Revealed: Street View's UK invasion schedule

Those of us who've been keeping close tabs on Google's Orwellian Opel Street View spycars and their inexorable progress across the UK and beyond recently pondered how long it would be before every highway and byway fell to the search monolith's all-seeing eye. Well, we've just received some evidence indicating the complete …

[Tony Barnes]

Any other vehicle types...?

I was sat having my lunch by the park the other day, and a big white van with a large camera roof attachment as per the google cars drove by. Emblazoned on it's side was simply the word "surveying"....

My grab for my camera phone was too slow to commit it to a photo, but it was a very different beast to the ones I've seen pictured! Is someone else capturing the country??

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptop

I'm surprised someone didn't have away that laptop. Could have probably found out a lot from that...

[Mart]

Non-privatised pay to enter roads

I notice Google is moving in on the south-west I wonder if they will take a trip through Longleat safari's roads? I'd love to see them trying to go through the monkey enclosure with them camera mounts haha

[David]

"the UK's roads extend around 233,000 miles"

Surely they're not intending on covering *every* mile of road? I was expecting them only to cover urban areas (though as they've been spotted in some pretty small Highland towns maybe not).

[dervheid]

If you left it like that in any 'inner city' area...

anything of value would have been stripped off/out within 5 minutes and the remainder put to use as a decorative bonfire!

[Tim Brown]

Did he have it all down on a scrap of paper because....

... the imba online scheduling and task management system that Google have undoubtedly provided, doesn't work properly??

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't believe it.

Tim brown makes a good point, as does Anonymous Coward r.e. leaving a laptop on show. And to top it off, handily leaving the pad open on that page? Even labelled as 'Google Work Schedule'?

Come on. Someone's telling porkypies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does my arse look big in this...?

Whilst holidaying in Paris in May, I happened to spot a similar looking car driving along Boulevard Haussman. The only difference is that the Frenchies had Google logos all over their car, so there was no mistaking it (oh and the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car.... those crazy frogs!).

I wanted to drop my trousers, bend over and let them take a shot of my arse as they drove by but the wife wouldn't let me do it. Something about embarrassing her on one of the busiest streets in Paris.

If someone can get me their UK schedule then I'll gladly oblige and bare my bum on one of Blighty's streets for Google to capture for posterity.

[Mike]

Typical

once again, a major corporation seems incapable of getting further SW than Weston-Super-Mud.

I'll just have to add them to the list of organizations who believe the entire peninsula to be occupied by straw-chewing sheep-molesting cousin-marrying bumpkins, and thus need to have their board of directors suitably pitchforked into understanding that we do have tarmac-covered highways southwest of Bristol, and very few of them these days still have grass growing up the middle.

Alien, cos that's what the rest of the world seems to think we ooh-arrrrrr.

[billyghoti]

Google car in Belfast

The Google camera car was stopped outside my house in SE Belfast, Northern Ireland, a few months ago. I think it was in early June. It was spotted a couple of times in the same area over the next few days.

Les Clarke

Belfast

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tim Brown

>the imba online scheduling and task management system that

>Google have undoubtedly provided, doesn't work properly??

Of course it doesn't work - it's only a beta. Oh wait....

[Anonymous Coward]

I WANT A JOB!!!

C'Mon......

i got 10yrs NCB, probably driven 300,000 miles+, got super clean drivers licence(never had any points), though i do sometime drive like an OAP (yeah that means i obey the speed limits!!!)

so who or what agency do i need to chuck my CV off to, to get in on the Gig.

can i do cornwall Please..... :)

i've been on the Dole for 9months looking for an IT job in East Anglia, and:

a: i'm on first name terms with most of the job center staff there.

b: they are really getting pissed that i cannot get a suitable job in IT.

SO GISAJOB MATE :)

[Si Lo]

I for one...

Welcome our multicoloured billionaire overlords and will gladly play ball with them.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Does my arse look big in this...?

"I'll gladly oblige and bare my bum on one of Blighty's streets for Google to capture for posterity."

Don't you mean posteriority?

[Vince]

In Exeter weeks ago...

I don't have a photo, but I saw the google vehicle in many parts of Exeter a few weeks back, so they're covering a lot of area pretty quickly.

[Anonymous Coward]

"suitable jobs"

"on the Dole for 9months looking for an IT job in East Anglia"

"i cannot get a suitable job in IT"

How about either:

A) stop messing around with your frequent visits to the Job Centre. In my experience, it's merely an extension of social services rather than a viable shop window for 2suitable jobs" - a quick online search is sufficient,

B) trying for "a suitable job" outwith East Anglia,

C) trying for "a job" in East Anglia.

