Update: 18 months now, still prodding google, but no answers yet

Google Street View is brilliant – in fact, the whole digital map revolution is largely driven by expectations set by Google. Their tech is amazing. Unfortunately, as an organisation, they often fail to come up to scratch. A shame… here’s an example:

Every now and then Google have a flurry of promotion about their street view partners program, most recently in March this year the blogs seemed to be getting the message out. It’s certainly a cool idea, and there are some stunning examples out there. Our University applied for this years ago, and after a few slips and trips, were delighted when the trike finally visited the campus (on May 9, 2010). Then we settled down to wait for the images to come online. The site said it could take up to 90 days.

Today is the anniversary. Yup, 365 days later, and still no Street View on campus. Now, I’m sure they have their reasons – obviously, being very busy would be one of them. They have since released some excellent street view partner sites. I know we’re not being singled out or ignored, because I understand that the day before they came to us, they did the MCG… and it’s not online yet either! I guess what I find infuriating is [a.] that they are still soliciting for partners, when they’ve obviously got a massive backlog of images already, and [b.] that they never tell you anything – no communication, no progress updates, nothing. It’s always “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.

So, Google is as Google does. It’s free, so one certainly can’t complain, but like a lot of people, I do wonder about the direction Google are taking. That they were so long congratulated as innovators, but now that innovation is contributing to a lack of focus for a business that was built on focus. I wonder how long before they do start to officially start to trim their programs, rather than just let them die of neglect.

And now they’re even going indoors! Don’t know if we’ll ever see our images online at this rate.

Yet more trumpeting about excellent new StreetView locations, but no response to any of my enquiries.

According to Google Maps ‘blue outlined streets’ have Street View, so I was surprised to see that they must have left the car behind one day and hopped on a bicycle, because the Moonee Ponds Creek bicycle trail was outlined in blue just near my house. Alas, the Street View pics don’t give a true representation of the bike path – it seems wider and busier than I remember it.

Uh-oh! algorithm troubles! That looks very much like the nearby tulla freeway. I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more interesting anomolies among the new Australian images.

Anyway, I was panning around the Gulf Country of far north Queensland when I noticed the blue line didn’t go all the way to Normanton. Odd – so I dropped the little yellow guy as close as I could to the end of the line and saw in the distance what looked like… yes, I think it is… water! Ha! that’s the Gulf Country for you.

No wonder they never got to Normanton

The face blurring technology is in full swing, and not very discriminate – blurring both the wheels on my car, as well as heaps of other vaguely face like things.

Anyway, I’m pleased I wasn’t imagining things when I spotted the Google car last March.