particular issue in Germany, where many people objected to the roll-out of Street View. Google now has Street View images only for big cities in Germany, like Berlin and Frankfurt, and appears to have given up on the rest of the country completely. Zoom out over Europe in Street View mode and Germany is mostly a blank island in a sea of blue.
Want to do something fun the author of the write up did not bother to do? Locate a list of military facilities in the UK. Then try to locate those on a Google Map. Next try to locate those on a Bing.com map (oops, Uber map)?
Notice anything unusual? Now relate your thoughts to the article’s list of causes.
If not, enjoy the snap of Max and Tess.
Stephen E Arnold, July 14, 2015
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