Google Maps Street View capture... from a bike

Wow, that is awesome. I wonder if Google is working on actual hardware "spiders" to crawl the real world.

just goes to show that Google has no problem spending money to make a great product, even better.

I mean how many people will actually use something like this? But for those few, Google will be the only option

I suspect Google is doing this for more reasons than "just because". Imagine all the data they're collecting other than just pictures.

One thing people are missing is that using bikes doubles as escalation in the arms race between Google and locals who don't want their neighborhoods to be photographed with Street View. Considering that extreme cases of the conflict included a situation where a human chain was formed to prevent the car from driving into the area, it seems remotely possible that unpleasant incidents might occur when some Neighbourhood Watch attempts increasingly hostile measures to restrain an overzealous Street View cyclist who won't listen to reason. While I don't know that the photographers' walking orders look like, it seems like most of the cases involved photographers who were being flat-out callous to the locals, making the situation more severe than necessary and giving a bad name to their company. Since Google are the people suffering the consequences and getting the resulting negative publicity, it's still Google's problem. Google's PR, of course, isn't helping the matter when they act like the locals don't have a legitimate concern in not wanting their property mapped.

See, I recognize the usefulness of having access to this data, but it's still personal data. It's not like it's impossible to construct a useful database of locations in a manner respectful of local residents' privacy; but unexpected issues always arise. The very mission statement of Google opens a philosophical can of worms: "to index the world's information and make it useful". Useful? Who to? How can you tell when making a piece of information 'useful' to one person becomes an affront to another person's human dignity? This really is a problem for which, no matter how much one tries to foresee complications, there's always some new issue popping up. Resolving the issue requires a much greater amount of accountability - accountability to the public whose information is being gathered and 'made useful' - than we can get out of Google as a publically traded corporation. Heck, it arguably requires much more accountability than we can currently get out of the United States' _democratically elected government_ (otherwise we wouldn't be worrying about things like wiretapping).

So certainly this Street View thing is all in the name of progress right now, but I'm not certain that it's worth the while to humanity to be able to see photos of bike paths in Google Maps before we've got some answers to the accountability question.

I saw one of those in LA 1.5 years ago, I don't think they're exactly new.

This past May I was on vacation in Orlando, Florida, and while visiting Sea World, some Google employees were capturing the attractions inside the park using this type of bike.

Actually, this isn't completely a new thing; It's just Google is doing it.

http://openviewproject.org/

Check out our fly ride! http://openviewproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/polycy...

One of the reasons why caving is an interesting sport is just that - no easy way to capture all the imagery.

I'm waiting to see Juan Valdez and his trusty mule to be equipped with the Google "Trail" View equipment.

I hope they will be very careful where they park that bike in Amsterdam, with all that gear on it it would be gone in less than 10 seconds.