Google is busying driving cars with cameras mounted on top all over England, taking pictures of every single house in the country. Google promises to obscure significant details, which has led to bizarre photos with people's faces blurred out. A lot of British citizens are outraged, since anyone with a Web browser will be able to snoop around the front of your home from a distance. It sounds like a lovely tool for burglars, who will no longer have to risk driving through neighborhoods to case houses--they can do it from the safety and security of their own home.
Ditto with nosy neighbors, stalkers, and anyone else who might be disgruntled or angry. It's hard to understand what value Google is adding here. One might argue this might be quite useful for stores, who want customers to be able to find them easily, but the main effect of this new Google service would seem to be just another opportunity for Google to sell ad space. Google's corporate motto (Don't be evil) more and more just seems to be a sick joke. Google seems determined find a way to usurp every kind of information in the world, turn it into proprietary intellectual property, and then sell ad space.