Scrunched Street View spymobile spied in India

A brief vid has popped up on YouTube purportedly showing a pranged Street View spymobile in northern India. A still showing the crashed Street View car in a rocky gorge The 22-second clip also features someone venting his spleen at the Great Satan of Mountain View by lobbing rocks at the wrecked Orwellian black Opel, as you …

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Ok... I have to ask...

1) Can anyone really read that it says Google on the side of the car?

It could say Navteq for all I know. (Navteq also has a fleet of cars, although they may say Nokia these days.)

2) If this is India, why is the guy talking in an American accent saying 'Cool Dude!' ?

3) Where's the road that this vehicle supposedly came from? (I've never been to India, so maybe that was the road?

One of the stooges, obviously because only a stooge would drive a car in to the ditch like that.

[Blofeld's Cat]

Re: Ok... I have to ask...

"1) Can anyone really read that it says Google on the side of the car?"

The video is not very good but if you look at the Flickr link from the article or the picture on:

AutoEvolution

You can read the somewhat dusty sign.

[Ian Michael Gumby]

@ Blofeld's Cat... Re: Ok... I have to ask...

Thx.

Didn't know about the photo... Yeah, its a Google car.

As to the American Accents... ok, probably some tourists,

As to the road. Not much of a road.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ok... I have to ask...

There is also no sign of the rocks behind the car being disturbed and no parts of the car on the rocks, therefore everything points to this being a staged event.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ok... I have to ask...

1) Yes - http://www.flickr.com/photos/80810385@N08/7629315132/sizes/h/in/pool-98378256@N00/

2) No american tourists have ever been to India, you must be right, it's a fake!

3) The road is at the top of that embankment that the car is that the bottom of. Sort of obvious, no?

[mraak]

Why are idiots throwing stones at a car?

Clearly Apple fanbois.

[Anonymous Coward]

Throws...

...like a girl.

[Anonymous Coward]

The car has a Himachal Pradesh (India) number plate.

The guy is wearing a "Travel bookshop" t-shirt. The URL on his sleave is something.cz

We'd better start eliminating the impossible....

[A Known Coward]

travelbookshop.ch - it's clear as day in the full res Flickr photos

[brooxta]

Curiously

... this is part of the first set of colour images captured by Curiosity this morning.

As you can see, Google tried to one-up NASA (in a bet between Page/Brin and Bolden where the stakes were landing/take-off rights at more NASA landing strips), by beating them to the LZ on Mars. Sadly their G-Rocket (beta) landing system has atrocious latencies via Odyssey and the whole thing came to a sorry end.

NASA were obviously chuffed to bits to hit the LZ successfully and get some shots of the pranged G-Rover for bragging. What took everybody by surprise, however, was the sight of an indignant amanfrommars dinging said G-Rover with prime specimen Martian rock samples in response to Google's brazen intrusion into his previously unmolested (and indeed uncontended) home wifi system.

PMOIDH? Please?

[imanidiot]

Really?

Is it really THAT hard to see both the video and the pics are faked? In the video the specular lighting on the vehicle is almost non existent. It's a matte uniform blob basically. The shadow angles don't match, and the perspective seems to be off too.

As for the pictures, the "reflections" in the hood and roof are clearly of a cloudy sky at sunset (note, clouds with orange-y lighting) yet the sky's are very clearly completely clear and the photo's appear to be taken slightly after mid-day. Again, the shadow angles don't exactly match. Furthermore the shadow of the car on the ground is almost non-existent. It's just a darker area, with no clearly defined edges. (Yet all other shadows are hard-edged)

It surprises me what people will debate over as to being real or not. It should be obvious.

[A Known Coward]

Re: Really?

Orange clouds reflected in the roof? You mean the orange/red _dust_ on the blue roof?

As for the shadows, the light source is behind the embankment, the car is in indirect light, the objects in the foreground are in direct light.

What's with the wild conspiracy theories? Are Google fans even crazier than Apple fans?

[imanidiot]

Re: Really?

Uhmmm, No, the car is not in indirect light, several of it's parts should be in full sunlight casting shadows. yet they are not.

And if that's supposed to represent dust on an otherwise shiny roof, they've done a very VERY poor job of it. (Seriously, go look at some real pics of actually dusty cars)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a test, nothing to see...

Its simply Google which tries to come up with new ways to delete all the wifi data these cars are slurping.

[Steen Eugen Poulsen]

Darwin award...

Uhm, not sure about AmericaM law, but isn't the guy on the video committing a crime by harming the vehicle?

[amanfromMars 1]

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