Google Maps Street View Has Really Gone Downhill... (camera, issues, 2014)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: God's Gift to Mankind for flying anything
5,921 posts, read 13,870,992 times
Reputation: 5229
Same here, I can not see my house from Google StreetView, but then,
I can not see my house, when I myself stand on the street ...
I just checked and all I see is trees !
Guess I have to move the house closer to the street or cut all the trees ?
Somewhere, I am a bit surprised why it is important to be able to see your own hose ?
Must the same phenomenon where people take umpteen selfies.
If you think Google Maps has gone downhill, you need to take a step back and think about what life was like before any maps at all. This is free. It is a massive application that people write volumes of books about. And it is free.
One Google Maps disappointment ... dang it they've driven through my neighborhood again. When they came through less than an year ago there was a bunch of us standing in my driveway yakking away, and it was fun to go to Street View to see us waving and acting like fools. Rats, with the updated Street View, my driveway is empty (and the bushes are in a dire need of trimming).
While I do feel Google Maps has gone downhill to a degree - some of its accuracy is gone when it comes to pinpointing property numbers for example -- I agree that yes, it is free and it's huge. I cannot imagine how I could ever accomplish some of the work I do without it. Some of the "downhill" changes are probably due to privacy issues. I used to be able to zoom in on house numbers or mailbox numbers to verify a specific property, or to zoom in on business signs that were too small to read from the street. That feature is gone. Birds-eye view isn't as convenient either. I would use that in conjunction with satellite views to view a property from different angles.
Oddly, in a few instances I've encountered, Street View is no longer available for some of the roadways I "traveled" in the past. I know have to use satellite and zoom in as closely as I can.
No, I'm not an investigator nor a nosey snoop nor a stalker :-) Google Maps is a great genealogy and family history tool for one thing to pinpoint where ancestors lived. Ancient deeds used stone walls, brooks, tree stumps, etc. as boundaries. Features of Google Maps help with that. It's just that some of its accuracies are gone which means a lot more scouring and making presumptions since some of the features are now limited.
One Google Maps disappointment ... dang it they've driven through my neighborhood again. When they came through less than an year ago there was a bunch of us standing in my driveway yakking away, and it was fun to go to Street View to see us waving and acting like fools. Rats, with the updated Street View, my driveway is empty (and the bushes are in a dire need of trimming).
While I do feel Google Maps has gone downhill to a degree - some of its accuracy is gone when it comes to pinpointing property numbers for example -- I agree that yes, it is free and it's huge. I cannot imagine how I could ever accomplish some of the work I do without it. Some of the "downhill" changes are probably due to privacy issues. I used to be able to zoom in on house numbers or mailbox numbers to verify a specific property, or to zoom in on business signs that were too small to read from the street. That feature is gone. Birds-eye view isn't as convenient either. I would use that in conjunction with satellite views to view a property from different angles.
Oddly, in a few instances I've encountered, Street View is no longer available for some of the roadways I "traveled" in the past. I know have to use satellite and zoom in as closely as I can.
No, I'm not an investigator nor a nosey snoop nor a stalker :-) Google Maps is a great genealogy and family history tool for one thing to pinpoint where ancestors lived. Ancient deeds used stone walls, brooks, tree stumps, etc. as boundaries. Features of Google Maps help with that. It's just that some of its accuracies are gone which means a lot more scouring and making presumptions since some of the features are now limited.
From Google Maps Help...........
See street-level imagery from the past
You can see street-level imagery from the past using Street View in the new Google Maps. For example, see how your neighborhood has changed over time.
Drag the Pegman from the bottom right corner, then drop it on the map.
If past imagery is available, you’ll see the clock icon in the top left of the map.
Click the clock icon and use the slider that appears to go further back in time.
by virtue of the fact that many of the street views have been replaced with aerial views only.
Google Maps has obviously suffered a major crash, and they lost a lot of their data. Whether they will be able to recover that data or not, who knows. It looks to me like most of their imagery from the last year or so, has been replaced with older images.
Fortunately there is an alternative, Bing Maps Streetside. I gave up on Google Maps a couple of years ago anyway.
Here is the Streetside coverage map. Once Bing finishes covering the entire country, Google Streetview will be irrelevant.
Maybe someone complained and Google removed it. Google didn't waste millions on dudes driving around the world in trucks taking pictures to just all of a sudden get rid of street view.
I’m not so sure. Google wasted millions on developing the old Google Maps to perfection, only to throw it all away and replaced it with the new castrated Google Maps that everybody hates. They wasted millions on Google Glasses only to then stop producing them. Google has got a lot of millions to waste, and they have shown that they will do it.
In order to get the street-view, the Google-cam has to have been there...or a User has contributed content.
I am quite impressed with Google-maps.
Five years ago I would have agreed with you. I think it was probably one of the single best designed web services that I have ever seen. Google Maps was pretty much perfection. I had no complaints with it. But after what they have done with it in the last five years, I don’t think it is impressive anymore. It has gone down the toilet.
One Google Maps disappointment ... dang it they've driven through my neighborhood again. When they came through less than an year ago there was a bunch of us standing in my driveway yakking away, and it was fun to go to Street View to see us waving and acting like fools. Rats, with the updated Street View, my driveway is empty (and the bushes are in a dire need of trimming).
While I do feel Google Maps has gone downhill to a degree - some of its accuracy is gone when it comes to pinpointing property numbers for example -- I agree that yes, it is free and it's huge. I cannot imagine how I could ever accomplish some of the work I do without it. Some of the "downhill" changes are probably due to privacy issues. I used to be able to zoom in on house numbers or mailbox numbers to verify a specific property, or to zoom in on business signs that were too small to read from the street. That feature is gone. Birds-eye view isn't as convenient either. I would use that in conjunction with satellite views to view a property from different angles.
I don’t think this problem has to do with privacy issues, but I do wish that one of these mapping companies would stand up to the privacy advocates and tell them, that they do NOT have privacy from the street. People have a right to take pictures of you or your house from the street. You can’t stop them. Google and other companies by giving in to these idiots and blurring out their faces and house numbers, are just creating an expectation of privacy, that doesn’t legally exist.
Also, I do agree that the privacy blurring on the images diminishes the value. Being able to read business signs and address numbers is important. Because Googles location data is not always accurate. I have searched for addresses on Google maps, and when I looked at the image of the house it was not even the right address. The correct house was a half block or even father away.
Five years ago I would have agreed with you. I think it was probably one of the single best designed web services that I have ever seen. Google Maps was pretty much perfection. I had no complaints with it. But after what they have done with it in the last five years, I don’t think it is impressive anymore. It has gone down the toilet.
UMMM, what is it that makes you say GM has degraded in the last 5 years???
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Pegman from the bottom right corner, then drop it on the map.
clock icon in the top left of the map.
I gave up on Google Maps a couple of years ago anyway. 
