#GOOGLE MAPS GO BACK IN TIME UPDATE#

There’s also a much darker side of the apparent omnipresence of Street View and Google Maps more broadly, one that raises myriad concerns about peoples’ privacy. There are entire online communities devoted to exploring the mapping platform for unusual things, identifying everything from wild animals to sandstorms. Late family members aren’t the only surprising finds on Google Maps. “What we are increasingly seeing is the absence of participation of the people in that design.” “Increasingly, the majority of our online users are going to come from global south countries,” Faheem Hussain, a professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, told Recode. That’s especially important because Google’s approach to this data may not match up with the religious and cultural norms surrounding death practiced by many of its users across the world. More broadly, tech companies like Google hold much of the power over this sensitive and personal data, and citizens haven’t had a real role in setting norms for how data associated with decreased people ought to be handled. The images are a reminder that many people who show up in Street View don’t know their pictures are being taken, and the deceased have no say in whether or not their image remains on the service. The tweet generated more than 400,000 “Likes.”īut there’s more to the story than viral content. The phenomenon also drove a whole news cycle last year, when one Twitter user said she’d found an image of her late grandfather on Street View. It was even happening before Google introduced the time travel feature. “That makes it a little bit more something that you feel like you’ve stumbled across rather than something you’ve made happen,” she told Recode.Īgain, people have been discovering images of late loved ones on Street View for a while. It showed the house with a light on, which told Turner that her mother was home when the image was captured. She ended up finding that the last available image on Street View was from 2009. Turner, the writer, told Recode she discovered the time travel feature in Street View earlier this week, when she was trying to see what a house that belonged to her late mother, who passed away nearly four years ago, looked like now.

The time travel feature in Street View lets you compare present images to images that were captured as far back as 2007. While helping people remember dead family members isn’t really the intended purpose of Google Maps, a spokesperson told Recode it was “heartwarming” people were using the platform in this way. Google says the digital recreation of the physical world is powered by millions of cameras that capture multiple angles, collected by people “ driving, pedaling, sailing, and walking around and capturing imagery.” The company has also moved to allow users to submit their own images to supplement its own Street View. Google Maps uses lots and lots of cameras to create the immersive experience that Street View offers. This effect suggests that the creation of these 360-degree views of the world requires momentary surveillance. Somewhere along the way, Google Maps users are realizing this process has unintended consequences.

#GOOGLE MAPS GO BACK IN TIME UPDATE#

The trend points to an enduring pattern of Google forging ahead in its endless quest to map the entire world (Street View currently includes 87 countries) and constantly update that data. Google released Street View in 2007, and these types of viral Twitter posts have been happening since at least 2013. This is hardly the first time people have used the time travel feature in Street View to go searching for the departed on Google Maps - or to share the experience on social media. It is still her house, she is still alive, I am still visiting every few months on the train to Bodmin Parkway,- Sherri Turner June 16, 2021 I look at my mum’s old house on Google maps street view, the house where I grew up.

Google maps go back in time