6 ms·

>Now I am wondering why google doesn't have an app to allow individuals to update google street view content themselves. I've always wondered if Google could p

by jasode 9y ago

>Now I am wondering why google doesn't have an app to allow individuals to update google street view content themselves. I've always wondered if Google could partner with the US Postal Service and piggyback off their fleet for continuous streetview updates. Those mail trucks already drive the 99% of roads (that are not highways) every day and the maps would get updated more often. To save money, they also wouldn't have to attach cameras to every truck. Just move them from vehicle to vehicle on a rotational basis to eventually cover 100% of the routes. Heck, Google Inc probably wouldn't even have to pay all of the costs. They could make a convincing case to the Federal government that upgrading the USPS mail trucks with cameras would give law enforcement and civil planners up-to-date geographic data. Therefore, they'd get a multi-billion government grant to implement it. Or, they could also partner with Uber/Lyft. It just seems like the USPS (or FedEx/UPS) fleet has more consistent vehicle dimensions for attaching a multi-camera rig.

macintux 9y ago
I'm sure there would be pretty significant concerns about government surveillance were the USPS to be recording every street every day.
- santoshalper 9y ago
  I'm sure that would go over really well with the gun-nut/infowars crowd.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  UPS trucks instead? Maybe less reach but still pretty good.
- jasode 9y ago
  > the USPS to be recording every street every day. Oh, I wasn't thinking that every street every day would get recorded. I don't think Google (or NSA) datacenters have enough storage to keep up with that volume of nationwide photos. (I haven't done a back-of-the-envelope calculation, so maybe I'm wrong and they actually can). I was just thinking that there are many streetviews (especially rural areas) in Google Maps captured in 2007. My street is from 2013. Using another entity's expansive fleet of vehicles, those maps could be updated more frequently... like once a month instead of every 4 to 10 years. Also, the USPS trucks are already burning the gas driving all those roads so it's a waste of fuel to have another car drive the same route just for photos. As for fears of surveillance, it's going to depend on: (1) if the citizens feel they also get benefit from the updated data. E.g. web surfers on Zillow see a house for sale and they would prefer to see a streetview of the neighborhood from last month instead of 5 years ago. Same for scoping out a company's address for a job interview. (2) Are USPS cameras perceived as a minor extension of traffic cameras at every extension that citizens drive through every day and the police car dash cams that record a continuous loop as they patrol the city? Or it's a major step change in data collection that the public would reject. I don't know.
  - Jyaif 9y ago
    > I don't think Google (or NSA) datacenters have enough storage to keep up with that volume of nationwide photos. If you keep taking pictures of the same things over and over, you get a really high compression ratio. Not to mention that you have the option to throw out the old data.
  - cobookman 9y ago
    Google datacenters most certainly have enough storage. I'd bet youtube uploads more data / day than these USPS cars would. Don't forget that the cameras on the cars would not need to have 30 fps uploaded at 4k resolution.
    - jasode 9y ago
      Here's my back-of-envelope calculation: Assumptions... 4,000,000 miles of roads (4.12 million minus 164,000)[1][2] 5280 ft per mile 200 ft as guess of distance between snapshots 60,000 bytes as estimate for 1 jpg sized for "near HD"[3] 15 photos per set [3] ... total is ~95 TB per day.[4] The Youtube stat from 2015 quoted 24 TB per day.[5] The total Google Maps in 2012 size was 20 PB.[6] So, 95 TB is within the realm of possiblity but it seems like coordinating the logistics in the USA to upload that much from trucks every day would be a huge hurdle. (The Youtube 24TB is worldwide uploads and not just USA.) Since the vast majority of the streetview images for a particular day won't be requested by anyone, it wouldn't be a good return-on-investment to pay for that much disk space. Obviously, the total goes up if I underestimated the intervals (100 ft instead of 200 ft) or underestimated the jpg size (new generation of HD cameras output 200000 bytes for still images). The total goes down if a significant chunk of those 4 million miles don't need streetviews. There are probably other factors I'm missing. (What's that famous Google interview question again? "How many gas stations are there in the USA?"[7]) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+i... [3] https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-of-camera-equipped-street-view-cars/ https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200)*(15*60000) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200... [5] https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-Youtube-Google-currently-have https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-You... [6] https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snapped-20-petabytes-of-street-photos/ https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snap... [7] https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+gas+stations https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+...
neonhomer 9y ago
One issue is in the rural areas they delivery mail in their own cars, not USPS mail trucks. But ultimately Google could loan/lease their cars to those drivers.
technofiend 9y ago
Security paranoia aside that would be a great way to keep Google Maps up to date even if it was just done quarterly. And frankly I'm sure the US Post Office could use the revenue from whatever Google would pay to do the mapping.
kozikow 9y ago
I investigated targeting individual Uber drivers for street view mapping. Problem is that Uber drivers circle around the same area a lot, so it is not optimal to use professional 360 set. On the other hand, there is no good consumer grade camera for 360 street view mapping yet, although it keeps getting better.
msiebuhr 9y ago
In Denmark, several municipalities have hired garbage-collection trucks to test mobile coverage (danish article with images at https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/oestjylland/skraldebiler-afsloerer-skidt-mobilsignal-paa-djursland https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/oestjylland/skraldebiler...) and some utility companies have done the same with recievers for short-range transmitters placed in water/power/heating meters.
hackbinary 9y ago
I like the idea from the point of view of 'making things better', but from the philosophical perspective of publicly funded entities should not give benefit and preferential treatment to private and proprietary enterprises and systems. I think if the USPO was capturing this data, then it should be available to everyone.
- jasode 9y ago
  >publicly funded entities should not give benefit and preferential treatment to private and proprietary enterprises and systems. It wouldn't be a "gift" from the USPS. It would be a mutually beneficial financial contract. (E.g. 5 year multi-million dollar contract to mount Google cameras.) Similar to how private events pay the government for extra police officers to direct traffic or supplement security. Or how the Pentagon charged the Top Gun film production $25,000 to turn an aircraft carrier around.[1] Government entities have set the precedent that they will sell services to private companies. The citizens' access to the USPS photos would a given and be part of the contract. [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-cost-25-000-to-turn-the-ship-in-Top-Gun-during-filming https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-cost-25-000-to-turn-the-shi...
  - fletchowns 9y ago
    I don't think those two examples are very good for your argument. One is about public safety and the other is basically about military recruitment. There is a lot more precedence for those sorts of things than there is for mounting Google cameras to USPS trucks.
    - jasode 9y ago
      Well, there's a precedence for the government wanting to preserve jobs. USPS lost $5.6 billion last year.[1] A rich Google contract wouldn't solve all their financial problems but conceivably, USPS would hire extra workers to help manage the camera equipment, the photos, and interface with Google Inc. If not that reason, the government could come up with other justifications. (The US government is very good at coming up with justifications for anything.) In any case, getting some extra revenue from trucks already burning up huge amounts of fossil fuel to deliver mail seems like an eco-green win/win. [1] https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2016/pr16_092.htm https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2016/pr16_092....
dTal 9y ago
It's a good idea, but they can't have their cake and eat it too. If it's so good for society that they get taxpayer money, the data should be freely licensed. Conversely, if they expect to monetize the data, then we should charge them a very stiff fee for having the monopoly on postal-van cameras (I find it unlikely the postal service would agree to let multiple companies mount equipment on their vehicles, if they'd even let one).
- Spivak 9y ago
  You have it backwards. The postal service mounts their own cameras on the vans and then sells that data to companies wanting to build mapping applications.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    That data would then be produced by a US government sponsored entity, and should be licensed in the public domain.
Retric 9y ago
Cost per truck is greater than the value of updating the roads every day. However, having one truck per post office that gets rotated through the routes might be worth it, or even better a few trucks that get rotated through each post office. But, even then the post office avoids a lot of roads in the US.

