Google Maps car taking fresh photos of Gainesville

In Google’s version of Gainesville, there’s no Hampton Inn downtown, no Methodist church near the corner of University Avenue and West 13th Street and no mention of the University of Florida’s 2008 football championship on the outside of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

That will change soon.

A car carrying a 360-degree camera has been driving around town this week to get updated street-level photos for Google Maps, the online atlas that provides directions, transit information and photographs of the buildings, traffic and pedestrians on many of the world’s busiest streets.

On Wednesday, the car — a Subaru with a California license plate and wrapped with a design to look like a Google Map — was spotted near the UF campus.

On Thursday, it was seen on Archer Road.

And if it saw you, you could end up online for the world to see. Sort of.

To deal with privacy concerns that have stemmed from the application, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company employed software to blur identifying features on people and vehicles.

“Once the photographs have been taken, they go through computer processing to make them ready for use on Google Maps,” Google spokeswoman Deanna Yick wrote in an email. “This includes cutting-edge face-blurring technology, which helps make sure that passers-by in the photographs can’t be identified, and we also blur legible license plates.”