I’m originally from the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham) and they think nothing of realigning or totally changing an intersection. Offhand, I’d say that frequency of updates would be a problem in every area on the fastest-growing lists.

I’m sorry, the Google thing does show both sides of the street and I was mistaken. I had just taken the arrows at their word and it wasn’t until I was verifying my last comment that I found, you can ignore the arrows and who knows, you may even be able to go the wrong way down the street.

Still, the pics aren’t very clear and the interface is quite clunky. Someday, it might amount to something for the big cities, but it has a long ways to go, if you ask me.

Sure, there’s some “wow” factor, but both of them look like they’ll be more of a novelty. Heck, pretty much all of the map services get the occasional address wrong and I know that Google has a long ways to go, just to catch-up with Microsoft with their aerial shots of rural areas. There’s a lot of America out there and other than being a cute thing for a few cities, I really don’t see it expanding to cover everywhere anytime soon and right this minute, they’re both only useful for one side of the street.

As for privacy, I don’t know how the courts will rule or what the future may hold, but someday there’s going to be some guy’s car caught in front of his mistress’ house and it’ll be permanently archived in Google. And, I suspect the privacy risks is one of the reasons, my simple playing seemed to jump-over or blur people sitting on stoops.

Discreet, you don’t think this can be useful? What if I want to see the what the store I’m trying to get to looks like so I know what I’m actually looking for? Or how about what an intersection will look like so I know where to turn before I pass the road sign? Or seeing the neighborhood from ground level when I’m checking out a house listed for sale. This definitely can be very useful. Compiled video from the frames would be the cool but not useful feature. And privacy? These are public roads and views. Google is just making them easily accessible. If showing what a public street looks like was a privacy concern then local tv news would be impossible.

Though, if you’d like to tour Manhattan, one click per ten feet, then it really looks like a cool service and it might even be fun to look for a stoop-sitter, they didn’t blur.