Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 17:09:49 on
Fri, 20 Mar 2009, Steve Firth remarked:
The odd thing is that in each of street scenes I've looked at adults'
faces tend to be blurred, childrens' faces are not.

It seems to me that they blur things that look circular, including the
hubcaps on cars. Maybe a lot of childrens faces are more oval than their
algorithm can cope with.

I'm sure I read somewhere that their "algorithm" consists of paying
people less than the minimum wage to stare at images on-line and click
on the faces.

And they blur out people's arms, car hubcaps and bits of roadsigns,
because they are bored?

I suspect road signs because Google seems to have a policy (but a
strange one) on advertising. I've mostly been checking out cities in
Italy that I know well. On those street scenes the signs most frequently
blurred out are the ones that all Italian cities have advertising local
businesses. Also they seem to blur out logos of big corporates such as
KFC/McDonalds.

Hubcaps might be the same rule - I've seen some bizarre blurring on
vehicles such as headlights on BMWs and rear boot badges on some, but
not all, models.

Other features seem to be blurred by motion, either of the camera or of
the subject.