Street Views in Google Maps has caused controversy since the day it was introduced. In all honesty it freaks a lot of people out and rightly so. Do you want people looking up your driveway? Of course you don’t. But it’s here, been here and will probably stay here unless your town bans it (which has happened).

The two "worst" states that have the Eye of Google upon them are Florida and California. These two places appear to have the most coverage compared to the rest of Google Maps in the United States portion of the North American continent.

Here’s a Google Map showing this (as well as most of the rest of the USA):

The pecking order goes from south to north with very heavy concentration on metropolitan areas. Going from east to west, more concentration is placed on the east.

Concerning Florida in particular, this is what I have to report. (This is a small indicator of what will happen as more coverage appears in other states):

It is nothing short of shocking how fast Google is putting in Street Views data into the system concerning the Sunshine State. Almost all of Tampa Bay is covered at this point as well as pretty much all the other major metros such as Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville, Jacksonville, Miami and even the keys on the southernmost point.

The good: You can sightsee all the major hot spots in FL easily.

The bad: It also includes all the residential roads. Being that most homes in these areas aren’t set back on the properties, everything is in plain view for anyone who wants to look.

As anyone who has used Google Maps with Street Views knows, yes, you can get photos of someone’s porch all too easily.

My recommendation to anyone who owns a home that is not set back on the property is to periodically check Google Maps to see if your home is in plain sight on the internet. If it is, report it to Google and request it removed.

How to request an image to be removed from Google Maps Street Views:

1. Go to Google Maps and load up your address.
2. Pick the Street View option so the Street View image appears.
3. In the "speech bubble" for the image, click Street View Help.
4. Click Report inappropriate image.

Follow the dots from there.

Right: A Google-owned Toyota Prius gets pulled over. This is one of the vehicles used for the “Street Views” service in Google Maps, hence the funky camera equipment on the roof.

See more (and larger) photos here.

[Source: TreeHugger]

Recently I checked out Microsoft Live Maps in combination with Virtual Earth 3D (beta). I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is. The “Bird’s eye” view definitely looks better than anything Google Maps or Google Earth currently offers. It’s also great that it all runs in the browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox.)

The only drawback is that it does take up a large amount of memory to run. However there are performance settings which you can scale back for those with slower computers. See video below for details.

(click above image to see full size)

Just for kicks recently I checked out Microsoft Live Maps with Virtual Earth 3D (Beta) installed.

Summed up: It kicks ass.

No, it does not have all the features of Google Maps/Earth (such as Street Views,) however it looks far better, particularly with “Bird’s eye” option enabled. I was amazed at how good it looks. We’re talking crisp clean very detailed photos you can map with.

I will be doing a video on this soon showing what you can do with Live Maps. There are both pros and cons. Stay tuned for it.

One final note: Notice the screen shot was taken with the Firefox browser. Yes, Virtual Earth 3D works both in FF and IE (but not sure about Opera, didn’t test on that one.)