Another month, another absolutely massive Street View update. The big news is that Google has launched a wealth of imagery for previously uncovered Mexico; but they’ve also added imagery to Hawaii for the first time, added many new places in the Netherlands, and also provided brand new coverage for huge areas of Spain.

Mexico

In Mexico the cities of Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and Cancun have all received coverage. So far we’ve spotted the world famous Teotihuacan pyramid, complete with people on top (previously covered in 2005):

The world’s largest bullring, which we viewed from above earlier this year.

And one of Mexico’s greatest exports, character piñatas.

Hawaii

Until now Hawaii was the only US state to not have Streetview coverage – but Google has now remedied that by bringing us imagery of main island of Hawaii. Here, covered in a blue tarpaulin, we can see the nose cone of the plane that was used in the opening episode of Lost – which was filmed around here somewhere…

Netherlands

The Netherlands already had excellent coverage, which allowed us to see all sorts of exciting nudity, prostitution, and other Not Safe For Work antics. The latest update goes on to cover Utrecht, Den Haag¹, Eindhoven, Den Bosch, Tilburg, Leeuwarden, Apeldoorn, Deventer and Amersfoort!

All of this means we can now see the brilliant Kubuswoning from ground-level (previously covered in 2006):

The windmills at the popular tourist destination, Kinderdijk, were captured by the Google Trike (turn round for loads more):

Spain

Finally Spain, which already had good coverage, has received an almost total blanket of blue streets. The updates extend right out to the Canary Islands, now covering Mallorca, Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

Here’s the Guggenheim Bilbao, complete with another massive spider (they pop up everywhere on Streetview it seems), which we covered back in 2005:

For continuing Spanish-language coverage of all the new Streetview imagery, you should follow Google Sightseeing Español on Twitter.

Have you found something interesting? Leave a comment below!

Warning: This post contains partial nudity and other images that you may not deem suitable for the workplace or for children.

When we first posted our notorious Topless Sunbather here on Google Sightseeing back in September 2006, half the world seemed to be appalled that a person’s privacy should be invaded in such a way and then posted on the Internet, and the other half wanted higher resolution images.

Evaluating the situation again nearly 3 years later, it seems that only half the people got what they wanted.

When Google launched their controversial Street View service in the US, we saw all sort of things that the press were appalled at; including our own post of the Google Street Fight that went on to become one of the best known Street View sightings. Perhaps because of the way US culture operates, we saw violence in the streets – but sexually explicit images never appeared within the US Street View images to any great extent.

On our Google Sightseeing Twitter page we’ve been posting Street View sights for nearly a year now, and we’ve seen the occasional poster or painting showing partially clothed women, but the inevitable Topless Street View Sunbather never materialised… that is until last week’s launch of Street View in the UK and the Netherlands, which also brought updates to several European countries that already had partial coverage.

Google anticipated some of this of course; they chose to skirt around the edges of Amsterdam’s Red Light District rather than have to remove all of the images later. Of course they couldn’t avoid them all, and they did inadvertently capture several images of prostitutes sitting in their windows. In Groningen one woman was even seen showing off an extensive range of sex toys. Although these images have all now been removed, none of them showed any nudity to speak of.

In contrast to the Dutch prostitution system, in Italy the prostitutes can often be seen on Google Street View sitting in their folding chairs while awaiting some passing trade. What doesn’t seem to be so common however, is for them to be sitting with their breasts entirely exposed.

So there we have it. Unlike with pixellated aerial photos, there’s no doubting what we can see here – this image clearly shows a woman’s naked breasts on Google’s Street View service, and at time of writing it remains visible within the Google Maps imagery¹. In fact there are a number of women with their breasts exposed in the Italian images.

Here in Europe it’s perfectly acceptable for a woman to wear nothing but a thong when she visits the beach, so it’s hardly surprising that the Street View car captured the following images when driving through Lazio (again, these images are both still available on Google at time of writing).

Google Street View has been getting a lot of grief from the UK’s papers in the last few days, most of which has been blatant scaremongering. There’s really nothing wrong with there being a picture of your house on the internet – it presents no increased risk to your security or privacy. Just like Google’s satellite images, the community-positive local and global benefits² of Street View will outweigh the unfounded, hypothetical fears concocted by newspapers with column inches to fill.

Seeing inappropriate images is another matter. In truth nobody expects to find breasts on their mapping service, despite the differing attitudes of people of different nationalities. While there are a small number of images that inadvertently appeared on Street View which should be removed³ – if it turns out that these woman don’t have a problem with letting the world see their breasts, then should Google remove their image at the request of somebody else?

On a related note, I wonder if this image of a semi-naked Glaswegian enjoying the summer sun will be removed?

On a rooftop in the Netherlands we find a blurry picture that may, possibly, if-you-squint-your-eyes, might appear to be two people that are lying very close to each other.

Now, I’m not going to speculate what these people are doing in the privacy of their rooftop. In fact, I’m not even sure that there’s more than one person there!

