How does the fact that the entire world would be able to see your house, your car or even your face, makes you feel? Paranoid? Privileged? Excited? Well, you don’t really have a choice, anyhow. Google is rapidly expanding and the StreetView technology is now coming to the United Kingdom after covering most of the major North American cities and several French territories.

If you don’t yet know what that is, log on to the Google Maps website and check it out by switching the StreetView on. Either it is the flashy Hollywood in L.A., a quiet neighborhood in Anchorage, Alaska or the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It’s all open for the virtual tourists worldwide.

Soon London and other major cities of the UK will be visible in detail too. And the actual detail is just astonishing. It is going to the level where one will be able of recognizing people’s faces, even though Google claims they will filter them in order not to harm citizens’ privacy. Yet critics were not pleased and it is feared the identities of the people will be possible to see, judging by their clothes or even hair. Detailed pictures of private properties are also thought to be helpful for house robbers.

But despite what some people say, StreetView is purposeful. Drivers who need to go places they have never been to, finding the buildings they have never seen, will gain enormously. Maps or even satellite images do not produce the much needed real-world detail, whilst StreetView is definitely going to help people connect in a manner that is even more advanced than automotive sat-nav.

Whether we like it or not, cars with giant cameras on top of them are already driving around the country so that a few months later they can provide us with the detailed view of the streets in an environment similar to the one of 3D shooting video games. And StreetView’s future ambitions are to embrace the entire world. Well, good luck to Google in dealing with the likes North Korea!

By The W