WebProNews

Google Street View cars are hitting roadblocks in England, quite literally. If it’s not the cops in one town, it’s human shields in another.

I’ve never been England, and all I know about British roads is from movies, and from what I gather they are often clogged with sheep. In one village, called Broughton, people shooed off the sheep to block the road personally. They heard they Google car was coming.

Villagers were concerned Google was taking “tremendous liberty” in how the company was taking imagery of public places. "I don't have a problem with Google wanting to promote villages,” said one. “What I have a problem with is the invasion of privacy, taking pictures directly into the home."

Once I feared the Google car had caught me, sagging eyes, no ball cap and morning hair mess rubbernecking out the car window to be sure I just saw the Google car right about here. I somehow managed to escape documentation, which is a bit disappointing.

The Google car is easy to spot. Though different models appear in various places, it’s the little fuel efficient, plain-looking number with a weird-looking metal stick-gizmo on top and California plates, unlike Microsoft’s 4x4 gas-guzzling tribute to the Ubiquitous Branding, the American Way and Being Rich Enough To Not Give a Crap.

In England, Google’s got something similar going, as illustrated in these pictures where the Google car gets pulled over by British police. You could try to see that on Street View, but it appears to have been blocked out by now. Good thing the real-time Internet’s slightly faster than Google—bloggers posted the evidence before it could be taken down.