For all we know this is just some run-of-the-mill topless sunbathing, right? I mean, what else could it be?

Thanks to “IRoN CYbOrG”

The super-high-resolution aerial images of Sydney from the recent Australia Day flyover have this morning been added to Google Maps.¹

Google even did some sightseeing of their own in the email announcement when they included links to Queenscliff Bay, Shark Bay, Bondi Beach, Manly Beach, Luna Park, a Navy Ship, a Tall Ship, Fort Denison, Circular Quay and a totally awesome Helicopter in flight!

However we refuse to be outdone! So here’s some of the best sights we found ourselves, such as a kid on a swing, with a cool shadow…

…the words SEX + DEATH formed in grass beside a weird glass pyramid…

And people playing table tennis. On a floating table tennis table!²

The Australia Day event is different to the rest of Google’s aerial photography, as they actually pre-announced when the plane would by flying over, and even provided a tracker so that you could tell exactly when it would be overhead.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, lots of people naturally took the opportunity to do some serious advertising. One local company spent 10,000 AUD on a huge vinyl sign, whilst many others were attempting to promote everything from websites to dating services, and one person in particular even tried to do some promotion for their own political campaign…

It wasn’t all rampant capitalism though – one man staged an effort to send a message to his estranged wife, in an attempt to secure a reconciliation via the medium of Google Maps…

However, it would seem that all this effort was in vain, as it was later reported that the plane had taken a different flight path than originally described, and didn’t actually arrive at each spot at the planned time, and also didn’t cover nearly so much ground.

According to the SMH article:

At Bondi Beach, Erland Howden and a team from the Nature Conservation Council of NSW rallied over 50 troops together to create a human sign that read “Vote Climate”.

So, we scoured the images of Bondi Beach for any signs of a message. We found lots of new entries for our list of the Top 10 Naked People (and we may yet get to have a Top 100 Half-Naked Hot Chicks post!³), but by the time the plane actually arrived all the climate change campaigners had given up and gone home, as apparently they were suffering from sunburn (I’m sure they were well aware of the irony).

Here the story gets suspicious however. Again, from the SMH article:

Michael Fox and his wife Jodie Fox also had a run in with bureaucracy in the Moore Park, near Fox Studios. Using coloured pieces of A4 paper held down with bamboo satay sticks, the couple and a friend had formed the image of a giant eye.

So we located Moore Park on Google Maps, and yet strangely (despite the fact that this is newer imagery than is currently available on Google Earth), there is no giant eye here! In fact, it would appear that despite being newly updated, this image wasn’t taken on Australia day at all…

So, after hours of combing through the new images, we’ve found no real examples of private advertising or even any sign that the people of Sydney knew they’d be on Google Maps!

Well, except this of course…

…but given that australia.com is the official website of the whole country, it can’t possibly count as spam, right? If so, does that mean no spam made it through at all? All those folk who spent money on giant banners might be upset, but the Slashdotters would be pleased – they were up in arms about the potential “spamming” of Google Maps.

Some conspiracy theorists may say that the delayed flyover was a last-minute change of heart by Google, who perhaps didn’t want their maps application full of free adverts. And whilst it’s certainly possible that over the last 4 weeks Google have been going through all the images and replacing any remaining sections containing spam, they did actually promote this event as “get yourself on Google Maps”, so they must surely have anticipated what people would do, right?

You’ve all seen the original Google Sightseeing Topless Sunbather already, but did you know that the Hague is in fact completely overrun with naked and semi-naked Dutch men and women? Yes people, it’s time to get your magnifying glasses out, because here comes the Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth!

10) The one that got so many people so hot under the collar. Many people think she’s on her front, but personally I remain unconvinced.

9) Very close to the original topless sunbather, this one is definitely female, I think. It looks like she’s lying on her front, and she does appear to have some kind of top on, so keep your hair on people!

8 ) Just six doors down, here’s a half-naked Dutch, person. Wearing a sarong perhaps?

7) This ones been widely discussed on other sites, but I personally reckon this is a guy, wearing shorts. Phew!

6) This person thinks they have privacy on this rooftop (haven’t they seen Enemy of the State?), and they’re definitely topless! (Sex unknown of course, but topless nevertheless.)

5) Outside a café on the beach (presumably before it opened that day), we find someone sitting calmly in a chair, blissfully unaware the whole world can now see them in their birthday suit.

4) The previous nudist may have also been unaware that just on the other side of the building, there was another person sunning themselves – flat on their back and completely in the altogether! Does anyone know someone that works in this café by the way?

3) Again on the beach, here’s a couple of naked people who think they can hide behind a wind-break! Pah! Don’t they know there is no escape?

2) Hiding away behind some bushes is no escape either… Mind you, I wish that person would keep their legs together. Yeuch!

1?) Well, do you know of a better one? I’m sure there’s loads more brilliant ones yet to be found, so get searching! Post a comment with your find then I’ll add the best ones here.

Thanks to the Keyhole Users.