Google Street View is designed to take the privacy of individuals seriously, and apparently, it extends to bovine security, blurring out the face of an ordinary cow grazing.
Sure, it's easy to poke fun at the whole incident, and even the Mountain View company itself made "udderly" choice puns.
"We thought you were pulling the udder one when we herd the moos, but it's clear that our automatic face-blurring technology has been a little overzealous. Of course, we don't begrudge this cow milking its five minutes of fame," a Google spokesperson tells BBC.
However, it indicates that Google's face recognition technology needs a bit of work in terms of distinguishing objects, as it could be blurring out not only cows' faces but also buildings, landmarks, statues and whatnot.
The Cow, The Blur And The Google Street View
The Guardian's U.S. Opinions Editor David Shariatmadari spotted the bovine grazing on the banks of the River Cam in Cambridge, England. To spread the word, he posted his finding on Twitter.
Great to see Google takes cow privacy seriously pic.twitter.com/ACTBpDwno6
— David Shariatmadari (@D_Shariatmadari) September 13, 2016
As everyone can see, practically everyone is fueled with humor, and a bit of fun is arguably the best takeaway out of all of this.
Face Recognition Technology Has Room For Improvements
When the hilarity subsides, it's time to take a quick look at the more serious side of things. As mentioned earlier, this shows that Google's face recognition technology has to be improved. Despite having a massive database of images, it's still possible for it to make a minor slipup like this.
Aside from incorrectly blurring out non-human subjects and somewhat restricting the whole Street View experience, this little wrinkle that needs some ironing could be used against it by entities with privacy concerns regarding the service, including but not limited to the Home Ministry in India.
Of course, that's just mere speculation at this point.
Summing Up The Blurred Bovine And Google Story
To boil things down, the entire incident is virtually harmless, and it's safe to assume that the now-popular cow has probably made the day of many online users.
Did you find the blurred cow to be a comical event? If so, we'd love to hear what you think about it, especially if you've got a couple of bovine-related puns in mind already.
