EDITORIAL – Google Maps’ Street View helpful, fun

Google has put us on the map. Literally.

As of yesterday, Pittsburgh joins bigger, busier… Google has put us on the map. Literally.

As of yesterday, Pittsburgh joins bigger, busier cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to be one of the 14 cities people can tour online using Google Maps’ Street View. This unique service enables users to view three-dimensional-like photos of almost anywhere in the city, from a small street in Oakland to the main roads of Monroeville.

To put it plainly, this is totally freaking sweet.

Street View offers Pittsburghers and non-Pittsburghers alike a real-life blueprint to the city.

By dragging a cursor to almost any point on a map of the city, you are automatically placed in a virtual Pittsburgh, where you can move backward, forward, side-to-side or upward to stare at the sky.

Street View is easy to use and up to date. And it’s perfect for those of us who are navigationally challenged, who need to see landmarks in order to get from place to place easily.

We are pleasantly surprised that Pittsburgh was chosen as one of the cities featured on Street View, even though there are other bigger cities in the United States that are still not included.

We’re not sure if this will necessarily make Pittsburgh a more popular city among tourists, but it’s certainly going to help by equipping prospective visitors with a tool to help familiarize them with our city.

Also, Street View is just plain fun, like a good old-fashioned “Where’s Waldo?” book. You can find pictures of your house and your friends’ houses. You might catch sight of your car parked on a street near campus. In fact, the person crossing the street in the Forbes Avenue photos might just be you.

And obviously, that’s the problem. Since Street View’s debut in May, privacy and security issues have been raised. According to the Post-Gazette, in Miami’s Street View, users can see a man receiving a ticket from the police. According to The New York Times, a Street View photograph taken in Palo Alto, Calif. shows two bikini-clad young women sunbathing near the Stanford University campus. In a statement, Google said that privacy is a serious issue for the company and that it carefully reviewed the possible privacy problems of Street View before the service was started months ago.

According to The New York Times, Google said, “Street View only features imagery taken on public property