May 11, 2011 4.20 pm This story is over 154 months old

Google Street View cars return to Lincoln

Smile, you’re on camera!: Google Street View cars collecting street level imagery are back in Lincoln.

Google Street View cars are back in Lincoln to gather fresh images of the city.

The distinctive cars with a 360-degree camera on top have been spotted in several locations across the city over the past days.

The Street View cars are in Lincoln to capture new images of the city’s streets in order to give an accurate view of the latest developments.

A Google spokesperson told The Lincolnite: “We can’t go into the details or driving schedules as this can change based on a number of conditions, but we can confirm that we update and refresh our imagery on Street View from time to time.”

University of Lincoln Masters student Samuel Cox (22) said he saw the Google Street View cameras and the cars before on the internet, but never in person until Tuesday.

“It was valuable watching it in action. I’ll hopefully be frozen in Street View hyper reality once it all gets uploaded,” he said.

Google Street View car in Lincoln on May 10 spotted by Samuel Cox on St Faith’s Street.

Google Street View is an adjacent service featured in Google Maps and Earth that provides panoramic views from streets across the world.

Besides exploring the great cities of the world with Street View, you can also look at your street and see if Google caught you on camera.

The service was first launched in the UK in 2009, with the street level images of Lincoln going live in March 2010.

Google landed in hot water in several countries in 2010 after it revealed that its Street View were gathering extracts of personal Web activity from Wi-Fi networks.

Besides gathering street level 3D imagery, Street View cars were scanning local Wi-Fi networks and used the data for the company’s location services.

Google said it would delete the sensitive information (including email addresses and passwords) that it illegally captured from Wi-Fi networks across the UK.

In summer 2010 Google resumed collecting Street View imagery in the UK and said Wi-Fi data collection equipment has been removed from cars.

Main Photo: Byrion Smith