‘Cool’ Google Street Views
p2pnet news view P2P | Advertising:- p2pnet has probably pointed out more identity phk-ups on Google’s Street View ’service’ than any other site.
We’ve also reported another problem first cited by p2pnet regular Marc and which, as far as we can see, hasn’t been noticed by the lamescream press corpse, which is always quick to parrot self-extolling Google puff pieces as though they’re genuine news items.
And that’s Street View’s apparent racial discrimination.
But back to Gargle’s identity crisis, America’s largest online advertising company has been criticised over and over again because its supposedly high-tech ‘blurring’ feature, created to protect the innocent, is very seriously flawed.
It works like this: Gogle SnoopMobiles prowl the streets of the world taking pictures of people, their dwelling places, their vehicles and anything else which falls within range of their view finders.
It then publishes the images hundreds of millions of times online without the people in the pictures ever having been asked if it’s OK with them.
A Gargoyle application is supposed to blur the pix. However ’supposed’ is the operative word because the system frequently fails, or is so inefficient as to be totally useless.
oddee.com features a number of these unwanted (by the victims) exposures, including the pic on the right of a man coming out of a strip club (we de-identified him).
Another “Hilarious Google street find” is of “a man passed out in the back of a pick up holding a beer!”
And, “If you’re ever caught short in broad daylight and decide you really must relieve yourself behind a parked car, it’s probably a good idea to make sure there isn’t one of Google’s Orwellian Street View spymobiles lurking nearby,” says the story, adding:
“According to Spanish paper El Mundo, this delightful scene was spotted in Madrid by sharp-eyed bloggers, who wasted no time in broadcasting it to the world.”
Within 12 hours Google “responded by scrubbing the image,” it says.
But by then it was obviously too late.
Over to you, Goople spinsters.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
racial discrimination – ‘HP computers are racist’, December 21, 2009
very seriously flawed – Google Sneak Views: p2pnet, Part II, December 14, 2009
oddee.com – 12 Coolest Google Street Finds, November 11, 2009
January, 2010
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