by jasode 9y ago

macintux 9y ago

I'm sure there would be pretty significant concerns about government surveillance were the USPS to be recording every street every day.

santoshalper 9y ago
I'm sure that would go over really well with the gun-nut/infowars crowd.
roywiggins 9y ago
UPS trucks instead? Maybe less reach but still pretty good.
jasode 9y ago
> the USPS to be recording every street every day. Oh, I wasn't thinking that every street every day would get recorded. I don't think Google (or NSA) datacenters have enough storage to keep up with that volume of nationwide photos. (I haven't done a back-of-the-envelope calculation, so maybe I'm wrong and they actually can). I was just thinking that there are many streetviews (especially rural areas) in Google Maps captured in 2007. My street is from 2013. Using another entity's expansive fleet of vehicles, those maps could be updated more frequently... like once a month instead of every 4 to 10 years. Also, the USPS trucks are already burning the gas driving all those roads so it's a waste of fuel to have another car drive the same route just for photos. As for fears of surveillance, it's going to depend on: (1) if the citizens feel they also get benefit from the updated data. E.g. web surfers on Zillow see a house for sale and they would prefer to see a streetview of the neighborhood from last month instead of 5 years ago. Same for scoping out a company's address for a job interview. (2) Are USPS cameras perceived as a minor extension of traffic cameras at every extension that citizens drive through every day and the police car dash cams that record a continuous loop as they patrol the city? Or it's a major step change in data collection that the public would reject. I don't know.
- Jyaif 9y ago
  > I don't think Google (or NSA) datacenters have enough storage to keep up with that volume of nationwide photos. If you keep taking pictures of the same things over and over, you get a really high compression ratio. Not to mention that you have the option to throw out the old data.
- cobookman 9y ago
  Google datacenters most certainly have enough storage. I'd bet youtube uploads more data / day than these USPS cars would. Don't forget that the cameras on the cars would not need to have 30 fps uploaded at 4k resolution.
  - jasode 9y ago
    Here's my back-of-envelope calculation: Assumptions... 4,000,000 miles of roads (4.12 million minus 164,000)[1][2] 5280 ft per mile 200 ft as guess of distance between snapshots 60,000 bytes as estimate for 1 jpg sized for "near HD"[3] 15 photos per set [3] ... total is ~95 TB per day.[4] The Youtube stat from 2015 quoted 24 TB per day.[5] The total Google Maps in 2012 size was 20 PB.[6] So, 95 TB is within the realm of possiblity but it seems like coordinating the logistics in the USA to upload that much from trucks every day would be a huge hurdle. (The Youtube 24TB is worldwide uploads and not just USA.) Since the vast majority of the streetview images for a particular day won't be requested by anyone, it wouldn't be a good return-on-investment to pay for that much disk space. Obviously, the total goes up if I underestimated the intervals (100 ft instead of 200 ft) or underestimated the jpg size (new generation of HD cameras output 200000 bytes for still images). The total goes down if a significant chunk of those 4 million miles don't need streetviews. There are probably other factors I'm missing. (What's that famous Google interview question again? "How many gas stations are there in the USA?"[7]) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=miles+of+roads+in+usa [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+in+usa https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+miles+of+highways+i... [3] https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-of-camera-equipped-street-view-cars/ https://petapixel.com/2012/10/15/a-glimpse-of-googles-fleet-... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200)*(15*60000) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((4*10%5E6)*5280%2F200... [5] https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-Youtube-Google-currently-have https://www.quora.com/How-many-terabytes-of-storage-does-You... [6] https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snapped-20-petabytes-of-street-photos/ https://petapixel.com/2012/06/06/google-street-view-has-snap... [7] https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+gas+stations https://www.google.com/search?q=interview+question+how+many+...

