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Google Punks Web With Victorian Ghost Hoax on Street View

by Chad Mumm on March 26, 2009 at 06:40 PM

We've seen all sorts of strange and interesting things on Google StreetView, from X to Y. But when the Telegraph reported that StreetView spied this unexplained, ghostly pedestrian decked out in Victorian-era clothing, people began to wonder if there was something paranormal afoot. After all, the Cardiff, Wales docklands where the woman was spotted has a long history of murders and other mysteries. As it turns out, the Telegraph's Sarah Knapton may have let her imagination run away a bit. Apparently, the apparition is none other than Mary Poppins, making this just one in a new batch of StreetView pranks organized by Google to promote its 360-degree street-mapping service.

If you look around carefully, you can find Paddington Bear waving on London's Portobello Road, Sherlock Holmes loosed in Oxford, and the famous Beefeater doing a little shopping at a London department store. Perhaps the Google folks got the inspiration for such shenanigans from Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett, two Pittsburgh-based artists who staged a series of outlandish scenes for the passing StreetView team back in May, 2008.

We're glad that Google has a sense of humor, since StreetView has been highly criticized as an invasion of privacy. Maybe the company is hoping that a few good-natured pranks will prove its 'non-evilness' to the service's paranoid detractors.


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Tags: funny, google street view, GoogleStreetView, pranks

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