UPDATE: Official launch happened this morning, September 30th, and the data went live later on in the day on the Google Maps .com site (.ie will follow)
Click on ‘Pegman’ (this guy: to activate Streetview, and see my follow-up post here

There have been some murmurings on Twitter this evening about the possible launch of Google StreetView in the Republic of Ireland tomorrow, Thursday 30th September.

Possibly the clearest non-embargoed indicator comes from Ed Parsons (Google’s Chief GeoSpatial Technologist, @edparsons ) who tweeted this:

I expect Ed will spend much of the day dealing with ridiculous privacy concerns tomorrow. Certainly Google did themselves no favours when they captured a lot of private wifi network data, intentionally or not, but much of the posturing over privacy on this issue is overblown.

Much of the imagery captured will be over two years old, while individual faces and vehicle number-plates will be obscured. I am sure that certain Irish media outlets will be hunting high and low for possible breaches of privacy, and we can expect a ream of articles which will have images of (and maybe even links to) the houses of the rich and infamous.

To which I say “So what?”, but I’m sure Ed will be more eloquent.

Image from http://www.guia-buscadores.com/robotstxt-20

UPDATE: And via @doccer here’s a salient quote from an excellent opinion piece on StreetView and privacy in The Economist:

Yet there is a danger that by trying to please everyone, the government will satisfy no one. Privacy advocates will continue to seek tighter regulation. But as geo-data services continue to develop in unpredictable ways in less squeamish markets, tech companies operating in Germany are unlikely to sign up to overly restrictive rules.

The whole article is here:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/09/geo-data_germany