Okay, some unfortunates are caught in the background by Google's photographers - in the same way they're caught in the background of anyone else's photographs uploaded to the internet - which could cause some embarrassment until they ask Google to remove them and Google promptly complies. But, really, that's a consequence of people having the freedom to take photographs in public. Are the opponents of Street View suggesting people should have the right to trawl through tourists' flickr albums and demand the removal of any photographs in which they have inadvertently been snapped? And that the very existence of online photograph depositories is an invasion of our privacy?
Jeremy's Europe Trip View is an invasion of privacy!
If anything, publishing satellite images of people's back gardens - as now available on pretty much any online mapping tool - is a much more obvious invasion of people's privacy than a one-off shot from the street. Oh, so that's what your private little space looks like! But we seem to have accepted that.
I think Google Earth is one of the three greatest wonders of the internet age* (the other two being Wikipedia and the bittorrent network). Like the other two, it opens up the world at a time when governments and other interests are working hard to close it down. It frees information when the powers that be are trying to control it. It is an extraordinary technical achievement and it really makes the world smaller.
Obviously there would be problems with the eye of Big Brother wandering around snapping us - but it does that anyway. Police CCTV setups are increasing around the world - the UK is almost blanketed with them. Melbourne is going that way, too. In comparison, with the information exposed regarding our public activities by Street View, at least we know what they've seen (because it's open to all of us), and we can ask them to remove it. And they will, promptly. Try doing that with the modern bureaucratic security apparatus.
*It was of enormous assistance planning this trip, for example - this morning I'm in Llanberis, Wales, and I already have a very good idea of where everything is because I was able to look around the landscape in 3D before even leaving Australia.
