‘Most’ of Bakersfield is now part of a limited Google map feature called Street View. In its LatLon Blog, Google recently announced adding the Street View feature for the California cities of Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, and Stockton.
If you haven’t heard of Street View before and you are from Bakersfield, go to Google Maps and look up a local address. Chances are Google will show a Street View thumbnail which you can click on to enlarge.
However, I say ‘most’ because if you turn Street View on while zooming out of Metro Bakersfield, you can see there are several gaps of areas that were not captured. In fact, my neighborhood is one that it missed. And to make things worse, when the Bakersfield imagery was first loaded and I searched for my address, it showed the view of a street a few blocks away.
I realize accurate data collection is difficult, but I would rather Google maps not return any results versus showing the view of a completely unrelated street, which is evidently what Google ended up doing.
Now when I search for my address it does not offer an incorrect thumbnail. This does, however, makes me think twice about Street View results. What if I try and use the street view feature for an area I’m not familiar with, only to find out the results it came back with are not even a true view of the area? I think the feature can still use some work.
This technology has also rasied some privacy issues for this type of imagery collection. In a recent area where the notorious Google van made its rounds, the captured imagery upset some home owners whose house displayed a little more detail than they were comfortable with.
Google eventually removed the imagery, but it shows how powerful this content can be. All one has to do is see some of the sample views on streetviewr or googlevan and you can see why this might be a problem. Regardless, it is exciting to see Bakersfield, California being included in such cutting edge technology.
Bakersfield Sign at Buck Owens Blvd
Father Garces Statue at Garces Circle