If you could sue one company to become an overnight millionaire, which would it be? Hopefully your answer was none because you are NOT a greedy person that thinks the world owes you something.
Apparently a Pittsburgh area couple’s answer was Google. They have sued Google Inc., saying a picture of their home that appears on Google Map’s Street View violates their privacy, devalued their property and has caused them mental distress.
Google’s Street View function shows street-level images of homes & businesses in quite a few places across the country. Cool, right?
This couple didn’t think so. The couple suing the Google, claim the reason they bought their home was a desire for privacy. They claim that the images of their house on the Google website included their driveway which is labeled “Private Road,” and were likely shot from that vantage point, which meant the Google photographer trespassed. So, where does the mental distress come in? What, because someone drove on your road, you had countless sleepless nights? And the depreciated home value? Do they think a picture will steal their home’s soul and therefore it’s worth less?
But the couple’s attorney, says that isn’t the point. Instead, the couple hopes the lawsuit will deter Google from violating other people’s privacy in the future. Maybe I am crazy but if someone can drive down the road and see your home, then what is wrong with what Google is doing? This is a great tool for people who are relocating to Dallas and can’t stay in DFW for weeks while they search for a home. Instead, they can pick out a dozen homes they like on Dallas home search websites like ours and then use this cool tool to help narrow down their search even further to help reduce the amount of needed to find their dream home during the short time they can be here. For this reason alone, I hope that lawsuit is laughed out of court. What a waste of a wonderful idea otherwise.
If you are relocating to the Dallas area or simply looking for a new home, please call us at 800-326-9011 or email us by clicking here and we will be happy to help in any way that we can.
Tags: Google Street View, Home Search
This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Home Buyer, Real Estate, Relocation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.