KEY POINTS:
CANBERRA - Early yesterday morning, my home became the virtual property of the world. So did my neighbours' houses, the shop at the end of the street, the local church hall, the road to the nearby nature reserve, and the Catholic boys' school.
The internet search giant Google has put us all on the map - literally, and with 360-degree rotational views photographed by a fleet of Holdens in a massive virtual recording of Australia.
My sister-in-law in Sydney was so excited to hear I was looking at her house on the computer she ran outside and started waving. Pity Google's new Street View is not real time.
But her house and all the others in every street around her are as clear as a bell when you walk the Street View around the neighbourhood, rotating the picture to whichever direction and angle you want.
It is the same for almost all of the continent, except for a few spots such as Uluru (Ayers Rock) which does not appear yet because of Aboriginal spiritual sensitivities and the need for permits to record the image.
Starting last November, a fleet of camera-mounted Holden Astras spent months recording more than 10 million images of cities, towns, coastal villages, Outback highways and national icons such as Sydney Harbour, Parliament House in Canberra and Melbourne's Flinders St Station.
Every house, business, school or whatever, covered by the Astras' cameras, is now available on www.maps.google.com.au.
Australia is the third country to appear online using technology which is based on a product developed locally and bought by Google four years ago.
It was used to virtually record American cities and the route of the Tour de France.
The system will be extended this year to New Zealand, Japan and Europe.
To find an image, users type the location into the search function. If it is in the system, a button named Street View appears which, in turn, presents available views as streets bordered in blue.
Users drag a human icon to whatever view they wish to see, placing them in a street with arrows to show which direction is being faced. The view can move up and down the street, rotated 360 degrees and zoom in and out.
Google says Street View can be used to explore Australia, to check holiday accommodation and its location, view the neighbourhood of a property you are interested in buying, or even search for buildings with wheelchair access. Tour companies can use it to help plan customers' itineraries, and other businesses can employ it for anything from promoting themselves to evaluating locations for marketing campaigns.
Google also says Street View would enable fire, police and ambulance services to view locations before they arrive.
But while bodies such as Tourism Australia and the Real Estate Institute have welcomed Street View, others have warned of privacy concerns. These are being monitored by the Australian Privacy Commissioner, although Google has blurred the faces of people and the registration plates of cars caught by the cameras.
Home and business owners can also ask for images to be removed, and private roads do not appear. This follows legal action launched in the US by a couple claiming damages for invasion of privacy after images appeared of their home on a private road, and by a widely reported Google response that today "complete privacy does not exist".
Despite a statement from Google claiming the comment was taken out of context and did not represent a blanket statement of its views on privacy, the US National Legal and Policy Centre said privacy was consistently being eroded by companies such as Google.
To make its point the centre posted on the internet details and images of the Californian home of Google co-founder and multi-billionaire Larry Page, using information found via the company's own online services.
- NZ HERALD
