Turns out the Google Street View car tagged with a GPS sensor thing was a hoax

Matt Burns

Matt is a Senior Editor at TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail side of... → Learn More

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010


This makes me sad inside. Pranksters really didn’t tag a Google Street View car with a GPS sensor and track it around Berlin. Nope, it was all just an Internet prank by a bunch of hipster art students. I guess this explains the non-systemic driving pattern though. Anyway, Google’s statement is after the jump along with one of the videos showing the fake car in action.

Guardian.co.uk,

Just saw your piece on the GPS Street View car in Germany and wanted to let you know it was a hoax :-) . Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab is an art organization which recently used a fake Street View car as an art project in Berlin and claimed to have put a GPS tracking device on in to track its route. This car was not an official Google car, as we are currently not driving through Germany as there are not optimal weather and light conditions at this time of year. As soon as we’ll restart driving you can find the driving schedule at http://www.google.de/streetview.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9261909&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1

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