apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I love streetview. Whenever I am going to a new place for the first time (store, restaurant, friends new apartment), I always look at the street view so I know what the place looks like. I have a wonderful tendency to walk right past the thing I am looking for, and often, home and building numbers are not clearly visible. But if you know you are looking for the purple building with the yellow door, you will have no problem!

i positively love google maps and streetview, and i use them at least once a day for SOMETHING. i actually can't remember how i got around before them!

It is a cool tool, until you own your house and then it becomes too intrusive. The English banned this car from entering their villages. Who wants just anyone to know all the details of your house and then have all the burglars devise the best plan to break into your house. I think the google air view is more than enough.

i love seeing the google streetview car driving around!

here in pittsburgh you can see some of its errors--where it hits a deer and once where it didnt clear an underpass and the camera smashed into it!

sorry, anusha, but i don't think google maps is going to make such a difference in thievery. anyone can drive past the front of your house. it's not like google is doing 4-sided shots of your house, plus showing people where the entrance to your cellar is, plus offering an app that shows where folks hide their spare keys, etc. i think that's rather paranoid, though i do think you should be able to request the "blurring" of your house if you really want (especially if they catch you walking by your window nekkid!) :)

I love it but at times can think it's uber creepy someone can get a look at where you live. True they can just drive right on by but still...

i have mixed feelings. i love google view in the city. but when it came to our street in a quite little suburb and captured all our cars in front of our house in which you can make out a license plate i wasnt happy.

Paris has had something like this for years, and it's been a great tool for me. Nothing beats it for checking out a potential hotel or apartment rental.

its great, i've used it to find my way from the train station to a hotel (i'm better with visual landmarks) and showed my grandfather what my neighborhood looks like since hes not able to visit me in person. among many other things.

For my street, Google streetview has pictures of the alley behind the street. It's very odd given that it means a real person drove to the street, and instead of driving down the street they decided to pull into the alley and take pictures there. The "street view" of our house is what you would see if you were behind our house facing away from it. Very weird.

kdkaboom; there is no reason to comment so specifically about how I feel - I was expressing my humble opinion without the need to be called upon. As per paranoia: I take it you do not own your own property (a house vs an apartment inside a building) and you have never had a burglary in your life and how one feels after it. I agree that this is not going to increase the number of thieves per se, but it is a tool in their hands (I am talking more of the wealthy neighbourhoods - I live in Queens and not very much wealth lingering about). Like any new tool can be useful and be abused.

I read here that people that own their houses all felt creepy when they saw the details of their property on line - I felt the same, so did my husband and some of our neighbours. I did not know that you can request them to blur out your property - I shall do just that. Thanks for the tip.

The idea of private residences being pictured on the internet is nothing new. Many cities have a local auditor website where you can enter in an address and get property values, blueprints, and photos of just about any property!

I can understand why having footage of personal property online might make a person feel uneasy, but just because one feels uneasy doesn't mean that they are actually at higher risk! I really don't think footage like that shown on google is likely to increase theft.

I love Google street view -- I just wish we could get our street ON it! (We live in a new development that is considered a "private" road. You can see some of the 6 houses on the street being built in satellite view pictures, but the closest you can get to the actual street is the house on the main road at the entrance to our street which is visible, just not an active link. We feel deprived! And every single delivery person of pizza or furniture has called en route because they can't find us!)

When I searched my workplace, I saw my car parked nearby. Friends have seen family members walking on the street! I think it's like a s napshopt of American life, and it's wonderful!

I don't think mapping tools like this one are going to offer burglers much they don't have without them, but they are certainly wonderful for people you WANT to find you, like the aforementioned pizza guy or the person coming to give an estimate on work or the people at the other end of that 911 call!!

Regina,
If you saw the Google car, then your picture will probably be online. I wonder how long it takes to show up?

I have to second StudioStarter's comment. Our county has a tax assessment site that shows a picture, floor plan, prices for each time the house is sold and even whether or not you are current on your taxes and HOW MUCH YOU OWE. It's pretty nice when you need to stalk someone. Just kidding!!