Playing Google's Waiting Game

Hey, what do you know—it's Google's Street View car, stuck in traffic! (Lesson learnt, we suppose.) The above photos, captured recently by Torontoist's Nick Kozak, provide a rare close-up of the roof-mounted device used to capture Street View's 360-degree shots, which looks unnervingly like the love-child of Bentham's panopticon and WALL-E.

So what's going on with the still-to-be-launched service? Although we had been under the impression that all the images for the eagerly awaited Street View had already been taken, recent comments from spokesperson Tamara Michner on that issue were a tad evasive: "We're capturing images on an ongoing basis around Canada," was all she would tell Torontoist when asked if Google's cars are still taking shots for the allegedly imminent version. (A similarly cagey response was recently given to the National Post.) In any case, Michner still insists that the service should be ready to go "soon." Of course, we've heard that before.

Photos by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.