NORTH Devon today came under the all-seeing eye of internet giant Google which expanded its Street View mapping service.

Residents will now be able to see 360-degree images of the area — including cars, businesses, houses and shops — on their computer or mobile phone.

The images have been captured over the past two years by a fleet of specially modified Google cars. One was seen in The Strand, Barnstaple, on Tuesday.

The cars have travelled 238,000 miles of British roads and in North Devon this has proved a challenge.

"Obviously some tiny country lanes in North Devon could have been missed at some point," said Google spokesman Laura Scott.

"It is also hard for the camera to get good quality images on bumpy tracks. But hopefully we have covered enough images to get a really good and accurate sense of North Devon."

The system was started in 2007 in America and has previously come under fire for invasion of privacy.

Mrs Scott said Street View only contains imagery that is already visible from public roads. It also automatically blurs both faces and licence plates.

But while Google admits it gets it right "most of the time", some items might be wrongly blurred out — including the face of KFC man Colonel Sanders — and some people might fail to be protected by the system.

Every photo carries a "Report a concern" link for anyone who believes they could be identified in a photo, or wants their property removed from a picture.

When Google updates the photos, these spaces will remain blank.

This option is also available for high-security areas, such as military bases.

Users can from today log onto www.maps.google.co.uk and use either a postcode or the orange "peg man" to locate a road. Accessible roads are shown in blue.

The images were due to be available from midnight last night.