If I were a boss looking over CVs I'd immediately be wary of anyone with gaps in their employment history. Being on the dole doing nothing is bad for the soul. You'd be better off working at Burger King. There are always jobs to be had.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Blanks on the Opel Map

Heard a rumour in the Pub the other night that the reason the Opels have not been seen with their cameras in the West Highlands is down to the RSPB. The rumour has it that Google were warned off and threatened with prosecution if the presence of their photographers disturbed nesting protected species such as the tarball eagle which nest in the potholes specially created in the roads. It seems that the Roads Dept have also been instructed to stay away from the potholes.

On the other hand maybe our privacy is being guarded by the midge and the tree munching beaver.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reactionary much?

I would have thought that if any population knows what Orwellian actually refers to, it would be Brits. Obviously, however, I thought wrong. El Reg might do a better job retaining its credibility if it wasn't foaming at the mouth obsessing over Google. What is this, the tenth, fifteenth story about the exact same thing? Yes, Google is doing streetview in the UK. We get it. Streetview takes pictures of exactly what tens of thousands of anybody walking down the street sees anyway.

Streetview does -not- record live imagery from every conceivable angle and feed it to the government, so they can get on a f*cking megaphone and tell you to disperse. THAT, my friends, is Orwellian - and you might do well to remember it, before you spend so much time ranting about non-issues that you fail to notice your last shred of *real* freedom being snaffled from under your quivering noses.

[Dave]

@ billyghoti

Update the map with that, thats the only sighting in Norn Iron so far

[Anonymous Coward]

@Does my arse look big in this...?

i thought of hanging a giant banner reading "fuck off google!" on the front of my house, if they were ever rumoured to be in my area. but then found they'd already done it while i'd been away on me jollydays. maybe some of the rest of you can run with the idea; get an old bedsheet, paint 'fuck off google!' on it and keep it handy to dangle out the window if you see them coming.

think of that wartime community spirit as entire neighbourhoods work out early warning systems - rattling dustbin lids to warn of the approach of the googlemobile - which then has to trundle down a street where every house is sports a large anti-google paint daubed bedsheet. i'd like to see their [google's] photoshop monkeys try and fix *those* images.

[Anonymous Coward]

NuLiaBore March On Crushing Civil Liberty

I've no doubt either the NuLabour fascists are behind this exercise in photographing every street, it being masqueraded as 'google' doing it, but I've no doubt financed by the authoritarian fascists in government. Either that or the difference seen in cars equipped with cameras patrolling our streets is a perfect cover for the government and local councils to snoop and spy on every street with the view to taxing us all more to death than they already do.

Do you trust this government?

[Dan]

Watching the watchers

did anyone see the Google spycar drive past the roving reporter on TV at the weekend? Watching them watching us watching them(?!)

[Anonymous Coward]

@David Wiernicki

"El Reg might do a better job retaining its credibility if it wasn't foaming at the mouth obsessing over Google."

Calm down dear - you seem to have suffered a sense of humour failure... or presumably a sense of "humor" failure. The only person who needs to work on retaining their credibility is you.

[Dave]

Calculation

Did that calculation include any estimate for the need to reverse back down dead-ends, and the need to re-traverse roads due to non-optimal routing?

Please, if you are going to be scientific then you need to show all of your working: please set an example for kids who are still in school.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that be "Posteriority"

If someone can get me their UK schedule then I'll gladly oblige and bare my bum on one of Blighty's streets for Google to capture for posterity.

[Steve Babb]

I for one....

...would like to tell the google gaggle to bugger off back to the Mainland.

The Isle of Man, exempt from StreetView, last bastion of civil freedom. Ahem, and home of really low tax. But we're mainly here for the civil freedom, honest....

[David Ramsden]

Street View car in Sunny Spain

The title says it all really. I've got a photo, but dont know who to send it to.

Google maps link.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=101440302271748359109.00045819c2788756e38a5&ll=36.640877,-4.482065&spn=0.000519,0.001207&t=h&z=20

[John Lewis]

Black Opels hit Devon

Mike, they're west of Weston now. I spotted one in central Exeter this morning - regret had no camera so cannot add it to the infamous map.

[Josh]

Street View car on the prowl in Cambridgeshire

Friday 3 October, 0830 on the A10 northbound just coming off the Stretham Roundabout: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cb24+9lq&ie=UTF8&ll=52.347813,0.212989&spn=0.004647,0.009656&z=17

Thursday 9 October, 0855 on the A10 northbound again, on the approach to Ely:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cb6+2wh&ie=UTF8&ll=52.376844,0.245304&spn=0.004486,0.009656&z=17