B.C. company launches Google-like street view on its website

A Vancouver-based company has launched a service that offers 360-degree, street-level views of Vancouver streets, similar to a Google service available in the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Canpages Inc., a company that publishes local directories both in print and online, announced its own Street View service earlier this week, a few days before Google launched Google Street View in 25 cities in the U.K.

So far, the Canpages service is limited to certain streets in Vancouver, Whistler and Squamish, B.C., but the company said in a news release that it plans to expand its street view to other cities across the country in coming months.

It added that it also plans to talk to advertisers about marketing features that will allow users to click on the image of a storefront to access links to videos, menus, or a website with more information.

The company uses technology from California-based MapJack, a company that provides a Google-like street view service for the San Francisco area, Lake Tahoe, and a number of cities in Thailand.

The system includes some features that are not available in Google street view, Michael Oldewening, director of marketing for Canpages, said in an email. They include:

• Full-screen mode.
• Images in pedestrian-only areas such as the Whistler Village.
• Higher resolution images than street views in some other countries.

MapJack also uses a somewhat different navigation system that Oldewening describes as "very intuitive." Interestingly, that system makes use of Google Maps.

No requests to remove images yet

So far, Oldewening said Friday afternoon, no one has requested the removal of any images from the service or reported any concerns via a link to a feedback form on each page, which automatically captures the identification number for the image the person is viewing at the time they submit the form.

In contrast, following the first day that the service launched in the UK, the BBC reported that Google had been forced to pull some of its images in response to complaints.

"It is thought the pictures removed contained revealing images of homes, a man entering a London sex shop, people being arrested and a man being sick," said the BBC's website.

Google specifies that people can make an image removal request regarding images of themselves, their children, their cars or their houses, even where the images have already been blurred.

Same privacy rules

Tamir Israel, a spokesman and articling student at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic in Ottawa, said that under Canadian law, a service like street view would have to follow the same rules whether it was operated by a Canadian company or a U.S. company.

Given that people in the images used by Canpages have their faces blurred out, and licence plate numbers are not legible, as required by Canadian privacy legislation, Israel's main concern is that the company should keep only the blurred images and not the originals, and that those images should not be used for other purposes, such as law enforcement.

He added that in B.C., the service would be governed by provincial legislation similar to the federal privacy legislation that operates in most other provinces.

Oldewening said Canpages does indeed keep the original images used in street view.

"However, it could not be seized by law enforcement without a subpoena, and we would have the right to challenge the validity of that subpoena," he added.

Google Street View, which is powered by software from Calgary-based Immersive Media, was first launched in the U.S. in May 2007.

In September 2007, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart warned the service might not comply with federal privacy legislation, as it included images of identifiable people that had been collected without their consent.

In response, Google promised that its service would look different in Canada than in the U.S., which may have meant blurring identifiable faces and licence plates. At that time, Immersive Media's fleet of camera-equipped cars had already collected images in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City for the service.

However, as of Friday, Google would not disclose when it might launch its street view in Canada.