Google Street View is now available in several Canadian cities. The Google Maps feature shows high-resolution street-level images on the wed and is now available in the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver (north to Whistler and east to Chilliwack), Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo, Ottawa and Windsor, as well as Calgary, Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta, Montreal and the surrounding area, Quebec City and Halifax.
Google Street View has been available in the United State since 2007 and is currently available in the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, and Japan. While Google has been filming Street View images in Canadian cities since 2007, a similar street view service provided by Canpages was launched in March 2009 covering Vancouver, Whistler, and Squamish.
Delays in launching North of the Border were due to privacy concerns brought up by Canada's privacy commissioner. Google has added privacy features to Street View, including the automatic blurring of faces and licence plates to avoid identifying people and cars and adding an easy method for asking that images be removed.
Since British Columbia falls outside the jurisdiction of the federal privacy commissioner (its laws are similar to federal laws and therefore take precedence), Canpages was able to launch their BC-only service. If Canpages expands its imagery to other provinces then they can expect a call from Canada's privacy commissioner.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. As a first step to fulfilling that mission,... [more]
Rob Lewis
Rob is the President of Techvibes Media Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of Techvibes.com.
His diverse background includes stints in International Trade Finance, Web Development, and Enterprise Software and he is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Simon Fraser University.
When not blogging on...[more]
