Google's Street View proves popular

21 March 2009 04:33pm

Google's controversial new mapping service may have sparked some privacy fears, but it is proving a hit with intrigued British internet users.

Google Maps UK received one in every 250 UK internet visits on Friday, with onsite traffic rising by 41%, web monitoring firm Hitwise claimed.

The firm added US Google Maps posted an 84% increase in visits as British web users began checking out places in America.

The Street View application allows users to access 360-degree views of roads and homes in 25 British cities and includes photographs of millions of residential addresses, people and cars.

Google said some businesses had been quick to make the most of the new technology.

Within 45 minutes of the facility going live one person had reportedly created a helpful driving route tool.

Another site which allows property owners to rent unused driveways, garages or car parks to other drivers, integrated Street View so owners could show prospective tenants their parking space before committing to renting it.

Sophisticated technology has been developed automatically to obscure the faces of people featured in Street View photographs, and car registration plates have been blurred, but such efforts have failed to quieten critics, with many labelling the maps voyeuristic and intrusive.

Scores of pictures, including one of a man exiting a Soho sex shop and another of a man being sick on the pavement outside a pub in Shoreditch, were removed from Street View a day after its fanfare launch in the UK.

A Google spokeswoman said the number of removal requests had reached the "hundreds", but it had been "less than expected" given the "tens of millions" of images available on the site.

© The Press Association