Google Street View: first take

Technology correspondent Benjamin Cohen gets an early look at Street View UK and finds Google hasn't quite met its promise to blur public faces.

At about 11pm last night, I stumbled onto Google Street View UK - the long awaited and controversial new service that allows you to "drive" around the country in pretty good definition.

Google street cars, equipped with cameras that take 360° horizontal and 290° vertical pictures have been driving up and down the UK photographing the country.



The photos were then stiched together to give you a street level view of whole swathes of the UK (for a full list see below).

It's a service that's been around in the United States since 2007 and has been gradually spreading across the globe.

The UK version has gone live only after the information commissioner gave the service the green light so long as Google blurred individual's faces and the number plates of cars.

However, a very quick search on Google Streetview has found that the software used to blur faces appears rather inconsistent.

Of photographs of groups of say three people, I've found that at least one person's face is visible.



The system seems to cope less well in low light conditions where often no blur is used at all.

The originals of the pictures featured on this page showed unblurred faces. We've blurred them so not to repeat the error.

However, it's important to note that the photographs are no better than the millions of photographs of the UK taken by tourists and uploaded to websites like Flickr or Facebook.

Many of those will contain completely unrelated people in the background.

Think about how many photographs you've taken of cities while on holiday, have you ever requested the permission of the people in the background?

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