It felt a little freaky finding our street and our house in living color on a Google map. I was simply mapping the route to a new restaurant from our home and clicked on the little green blob indicating our address. Suddenly the green blob was standing in the middle of our street and looking with my eyes to the intersection. I clicked the curved arrow to the left again and again, until the green blob was looking at our front door! There was our car, the firebush plants, the Roman baptismal fount (don’t ask). Spinning on to neighbors’ homes, it was possible to set the time somewhere in the last six months to a year. During that time a neighbor built a sandbox, another started bringing home a work van. But it was before we painted the house and trimmed the trees.
Where were we while someone stood in the middle of the street and videoed a 360 degree shot of our homes? No privacy was breeched, no secrets given up that I know of, but now I kinda know how the woman felt who discovered a view of her home so clear one could almost hear the cat purr from the window sill inside her living room.
If you haven’t checked your address out, you might be in for a surprise. Some homes I searched for were there, others not—YET. Just a warning if you’re not on Candid Camera as yet: careful how you bend over, keep your stomach sucked in, and for heaven’s sake, don’t have any visitors you wouldn’t want the world to know about. Just in case.
Wow, ‘THEY’ are watching us! Good blog, and I will
warn my visitors to stand up straight and act ‘normal’ coming in – what’s next, THEY will be giving us a total description of what’s in the trash every week. Watch out for Google Garbage!
Big Brother is alive & well….
Don’t leave the house without combing your hair
They don’t have my house yet. I looked at my daughter’s house in Bradenton. They caught her husband staring at the photographer while dragging golf clubs from the trunk of his car. Scary.
I have learned that in a Chicago neighborhood someone was caught on camera pointing a gun at a child. (Later removed by Google, apparently) Then there are the now famous hookers on a street corner (I forget where). There is a site dedicated to odd scenes caught by the Google camera. This presents a whole new way to waste time.
@Tony: It looks like you don’t have to worry about combing your hair. Notice that I wear my comb on my head instead of hair.
What you’re talking about here, it totally freaks me out. I do not like the idea of being watched by google anymore than I would like to be watched by my government.
The big ‘grid’ that civilization is comprised of seems to more and more resemble criss-crossing nooses. There’s something definitely eerie about the spectator culture.
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