A western Pennsylvania couple sued Google Inc., saying pictures of their home that seem on the Web site’s “Street View” feature violated their privacy, devalued their property and caused them mental suffering.

Aaron and Christine Boring bought the home in Franklin Park, a Pittsburgh suburb, in October 2006 for a “considerable sum of money,” according to their 10-page lawsuit filed Wednesday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

“A major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy,” the lawsuit said.

The suit targets the Mountain View, California, company by images on its Web site, which allows users to find street-level photos by clicking on a map. To gather the photos, Google uses vehicles with mounted digital cameras to take pictures up and down the streets of major metropolitan areas.

The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their lengthy driveway, labeled “Private Road,” and that violated their

“There’s no merit to that action,” Google spokesman Larry Yu said. “It is unlucky litigation was chosen to address the concern considering we have visible tools, such as a YouTube video, to help folks learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal.”

He said Google has urls on the Web site that let property owners inquiry that such images be removed whether they quote a good reason and can confirm they own the property depicted.

“We absolutely respect that public may not be comfortable with some of the imagery on the site,” Yu said. “We actually construct it pretty easy for folks to submit a desire to us to remove the imagery.”

Yu plus said that whether the Borings made such a demand to Google, particularly arguing that the images show a view from their private driveway, he is confident that the image would be…

Orginal post by Top Tech News