When Google were recording their recently launched UK and Netherlands Street View imagery, a small team of crack-commandos cosplayers were tasked with leaving behind some highly recognisable British icons for the public to find.

The most famous of these was of course the widely publicised Wally from Where’s Wally, but there were others hidden in the cities, and we think we’ve now rooted them all out!

We start with the famed nanny Mary Poppins, who waves at us from outside Cardiff’s Millennium Centre.

Another literary character, Sherlock Holmes, welcomes you to Cambridge. Sherlock is looking especially feminine today…

Another traditionally male role is the beefeater, the ceremonial guards of London Tower, but outside Birmingham’s Selfridges building we are greeted by a female beefeater.

Hmm, is it just me or do all three of these girls look remarkably similar?

Meanwhile in London, everyone’s favourite bear greets you to top tourist destinations.

Paddington Bear is simultaneously outside the British Museum, Trafalgar square, Portobello Road and (of course) Paddington Station!

Over in The Netherlands, it’s down to Google Street View’s own mascot, Pegman, to hide in the images.

Pegman was following the camera car around with his assistant, who we can from the side angle trying to hide behind him.

Elsewhere, we spot him again after just jumping out of the parked blue van.

Of course we aren’t sure that all the plants have been found… have you seen any unusual characters on your local Street VIew? Let us know in the comments or via Twitter.

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?

Yes people, it’s finally here. UK Street View has arrived. We will update this post as news develops! UK news agencies looking for comment can get in touch via our contact form

Street View has arrived here in the UK at long last, and Google have given us imagery in many parts of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Additionally, Street View is now available in the Netherlands for the first time, and while they were at it, Google has added several new cities in France and Spain!

Coverage is extensive, and covers all of the UK’s major cities. Both of the GSS HQs in Edinburgh and Oxford have coverage, and London has an absolutely staggering number of blue lined streets!

In Edinburgh the images appear to have been taken mainly during the Edinburgh Festival, which explains why there’s lots of odd looking people around.¹ You can see the seating for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in place on the Castle Esplanade.

Here’s London’s seat of power, Downing Street, showing off their awesome security measures, which has been captured alongside all of the other standard tourist sights like the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

In Belfast, it seems that the famous Northern Irish political murals aren’t safe from Google’s face-blurring software!

The Netherlands has also received a large helping of Street View today with coverage of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Here’s the “Coffee Shop Extase” and Sex Museum:

Other reports are coming in of new Street View imagery in France (including Calais and Le Havre), Spain (including expanded coverage or Barcelona), Northern Italy, and expanded coverage in numerous US states.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest news, and new Street Views throughout the day.

Google Maps Mania has a good selection of London sights to see, but what else have you found?

Here in the Netherlands we find a very unusual kind of bridge.

Like many small bridges, the bright blue and yellow Slauerhoffbrug is required to retract out of the way to let boats pass by. Unfortunately the Google Earth images were captured while the bridge was acting as a road, so other than a strange structure bolted on the side, it isn’t yet clear why we’d want to link to it…

Switch over to Bird’s Eye View on Live Maps however, and we suddenly see what makes this bridge so unusual! The middle section of the road is contained on a massive arm that swings upwards, pulling the middle of the bridge through 90 degrees, way up into the air! (Ground-level picture)

You can also see that due to the position of the swinging arm of the bridge, there’s a large gap in the surface of the road when the bridge is in the open position. This gap is filled by the arm when the bridge is open to traffic, and the arm even has road markings on it.

Built in 2000, the Slauerhoffbrug is a kind of cantilevered drawbridge, but skewed to one side. Apparently it was built like this so that the mechanism could be built beside the road without interrupting the flow of traffic - except for a few days at the end of the construction.

Many thanks to Wojtek Kutyla.

“Flocking” is the term used to describe the collective motion of a number of creatures, and is best known as something that birds do together. So much so that the collective noun for birds is of course “flock”.

A group of birds are technically flocking even when they’re not flying. Here on Lewis and Clark Lake, Missouri, we can see a huge flock of geese just resting on the water.

While flocks of birds in themselves aren’t a rarity on Google Earth (just find any fishing boat), in the nearly 4 years since we last featured a “flock of birds in flight”, we haven’t seen that many other sightings of migratory birds travelling in their trademark “V” formations.

They are still occasionally seen however, as here in the Netherlands, and to be honest I feel there’s very little else quite so strikingly simple and pleasing to be seen anywhere on Google Earth.

Here’s another smaller flock flying near Toulouse, France.

Known as “echelons”, these amazing “V” formations are actually better described as “J” formations, because they’re much more likely to be unevenly balanced - as demonstrated in this absolutely stunning image captured over the fields of Arkansas.

These transitory sightings don’t hang around very long (they often disappear during in Google’s image updates), however the geese we posted in 2005 are still visible today, as is the incredible Feeding Frenzy off the coast of South Africa that we posted about in 2007.

Thanks to Eric Alberts and VGT.