Capturing a moment in time, from here to Antarctica

Nothing makes people quite so house-proud, we now know, as the knowledge that their home has been preserved in digital aspic by Google. Only the penguins seem unconcerned

WE NORMALLY SEE our houses every day, and unless a fire is raging, or somebody is breaking in, there isn’t much reason to pass comment. But in the past few days people have been paying extremely close attention to their homes and their streets and their neighbourhoods, and all because Google Street View has finally included the highways and byways of Ireland.

The service, which began with five US cities in 2007 and now includes 25 countries, allows users of Google Maps to switch to a panoramic street-level view, moving up and down streets with the click of a mouse, zooming in and out of details, and gazing up to the sky and down to the ground. It is an exhilarating slice of sci-fi made real, and its initial impact when it went live on Thursday seemed to be remarkably universal: “What does my house look like?”

Nothing makes people quite so house-proud, we now know, as the knowledge that their home has been preserved in digital aspic by Google’s roving camera cars. Has the grass been cut, is the laundry dangling on the line, how is the fresh coat of paint looking?

At which point many people will realise that while Google Street View is certainly a step into the future, it’s also a window into the past. Far from offering an up-to-the-minute view of our streets and roads, many of the images are up to 18 months old. Certain buildings are still unfinished, advertising hoardings trumpet old movies, shops that no longer exist appear to be open for business. The cumulative effect is like seeing a temporally confused patchwork image of Irish street life.

After you’ve moved on from looking at your house and neighbourhood on Street View, it is the snapshots of everyday lives that truly resonate, from a farmer in a field in Co Tipperary to the homeless on the boardwalk in Dublin.

Sure to become a classic is the image of a young boy displaying perfect poise and pure concentration as he drop-kicks a plastic bottle at the Google van in Dublin’s north inner city. It can’t be long before someone creates a website of particularly amusing Street View vignettes.

But if looking at people captured in their daily lives is a major part of its appeal, surely the privacy concerns that follow Google Street View everywhere it goes might have some substance. Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic are just some of the countries to take legal action against the service on privacy grounds, despite Google’s practice of blurring faces and car-registration plates.

The fear that Street View could facilitate especially thorough burglars is another often-repeated complaint – famously, residents in the English village of Broughton blocked the streets when Google’s camera cars came driving by in 2009. Given that the UK boasts the highest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world, and that most burglars tend to be more opportunistic than meticulous, these fears seem misplaced. Google undoubtedly poses a threat to our privacy, but more because of the retention of data from our searches and electronic communication than because of the photographing of publicly accessible streets. In a particularly damaging story last year, it was revealed that Google’s camera cars had collected huge amounts of data from people’s private wireless networks, apparently inadvertently. Data like that is potentially far more threatening than pictures of our houses.

At Street View’s launch the Minister for Tourism, Mary Hanafin, said she hoped the service could “deliver a welcome boost to visitor numbers to Ireland” by showcasing our country’s natural beauty. But while certain beauty spots do look splendid in Street View – Kylemore, in particular, is worth a virtual visit – some of the most famous of all, such as the Cliffs of Moher, the Aran Islands and Glendalough, aren’t easily accessible to Google’s camera cars. Even in the Street View of Dublin it’s impossible, bizarrely, to cross the Ha’penny Bridge or to travel down Grafton Street. Still, it’s probably wise to keep the truly special attractions for the visitors who actually, well, visit here.

Google simultaneously launched Street View Brazil and, rather unexpectedly, Street View Antarctica, so you can now take a Street View world tour around all seven continents. But while it might encourage people to visit Ireland, I’m not sure it will do the same for the southern reaches of the planet – the views of the penguin population on Half Moon Island nonchalantly staring at some visiting humans photographing them doesn’t make polar exploration look like the most thrilling of activities. At least there won’t be any privacy complaints from the locals.