Google your house and see your home at street level, see your neighbor’s house and street online for free. Check out your co-workers' addresses and see if they live in an undesirable area or if they mow the lawn.

Google maps displays your house and front yard, a handy web mapping service application for homebuyers or to help locate that party you’re invited to at a home in an unfamiliar neighborhood. They have not yet photographed every house in America, so some addresses you search for may be unavailable.

Unlike former satellite photos that presented an obviously aerial view, this new application enables you to locate an address and see the house at street level. You can manipulate the view to include neighboring houses and sneak a peek up and down the street. You can even glance up in the treetops, should the house in question be located on a sycamore lined avenue.

    This free web mapping service application might come in handy if you are relocating and searching for a home in an unfamiliar area. Real Estate ads feature attractive photographs of a house for sale. Even a dump in a lousy neighborhood manages to look cute. Once you locate a desirable home, you can check out the neighborhood. Who wants to buy the finest home in a crummy neighborhood on a rubble strewn street where people keep sofas on the porch or past-their-prime cars on cement blocks in the front yard?

    If you’ve been invited to a party at the home of a co-worker or your cousin’s new digs in an unfamiliar area, Google Maps makes it easy to locate. So much better than crawling down the street at 5 miles per hour, aggravating the parade of surly roughnecks tailgating your car.

     The new Google Maps web mapping service application depicts your home and neighborhood to any mook who decides to check out your area. Robbers can case the joint quickly and get a feel for the area.

     In case of my own home, I’m relieved. No self-respecting thief would waste his time. Google Maps presents my street on a dark and cloudy winter afternoon. Late shed oak leaves pile up in the gutter. Leafless trees look dead. My son’s friend’s car, a beater, sits out front in all its decrepitude. The lawn is raggedy and the dingy lighting casts a gloomy pallor on the whole street. In short, it looks like a slum. The only way it could look worse would be if one of the houses just burned down and lay in a scorched pile of charcoal under a miasma of smoke.

     If I was searching to relocate and Goggled my actual home (which is kind of cute) I’d veer away like a hog being herded toward the slaughterhouse.

     Just for kicks, I searched for my street address in another city (they list several of the same street address throughout the country) and noticed that the identical address in Schenectady looks an awful lot like mine!

     Back when satellite home photos were all the rage, it seemed intrusive. The ability of any stranger to zero in on my back yard made me nervous. It was creepy. But, at least the yard looked pretty, lots of vivid green, mature trees and a nice layout, no junk lying around, no cast-off beer bottles letting the world know we drink cheap, unfashionable beer. I even experienced a jolt of perverse pleasure when I Googled my friend's back yard depicted during a late summer drought.

     This new technology that displays my home for all the world to see on a day that’s so overcast it looks like a black and white picture or a photo taken shortly after an ash storm at the edge of a dirty bomb detonation is intrusive, insulting and depressing. It’s 1984 meets Escape From New York.

     What’s next, for crying out loud, Google my dresser drawers? Google my medicine cabinet? Google my basement? At least they couldn’t make that look worse than it actually is.

Some of the house views contain photographs or people. Google has attempted to blurr these images but some folks are not happy to be so publicly displayed dispite the blurring or feel the blurring is not adequate.  Do to these privacy concerns and complaints, Google now offers technology to remove your face or your children's faces from the site.