neonhomer 9y ago

One issue is in the rural areas they delivery mail in their own cars, not USPS mail trucks. But ultimately Google could loan/lease their cars to those drivers.

technofiend 9y ago

Security paranoia aside that would be a great way to keep Google Maps up to date even if it was just done quarterly. And frankly I'm sure the US Post Office could use the revenue from whatever Google would pay to do the mapping.

kozikow 9y ago

I investigated targeting individual Uber drivers for street view mapping. Problem is that Uber drivers circle around the same area a lot, so it is not optimal to use professional 360 set. On the other hand, there is no good consumer grade camera for 360 street view mapping yet, although it keeps getting better.

msiebuhr 9y ago

In Denmark, several municipalities have hired garbage-collection trucks to test mobile coverage (danish article with images at https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/oestjylland/skraldebiler-afsloerer-skidt-mobilsignal-paa-djursland https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/oestjylland/skraldebiler...) and some utility companies have done the same with recievers for short-range transmitters placed in water/power/heating meters.

hackbinary 9y ago

I like the idea from the point of view of 'making things better', but from the philosophical perspective of publicly funded entities should not give benefit and preferential treatment to private and proprietary enterprises and systems. I think if the USPO was capturing this data, then it should be available to everyone.

jasode 9y ago
>publicly funded entities should not give benefit and preferential treatment to private and proprietary enterprises and systems. It wouldn't be a "gift" from the USPS. It would be a mutually beneficial financial contract. (E.g. 5 year multi-million dollar contract to mount Google cameras.) Similar to how private events pay the government for extra police officers to direct traffic or supplement security. Or how the Pentagon charged the Top Gun film production $25,000 to turn an aircraft carrier around.[1] Government entities have set the precedent that they will sell services to private companies. The citizens' access to the USPS photos would a given and be part of the contract. [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-cost-25-000-to-turn-the-ship-in-Top-Gun-during-filming https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-cost-25-000-to-turn-the-shi...
- fletchowns 9y ago
  I don't think those two examples are very good for your argument. One is about public safety and the other is basically about military recruitment. There is a lot more precedence for those sorts of things than there is for mounting Google cameras to USPS trucks.
  - jasode 9y ago
    Well, there's a precedence for the government wanting to preserve jobs. USPS lost $5.6 billion last year.[1] A rich Google contract wouldn't solve all their financial problems but conceivably, USPS would hire extra workers to help manage the camera equipment, the photos, and interface with Google Inc. If not that reason, the government could come up with other justifications. (The US government is very good at coming up with justifications for anything.) In any case, getting some extra revenue from trucks already burning up huge amounts of fossil fuel to deliver mail seems like an eco-green win/win. [1] https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2016/pr16_092.htm https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2016/pr16_092....

dTal 9y ago

It's a good idea, but they can't have their cake and eat it too. If it's so good for society that they get taxpayer money, the data should be freely licensed. Conversely, if they expect to monetize the data, then we should charge them a very stiff fee for having the monopoly on postal-van cameras (I find it unlikely the postal service would agree to let multiple companies mount equipment on their vehicles, if they'd even let one).

Spivak 9y ago
You have it backwards. The postal service mounts their own cameras on the vans and then sells that data to companies wanting to build mapping applications.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  That data would then be produced by a US government sponsored entity, and should be licensed in the public domain.

Retric 9y ago

Cost per truck is greater than the value of updating the roads every day. However, having one truck per post office that gets rotated through the routes might be worth it, or even better a few trucks that get rotated through each post office. But, even then the post office avoids a lot of roads in the US.