The Google car is taking pictures around town. How messy is your carport?

Google Street View has had a car zipping around O'ahu the last few months. It's been spotted in East Honolulu the last few days. It's not stealth surveillance. The car is marked with the Google logo and the camera is mounted on a tall stand on top. It's one of those "What the heck is ... Oh, that's the Google car! ... Dang, wish I had cut the bushes this past weekend."

If you look at the Google Street Maps photos, you'll find that only a few locations are available in cities in the U.S. and other countries. Click on Fresno, for example, and there are just a handful of 360-degree images of that lovely town. So it's not like it's every street everywhere. At least not yet.

So how does that sit with you, having your house, at least what is visible from the public street, photographed and published online?

On the one hand, there are those who are thrilled at the prospect. If they happen to see their dog in the photo or some laundry hanging on the line, that's just a bonus. Getting Google Street View is almost like being famous. Take my picture! Look everyone, that's my house!

On the other end of the spectrum are people who have gone to court to keep their homes off Google Street View.

And, as in matters of opinion on such things as privacy and dignity, most people fall somewhere in between. They're OK with it but they don't love it. They don't like it but they're too busy to think about it much. And for some, it's "What's a Google?"

Google presents it as a way to help people get around town, a navigational tool. There have also been stories about the Google Street View being used to solve crimes (these pop up at the top of a Google News search, naturally).

Information at the fingertips of wholesome, law-abiding citizens is helpful. Information used by thieves and stalkers is abetting a crime, and there is certainly that potential here. But the photos are not in real time, and are in fact months old once they hit the Web, so it's not like Mr. Bad Guy can look and say, "The car's not in the garage. They're not home. Let's go swipe the flat-screen."

Some private communities on the Mainland have blocked Google from photographing their streets. But otherwise, it's fair game.