The Fabricator
Street View, the Google application that allows web surfers to virtually walk down almost any street in Nashville, has caused thousands of hours of lost productivity since it became available several weeks ago, worried economic officials say.
“We’re already in the midst of a budget crunch and business slowdown, and now this,” laments one state official, who adds sheepishly, “I just spent an hour myself checking out all my bosses’ houses.”
The feature allows anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world to type in an address and see a 360-degree view from the street in front of that address. Google has been rolling it out for more than a year, with new cities added every few weeks.
“When I heard that Nashville had been added, I immediately looked up my house,” says a Lipscomb employee. “Then I checked out other places I’ve lived, and then moved on to houses of people I know. Next thing I knew, two hours had gone by and it was time to go home.”
That experience has been repeated not only all over Nashville, but also in every city where Street View has become available, leading to mutterings that something akin to municipal economic sabotage may be going on.
“I don’t want to say that anybody has done anything improper, but I think it’s a little suspicious that Seattle and Atlanta workers aren’t tempted by this and ours are,” says the state official.“I was talking to a person I know in Miami—that was one of the first cities Google shot for this thing—and they said it was terrible there last fall as far as getting anything done. Everybody was trolling Street View, either killing time at the office when they should have been working, or staying up half the night and coming in a zombie the next day. This feature may very well be why the country is in a recession.”
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