And this has always been an interesting and heavily debated issue: information is power, and if it's utilized in good / bad purposes only depends on those who use it.
You've probably read stories about the police using YouTube to catch criminals. One guy even accidentally ratted himself out for mentioning his own YouTube videos.
Now, Google is sharing a story in which the cops used Google Maps Street View to help find a kidnapped child from Massachusetts all the way in Virginia.
"An interesting first (at least as far as we're aware): Google's Street View imagery was used by police officers to help successfully locate a kidnapped child in rural Virginia. Nine year old Natalie Maltais, from Athol, Massachusetts, was found safely at a motel on Tuesday," writes Pablo Chavez on the Google Lat Long Blog.

The police retrieved global positioning coordinates from the child's cell phone provider. Then they "googled it" as a Telegram.com article on the story reports:
Deputy Chief Lozier said that on the Internet search engine site Google there is a street view where people can look at photographs of neighborhoods in many locations.
Using the street view, he was able to look back and forth from the intersection.
Looking across a field, he said he saw a long building with a red roof that looked like a motel. He then did a search on Google for motels in Natural Bridge and found the Budget Inn-Natural Bridge, which, on a map, appeared to be close to the intersection he was looking at.
For all the privacy-related negative publicity Google Street View has received, it's nice to see a positive story about how the service has been used for something truly good.
It's all about how information is used
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Google Street Maps
This is a great way to use Google street view. I'm not a huge fan myself but acknowledge that there are positive ways that the technology can be used. Great article.