This image was lost some time after publication.

The Google Street View car was Spotted in Microsoft Country last week after launching in many smaller markets around the country first. Apparently the drivers, rather than use some fancy, newfangled Internet doohickey, simply burn the data captured by the rooftop camera array onto a CD and mail it back to Mountain View. The fact that Portland, Oregon and Juneau, Alaska were added to the list of Street View cities before Seattle inspired an April Fools article in local publication Naked Loon quoting a fictional Google spokesmonkey as saying the addition of Seattle was "extremely unlikely, save for some kind of highly localized disaster centered somewhere in Redmond."

This image was lost some time after publication, but you can still view it here.

My question is whether or not the car will be passing through the enclaves of wealth on the east side of Lake Washington like Mercer Island and Medina, where Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has his four-story underground bunker. Still, the homes of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Clearwire founder Craig McCaw are all within Seattle city limits, so happy Street View hunting! (Photos by Jed Rosenzweig)