Journal #8

Journal #8

Michael Agger’s article “Google Spy” concerns a whole new level of internet voyeurism. While GoogleEarth was stunningly powerful and massive, Google Street View is a kind of creepy snapshot of real streets on GoogleMaps taken with real cameras of real people doing normal real day-to-day things. And while it was to be a very useful application, giving users access to real images of real locations instead of just top-view schematics of typical online map applications, many who were wittingly or unwittingly caught in embarrassing poses when the GoogleShutter snapped have been eager to make their complaints addressed.

Question 1:

Is Google Street View really worth the money put into it?

I’m not sure exactly, but it probably cost a lot to get people to drive around some of the United States’ largest cities and take real photographs of every street and then take all of those images and insert them into a whole new software application that is supposed to load the images instantly for millions of users. I guess it just sounds expensive.

Question 2:

It seems like Google has a lot going on. The article mentioned Google Patents—what is that all about?

Google patents is a section of Google designated for patent searching. You can even download .pdf’s of patents for personal record keeping. Perhaps the article mentions it because it was one of the less useful Google tools.