Google Street View heads off road in Britain

BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Google Street View has moved off road to record images of popular tourist destinations. Among the sites of interest are the ancient rings at Stonehenge, the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, Wales, the Angel of the North and Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland. The locations were picked following an online campaign launched by Google and the travel and tourism body VisitBritain who asked the public to name their top tourist treasures.

Google said it had dispatched a Google Street View Trike, a 115 kg machine with a camera mounted on pole behind the rider. The trike is designed to make imagery collections in places less accessible by cars, such as historic landmarks and coastal paths.

While Google Street View has courted controversy in its mapping of some 25 towns and cities across Britain, the latest venture shows many are warming to the online mapping service. When launched in April this year, Street View was criticized by some members of the British public for breaching their privacy. While Google maintains it blurs out faces and car number plates, some images did manage to slip pass the vetting process.

In some parts of Britain local residents have even impeded the progress of the Google car, blocking its way by linking arms across the street. Police were called to the small village of Broughton to the north of London last April when the Google car arrived to take pictures. However, the Information Commissioner's Office, which is responsible for regulating compliance with the Data Protection Act, rejected calls for the service to be suspended.