Google Earth in your neighborhhood?

riptides · Dec 28, 2009

Not impressed. My address shows up 1/4 mile down the road, on my neighbors cow shed.
Been that way since terraserver came online. Hope it stays that way too. Even zillow can't find me.

charlz · Dec 28, 2009

Overall I kinda like the 'street view'. If I am going to some new store that I have never been to I will map it on Google Maps and look at the street view to see if I can figure out what the building looks like so I can drive straight to it when I get in the vicinity. I think it is just as accurate as the driving directions... they don't take you right to the doorstep, just the 'area'.

I've been using Google Earth for a while now to layout 'tracks' in the desert, download them to my handheld GPS and then go ride them. Kinda fun because on Google Earth you can see things that you would never see from ground level and with the GPS on the bike you can ride right to them.

buckeyefarmer · Dec 28, 2009

I just looked up a real estate web site that had the google street view posted on the page for the listing, they also included the complete tax records, such as when the house was last bought, how much was paid for it, the tax record description of the property, # bedrooms, etc as compared to what the realtor says it has. they even had school info, neighbor demographics including salaries of the neighborhood. the picture google puts out is nothing compared to what others are putting out about your house.

MossRoad · Dec 28, 2009

Street views is kind of neat. I looked at our property and then panned to look down the road. There was a car in front of the google car. I kept pushing the forward button and the google car kept following it down the road. It went quite a ways before disappearing. I think the google car turned off and went down another road.

There is also some story out there that a google car actually caught a crime being committed. Don't know if it is urban legend or not, but hey, I read it on the internet, so it must be true, right?

JayC · Dec 28, 2009

Ever wonder what life is like as a Google car driver?

YouTube - Google Street View Guys

JB4310 · Dec 28, 2009

buckeyefarmer said:
they also included the complete tax records, such as when the house was last bought, how much was paid for it, the tax record description of the property, # bedrooms, etc as compared to what the realtor says it has. they even had school info, neighbor demographics including salaries of the neighborhood. the picture google puts out is nothing compared to what others are putting out about your house.

That's just the towns local assessors data base, like I was referring to earlier. Could only find info for the specific town who's site you were on. Some towns are more up to steam with their GIS systems than others, but paper maps and records are definitely going the way of the VCR.

The young fella that handles the GIS cross over for our town is the most sought after employee in town, from several different agencies.

I'm sure some crooks are using this technology, but so is Law Enforcement, it's starting to get weaved into the 911 system.
So when a cop pulls up to an address they can pull up these images on their cruiser's lap tops and be more familiar with the lay out.

JB.

marimus · Dec 28, 2009

CurlyDave said:
The satellite image they have our our place is about 5 years old, and our house doesn't show at all.

I wish they would update it, not because I need to know what my place looks like, but because I want to know of all the other home sites around me, which is difficult with the hills, winding roads and woods.

Just be aware of who is in what direction if I should happen to want to take a shot.

The imagery for my place was well out of date like yours, but when I checked last night they had updated it.

Its now only about 6 months out of date for my area, and shows nearly all of the improvements i've made

It also shows more detail than the old fuzzy images they had before, I can even see my tractor parked near my orchard