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City Requests Removal from Google Maps
By Julie | May 31, 2008
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune today reports that the city of North Oaks, Minnesota, has requested that all street-level images of their community be removed from Google Maps.
Google says that no community has ever issued such a blanket request. This doesn’t surprise me - North Oaks, sometimes known as the ‘Forbidden City,’ is somewhat unique. All roads in North Oaks are private land, which means that the typical Google approach to getting street-level images - sending in a car with a dashboard camera - isn’t legal to use. Non-residents (or uninvited guests) using the roads in North Oaks is considered trespassing.
North Oaks aren’t requesting to Yahoo or MSN that satellite-level images of the city be removed from their services. However, satellite image collection would not violate right-of-way rules on city streets as the Google street-level collection does.
Interesting stuff.
Topics: !, MSN, data collection, google, local search, minneapolis, privacy, search engine features, society, yahoo |
June 1st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Google appears to have complied.
I have a fundamental ideological problem with the very notion of private streets. No such thing should be allowed.