Google Street View, the feature in Google Maps that displays photos taken from the road. Today television news anchor Pat Kiernan spotted a photo of a man on the street in New York, with a crowd of onlookers starting to gather around him.
Now, there's no information about what happened to the man beyond the photo, but Twitter users discussing the image are mostly assuming that he's dead. (In fact, in a bit of gallows humor, one of the shortened URLs created for Kiernan's post is http://bit.ly/deaDguY)
Google has removed the photo from Street View, though I've included a thumbnail of the image above -- click if you want to see the whole thing. Here's the comment the company sent me:
This image was removed very quickly after we were notified. Street View shows images from public roads - what you would see if you walked down the street - but sometimes there are objectionable images. When we learn of such images, we act quickly to remove it from Google Maps.
Google has stumbled into concerns about privacy and the appropriateness of images before, but it's also taking steps to address complaints -- note the quick takedown here, as well as the decision to blur faces and the streamlined image removal process.