Home of Former British PM ‘no longer available’ on Google Street View

Google has removed the pictures of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s home from its Street View web service, The Daily Mail reports.

Typing Tony Blair’s address on the website providing three-dimensional images of streets, including close-ups of buildings, now results in the message: ‘This image is no longer available’.

The paper notes, though, that while the front of the house is not visible on the map, the building can still be seen from a different angle.

Images of the House of Commons, the entrance to Downing Street and several Government departments were also blocked.

Although even the former prime minister did not manage to escape the all-seeing cameras, the privacy of Dennis Woodside – the boss of UK Google – has never been violated. His London house stands on a private road inaccessible to his company’s cameras.

Street View was launched on March 19, 2009 and the pictures were still available on Friday, March 20 but were removed the next day.

Privacy issues

The service has attracted criticism for intrusion into private life. On the very day of the launch it was forced to remove pictures of people leaving sex shops or vomiting in the street.

Also, according to Google spokesperson Laura Scott, the company has received several hundred requests for the removal of private properties from the maps. “I can’t be precise about the figure but it’s below 1,000, which isn’t bad considering tens of millions of locations can be seen on the site,� she is quoted as saying.

Google says it will comply with nearly all requests to black out buildings. For this, a person simply needs to fill in a special form on the Street View website.

Another British newspaper, the Independent on Sunday, has reported, that the Metropolitan Police denied claims by Google that it had been consulted about Street View prior to its launch. "We have not been involved in discussions with Google regarding their product development," the edition quotes a Scotland Yard spokesman as saying.

In another development, Google has also removed images of naked toddlers playing in a garden square in north London, captured by the cameras. The faces of the children are easily identifiable.

Earlier Google said "99.99 per cent" of faces seen in Street View would be blurred but on Sunday it had to admit this had been “a figure of speech� and that “the technique is not totally perfect�.

About Street View

Street View appeared in the US in 2007 and has since been expanded to France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

The British version has tens of millions of photos of 25 major cities. These include London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Manchester, Oxford and Leeds.
It is expected more locations will be added over the next few years, with photos updating regularly every two or three years.