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Aug 20, 2009 11:04 pm US/Central
Good Question: How Does Google Get Street Photos?
(WCCO)
It's been two years since Google started driving around, taking pictures from public streets in big cities. But how do they get those street view images?
"When Street View first launched, the platform used to capture images was a van," wrote Matt Williams,
Google Street View Operations Manager. Today, the van is out and the car is in.
Matty Lang captured an image of a Google car with California license plates driving around the Minneapolis Warehouse District in July of 2009.
"The images are gathered by Google and our own cars, not by a local company," said Elaine Filadelfo, a Google spokesperson.
Google owns the vehicles but contracts with people to drive the cars on public streets and gather images.
Google cars have driven throughout the world in almost a dozen countries, according to the company. The cars have nine high-resolution cameras mounted on their roofs, and the cameras take pictures non-stop.
"Our current platforms include nine directional cameras for the 360-degree views, a GPS unit for positioning and laser range scanners," said Williams. "This approach facilitates the ability to be up and running in a short period of time and allows us to quickly scale and get our vehicles on the road around the world," he added.
It's similar technology used by the local office of NAVTEQ, a Chicago-based mapping company.
"There are six cameras on top, that gives a 360 view," said Amy Scherer Honigs, a NAVTEQ employee.
Scherer Honigs drives around with her partner Don Jaenisch, gathering information in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and parts of western Wisconsin.
"It's still pictures, every so many seconds," said Scherer Honigs.
The pictures are linked to a GPS system, so the computers remember exactly where they were taken. NAVTEQ sells its data and images to GPS companies, car makers, and Yahoo.
Google uses special software to process the images, and "stitch" them together. For privacy reasons, they've developed systems which automatically blur out license plates and faces.
"It can take several months to collect imagery for an individual city, and even longer for an entire country. The time it takes to cover a particular area depends on a number of factors. The weather, geography and population," wrote Williams on Google's webpage.
You can ask Google to take down an image, if you think it invades your privacy. If you've found an image that you believe contains objectionable content, locate the image in Street View then click "Report a problem" in the bottom-left of the image window.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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