Google Seeking Patent On Ads For Street View

theodp writes "CNET reports that Google is 'musing' about placing ads in Street View. The search giant reportedly floated the idea in a presentation to marketing and ad agency types in Europe a few months back. So will virtual billboards be popping up in Google Street View? A Google rep said the company had no current plans to put ads in Street View, but you might want to take that with a grain of salt. On Thursday, the USPTO revealed that Google is seeking patent protection for Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising. From the patent application: 'The street view display server can locate an ad image within the image database and overlay the region of interest with the associated ad image.' Connect the dots, and it sure sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Selling the Brooklyn Bridge is a pretty good scam — selling a view of it is even better!"

How is this new?

[tomhudson]

TV broadcasters have been doing this with football games and the billboard in Times Square for years, and game publishers have also been doing it with their virtual street views.

Google - for all your patent troll needs.

Redaction through advertisements!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, there could be great uses for this:

I don't want my license plate there, put an ad over it, or all license plates.

Maybe it wasn't the best day for that picture of your house/business, request that it be redacted, and Google gets ad dollars for . . . respecting your privacy!

With a little sanity, this could help. Personally I wouldn't care if they made some money off of SOMEONE ELSE for respecting privacy requests, but here's hoping that they'd actually respect your request.

Re:Way to completely destroy utility

[je ne sais quoi]

Thus far, Google has not displayed this sort of lack of taste. We'll see though. What I'm guessing is that it will be the form of a little transparent pop-up window with text ads relevant to whatever your looking at, e.g. if you're looking at a Border's, it will give you ads for a B&N or something. The kind of metadata to make these types of context specific ads has been creeping into google maps for some time. E.g., just look at this link [google.com]. You can clearly see the name of each business and an icon about just what kind of business it is there (hotels get a little stick person in a bed, restaurants get a knife and fork, etc.). Hopefully they would put them in a transparent window and somewhere unobtrusive, like on the street or in the sky.

Though, it does kind of give new meaning to the Futurama quote, "Behold.... the Internet." "My God! It's full of ads!"

This is one of those areas where patents are good

[melted]

This is one of those areas where patents are good. They prevent everybody else from doing this shit. :-)

Re:Redaction through advertisements!

[ascari]

Problem is the Google ad model is an auction model. How do you know you win? Your arch enemy might put your license plate/face etc in all the wrong places simply by outbidding you...

Then I want compensation

[penguin_dance]

If you're going to use a picture of my house to place advertisements, then I want to be compensated for the use of my house. Either that or take the photo down. And I'm sure businesses are not going to want a competitor's ad placed in or around a photo of their building!