Google Street View to shoot Australia again

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GOOGLE plans to send its fleet of special cars fitted with panoramic cameras back on the road next month to update Street View Australia.

Street View is an online tool that lets users take a virtual tour of landscapes from their computer by perusing an interactive database of millions of 360-degree snapshots.

Australia last year became the third country to be "scanned into" Street View, as much of the east and west coasts were added to the database.

Take a virtual tour of Australia in Street View »

Now Google plans to roll out the camera cars again to take a new set of snaps over summer.

"Starting from next month in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth and parts of Tasmania, we'll be doing our best to cover as many of Australia's public roads as we can during this summer," said Google product manager Andrew Foster.

"If you're in the right place at the right time, you might spot one of our clearly marked Street View cars in your neighbourhood."

Mr Foster also announced new privacy measures and imaging upgrades.

"The images we're collecting this time will be crisper than before – making Street View even more useful when using it to find that restaurant you've forgotten the name of," he said.

"It will also make our face-blurring technology even more accurate, because faces and license plates will be easier for our blurring technology to recognise."

Google introduced privacy measures including automatic face and license plate blurring after widespread complaints.

People who are uncomfortable with their image on Street View can also apply to have specific shots blurred or removed.

Mr Foster said a new policy around complaints would see offending images permanently removed from Google's servers.

After a complaint, a blurred version of the image would be uploaded to Street View. The original image would be kept in Google's internal records for one year and then permanently replaced with the censored version, he said.

Street View update coming to Australia – http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/10/street-view-...

The cars being used

[rebellious_teen]

I saw a car with a pole on top that has a square box with what appears to be cameras. Will I be famous?

[FlyingKiwi]

The street view image of my street shows someone standing at the top of the street who I think I might recognise, although it's a bit hard to tell. If they ever re-do NZ, my house is "safe" because it is quite a long way off the street. Unless they introduce "Google Driveway View" that is.

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Originally Posted by rebellious_teen

I saw a car with a pole on top that has a square box with what appears to be cameras. Will I be famous?

You might be

Originally Posted by FlyingKiwi

The street view image of my street shows someone standing at the top of the street who I think I might recognise, although it's a bit hard to tell. If they ever re-do NZ, my house is "safe" because it is quite a long way off the street. Unless they introduce "Google Driveway View" that is.

You never now what they are capable of doing , my street isn't even on google street view, hopefully that might change lol

[aussie-boy]

I hope they keep the old images, so you can go back and forward through time.

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I hope they keep expanding on other features as well. My dad's company subscribes to software where you can type in an address, and get all sales records for the house, deed holder's name, phone number.

This would be awesome in google maps (maybe only the pricing bit though)

[Scurry Inertia]

I am so pissed off right now. My mum saw a google car go past our house. Now she gets to be on google and i dont.

[Bobby B]

My dad and I are/ were on Google here in the US when they were doing the camera shots in my area

[kimberley teen]

the pic of our place looks like s-t a new one would be nice.