Google brings Street View to UK

Street views of 25 British cities are now available in Google Earth and Google Maps, the search-engine giant announced today as Microsoft launch a new version of its rival Virtual Earth.

Places covered are London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Swansea, York, Newcastle, Dundee, Southampton, Norwich and Scunthorpe.

Street-level images can be accessed by zooming in, or by dragging an orange icon onto a blue highlighted street. Businesses can embed the Google Maps feature directly into their sites for free.

A Google statement said great lengths have been taken to answer privacy concerns: "Street View only contains imagery that is already visible from public roads and features technology that blurs both faces and licence plates. In addition, any user can easily flag images for removal … by clicking on [a link marked] 'Report a concern'."

It added that the The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had supported Google’s policy of blurring faces or removing images on the request of individuals.

* Google has posted a number of games and experiments to illustrate the capabilities of its Chrome browser.