Big brother Google is cycling around campus

A Google employee cycled around the Tilburg University campus on a supersonic camera bike to take pictures for Google Street View on Monday. Soon potential Dutch and foreign students can explore the campus through the Internet.

Google Street View was invited by the department of Communication & Marketing. The free service is good marketing promotion for the university.

To protect  the privacy of students and staff, faces and license plates of cars will be blurred out of all pictures. That’s why it takes about two months before the photos will be published in Google Maps.

Street View is a service of Google which enables internet users to see 360-degree panoramic pictures of streets at street level. The service is causing a lot of headaches over at Google, as posting images of people and private residences could mean a violation of individual privacy and more and more countries have data protection watchdogs.