SOME LIMERICK AREAS are left out of Google’s Street View service, which launched in Ireland last week.
Moyross, Ballynanty and St. Mary’s Park are three of the neighbourhoods excluded from the online mapping service, which catalogues 55,000 kilometres in Ireland.
Google did not send its cars into the areas of Limerick most associated with gangland activity, but other areas in Irish cities also associated with crime are included.
Normal maps are available for the areas, but a street-level view is not.
Local resident Daniel Sullivan spotted the omission, and spoke to the Sunday Business Post. “Google has gone into places such as Inglewood in LA but not here” he said.
“Any place in a town or city that is not covered by Street View is only not covered for operational reasons” a spokeswoman for Google told the newspaper.
Local reports in May said that the ‘Google car’ was spotted in several locations around Limerick.
The Sunday Times report that Google did not enter other areas in Dublin which are home to large settlements of Travellers, such as Dunsink lane and Darndale. Dunsink lane is viewable in Street View, but only as far as the Ratoath road entrance.
The Street View service has been the subject of much controversy since mapping began, with concerns over privacy prompting some Germans to blur pictures of their houses earlier this year.
Google launched Street View in Brazil and Antarctica last week as well as in Ireland. Brazilian website G1 found a corpse in Rio de Janeiro within days of its release. The image of the corpse, covered in black bag, was taken down.
Cnet reported yesterday that it discovered another dead body in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.
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