What we're talking about here is an innovation in digital cartography. Goggle's view is that we're making maps better, we're making it easier to find things. But there are many organizations that take street-level images. There are many mapping infrastructure companies that take similar photos. Companies like Maptech and Tele Atlas do very similar things from a data collection and capture point of view. I can't speak to their blurring technology or their take-down technology, but the great innovation that Google brings is marrying these images with topographical maps to make direction-finding easier.
On June 17th, 2009. See this statement in context.