Earth Google ??

[Helena]

I have known or perhaps even seen this before..somehow you can see your homestead from a photo taken from the sky. nOr anyone's or any place.. I'm sure it is to benefit Uncle Sam and I find it angers me. I know..I live in my own little fairy tale world and believe that I have a private life on my few little acres of land.. But who in the heck..gives the right to "spy" on us. When did I vote on that law to be passed. I understand that it is for national securtiy...( please give me a few minutes to stop laughing here).. but it just upsets me to think that at anytime, anyone can see what we are doing or what we aren't doing. I'm sure if I was walking around naked all of the time they would stop in a hurry with the photos..What do you all say !!???

[Amylb999]

Well no, people can't see what you're doing at any time with Google Earth. Those satellite photos are taken once every few years. In fact the one of my house was taken in '92,,I didn't even live here yet. They're not detailed enough to show people, you can barely make out cars in a lot of them. (although I'm sure the governments images are detailed enough to look in our windows,,now there's a thought)

[ginnie5]

well if you really want to be annoyed check out the streetview on google maps..........in quite a few places they have gone thru taking actual pics of your house and land and posted them...

[cfabe]

The images you see on most of those websites aren't satellite images, they are arial photos taken from airplanes. And they are nothing new, local and state governments have been taking them for decades, since the 50s at least.

The Google StreetView pictures are taken from a car driving down the street, same thing anyone else could see driving down your road, what's the big deal?

[Helena]

Whew !!! Then I guess I'm safe from prying eyes !! Not that I have anything worth "prying" for...but it makes you wonder why they do this at all if everything is so outdated..

[Country Lady]

A lot of homes have air and street shots on zillow.com. We've lived in several different states and can pull up the estimated value of each house we've lived in the past. If you want to be noisy, you can pull up your friends house too.

[house06]

I know there is some concern about privacy violations but I think it is really really cool to be able to see places of interest in the world like the Eiffel Tower ( looks different from space than being there) The great wall of China and the Pyramids. I guess I am just looking at it from the educational standpoint.

[watcher]

Its really great for us. I can't tell you how many times the wife has called me asking me to get on google earth and find an address or if such and such street has any trees (she drives a car hauler and can't drive down tree lined roads) as well as many other things.

FYI, in the mid 70's I saw a 'spy' satellite photo on which you could not only clearly see a man standing on a tank but also the tracks of the tank on the ground behind it.

[tiffnzacsmom]

I like having street views accessible on my phone via google maps when I'm driving for work. Not all of our houses are clearly or visibly addressed from the street and some locations I take my clients too are in neighborhoods where I wouldn't want to get lost by passing the location. My house has nothing visible on google earth but the house I work at is, but its missing the driveway so it has to be a number of years old.

[MariaAZ]

Originally Posted by house06

I know there is some concern about privacy violations but I think it is really really cool to be able to see places of interest in the world like the Eiffel Tower ( looks different from space than being there) The great wall of China and the Pyramids. I guess I am just looking at it from the educational standpoint.

The Nazca lines in Peru are absolutely breathtaking from the maps.

[Windy in Kansas]

Many of the images are grainy and often there is no close ups available for rural America. The better images available seem to be of cities, especially the larger ones.

I agree that the images are quite dated.

It is amazing what shows up in the photos. My old family farm photo clearly shows where an old fence line used to be that has never been there during my brothers and my lifetime--meaning it was removed over 65 years ago.

I believe it is Flash Earth that hosts several image hosts and actually gives me better images than Google. I'm not at home so don't have a link at hand.

[Jennifer L.]

I LOVE Google Earth! I'm someone who never goes anywhere and now I can go see a lot of places. It's fun to just let it drift over the country, and find interesting spots. I've used it locally, too, when I wanted to find out what was down a road I've never bothered to drive down before.

Sure is a resource hog on the computer, but well worth it. The pics of my place are about three years old. (I can see the ruts I put in out back of the barn when I was trying to get a dead cow out to the edge of the woods when the ground wasn't as frozen as I thought it was. Got royally stuck that day! Now preserved for all to see! LOL!)

Jennifer

[NWoods_Hippie]

No good close ups here either, and the guy and who used to live here and I looked at the pic from Google Earth and we figure it was taken about 5 years ago. No worries here!!

Margie