In the face of fierce opposition from privacy campaigners, Google on Thursday launched its controversial mapping service Street View, which offers users 360-degree views of selected cities across Britain.

The search giant spent more than a year collecting images of Britain’s streets using cars fitted with special cameras, which have crawled over 22,000 miles and 25 cities, from London to Manchester, Scunthorpe to Dundee.

On Wednesday, leading privacy groups threatened immediate legal action against the company, and MPs said they would raise their concerns about the project in debates in the House of Commons on Thursday.

The service allows people to "walk" along a selected road at street level, from their computer or mobile phone. Hundreds of thousands of people have already used Street View to peek at the front doors of friends and family, and take a virtual tour of the streets of their city.

Google has taken longer than expected to launch the service, which is already available in seven other countries. Many people believed that the company was stalling in order to overcome the concerns of campaigners.

However, Google said that the launch was delayed by logistical difficulties. The poor British weather over the past few months wreaked havoc with Google's high-tech equipment, as their cameras are unable to take pictures in rain or snow. As a result, it has taken much longer than expected to compile the tens of millions of photos needed to launch the service.

Street View has already proved controversial. When it launched in the United States, there was uproar, as within hours bloggers posted images of people, their faces visible, being arrested, sunbathing and urinating in public. Taking into account the objections of many campaigners, Google has introduced technology which automatically blurs faces and car number plates. Google has also pledged to remove any images that viewers object to.

"We recognise that people do have some concerns in terms of privacy," said Google’s geospatial technologist Ed Parsons. "But this is the sort of level of detail you would get from driving down a road, the sort of picture you would see in an estate agent’s window." He said faces were blurred “99.9 per cent of the time,” but that “sometimes it does not work completely".

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, argued that the company should have sought the consent of the communities it was photographing before launching the service. He vowed to fight the service until it was taken down.

The Information Commissioner’s office was consulted by Google about its plans, and gave approval for the launch. Lawyers doubt any legal action could succeed.

Tom Brake MP, the Liberal Affairs Home Affairs spokesperson, said he would be bringing the matter before ministers at parliament today.

“The government is completely out of its depth," he said. "It can’t keep abreast of these technological developments. Companies like Google are pressing ahead with applications that have major privacy implications without the government stating a view before the technology is deployed.”

Google said that it will continue to update and expand the service, and will add more photos of more cities over the coming months.

Cities covered by Street View UK: London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Swansea, York, Newcastle, Dundee, Southampton, Norwich and Scunthorpe.

Spotted something strange on Google UK Street View? Send us the link or the image.

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