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Google removes Street View of kissing couple?

A Street View image of a couple enjoying their first, very chaste kiss appears to have been removed by the company.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Love is something that ought to be celebrated.

Yet it appears that Google Street View, the place where we have already seen passed-out drunks, vomiting Brits and even the same woman 43 times, has removed one of the more positive images ever found on its slightly snoopy pages.

You see, a young couple happened to be sitting on the grass in Wolverhampton, England--or just outside of the city, according to Google Maps--and fell into a loving embrace. It was, I am sure, a common occurrence on Common Road.

A Google Street View car was passing by during this amorous moment and captured the full frontal for posterity. Oh, there was nothing remotely racy about it. I have been to Wolverhampton, and it is one of the more perfect places for a roadside kiss. And anyway, it was cold.

Young love was here. Really.

In revealing their identities to the Daily Mail, Eddie Bateman, 16 and Hayley Moss, 17, explained that it was all so very high school. In a good way.

"I couldn't believe it," Moss told the Mail. "I wouldn't admit to it being me at first, as I was worried it looked quite bad, as it looks more than it is, but it really was just a kiss."

As if to prove just how touchingly old media some of today's youth still are, she added: "'I think it's amazing that our first kiss has been in the paper."

In the paper. Not "online." Not "on Google Street View."

At the time, she said, her parents and friends didn't know that she and Eddie were on the verge of making out on grass verges.

They say all good things must come to an end. But Eddie and Hayley are reportedly, three months after this image was taken, still together. A long-term relationship, in teen years.

However, the image seems to have been removed, even though Google has yet to confirm that. If you look at my screenshot, what other reason might Google have had to black out just this very part of Common Road?

Some might find this a pity.

Of course, it's unlikely to have been Google's choice, but rather the request of the kissing couple and their families. But wouldn't it have been lovely to have left a monument to innocence, abstinence, and all the joys of eternal youth? Yes, a monument to Google in its early days.