I was fiddling with Google Street View and noticed a subtle bit of amazing image technology. Honestly, this is the first time in a long time that technology has literally made my jaw drop.

They've subtracted out the car. ie: see the curb and manhole in this example.

When you pan the image all the way down, you don't see the Street View capture car. You see a "Predator"-like ghost shape of the car, filled by lower-res imaging of the street beneath it.

Clearly, they're using the photo taken before/after the car passed a given spot, then using precise mathematics to adjust the image of where the car was/will be. And they must be doing it automatically, knowing the distance the car traveled and the interval between photos, the angle ahead/behind, etc.

Amazing. This is just one reason that I have faith that Google is not "just an advertising company." They may be spread thin like Yahoo, but their quality is what counts.