Researchers have used Google Street View to study hundreds of elements of the built environment, including buildings, green spaces, pavements and roads, and how these elements relate to each other and influence coronary artery disease in people living in these neighborhoods.
Street view should be made illegal in general. There are no legitimate plus sides of it.
Also… Making abuse illegal won’t help as they just claim they didn’t use said data.
I use it to check where parking lots open onto the street, where some buildings have their facing/entrances, check street numbers to confirm that bakery IS closed and it’s a tax prep office now, etc.
GMaps sat-view is horribly out of date - my apartment still doesn’t exist after 5 years - but street-view is fantastic sometimes.