To the first commenter, who said "I am amazed google is allowed to be so intrusive. Everyone except Cheney allows google to take pictures of anything. Something is inherently wrong with this. We would not allow the police to take so many pictures and we would riot if the government said it was going to take so many pictures."
You do realise that the UK has the highest CCTV coverage per square mile on the planet? And that everything has at some time been photographed and that most of those photographs are already available online? The only reason google is having to actually drive around taking the pictures is that copyright laws prohibit them from using images that were already taken by existing photographers.
What google is actually doing is what they do in every other line of business - bringing order to unsorted data so that it can be navigated and browsed by ordinary people.
You do realise that the UK has the highest CCTV coverage per square mile on the planet? And that everything has at some time been photographed and that most of those photographs are already available online? The only reason google is having to actually drive around taking the pictures is that copyright laws prohibit them from using images that were already taken by existing photographers.
What google is actually doing is what they do in every other line of business - bringing order to unsorted data so that it can be navigated and browsed by ordinary people.