Google Street View is a truly amazing concept that a lot of people love the idea of. How brilliant that we can look at the whole world on the Internet in close-up, street level detail?

The problem some people have with the service is one of privacy. Taking photographs at street level means people and property is also photographed. And Google has taken a lot of flak for that fact.

In an effort to educate Japanese people about how Street View works, Google Japan made this short stop-animation video explaining the process in as cutesy a way as is humanly possible.

We get to see the Google Street View camera car as a living entity who spends the day taking photos and the nighttime editing images to remove faces abd license plate numbers at people’s request.

If only the truth were this simple and sweet!