Presently, the images are clear only to a few feet at any detail, i.e. it appears each shot is equivalent to about a 3Megapixel camera; you can make out faces on the side of the road if they were standing 2 steps from the vehicle. On one hand, for privacy concerns, this is a good thing for those who were passed. On the other hand, detail is desirable. I will note however, that this is obviously an early stage in the feature, as only a few hundred roads in major cities are available, and these are primarily major roads. Given a few more years, I think it is certain Google will be able to obtain higher quality images and of more roads, probably even your road soon.
Right now what you see has a lot to be desired. You can get a good idea of the road if you are a visual driver, but with trucks on the side of the road and people walking around, a lot is blocked. Later, I speculate Google will recapture many of the busy streets so they can edit out people, vehicles, and construction. Yet having people and vehicles in the picture gives the images a life of sorts, makes them interesting, rather than appearing to be ghost towns/cities. The images as they are presently, with people in them also gives a glimpse into the buzz and the life of the city or town.
There are other interesting possibilities opened up with the new StreetView. With all the images captured thus far (and soon to be captured), Google can create 3-D views of buildings beside the road, as they have captured at least 3 angles of the building on one face. Google can use this 3d model and the location to place a label, ex: Lincoln Memorial or the US Mint (neither are presently viewable in StreetView). Furthermore, as Google has phone listings and website listings, they can link the phone number or website to the view of the building. Imagine you are driving past a shop that has had problems with vandalism in the past and you heard in the news the owner is offering a reward for information that helps stop the vandalism. You drive past and notice a vandal in the act, but you don't know remember phone number. You grab your phone, go to Google Maps, and select your current location (provided by GPS; this is something privacy advocates hate but it appears rather inevitable, and Google will love it as it aids in providing their context based advertising), and you are able to get the phone number (and even the linked news article regarding the reward) and call the shop owner to report the vandalism in progress, and even take a picture for proof (with the built in camera in your phone).
Alternatively, you are driving around a city you have never been before, and Google Maps is providing you live view of your step by step driving directions (which is accounting for the construction and accidents provided by Traffic), and you are able to go to the museum while your kids are surfing the website planning what all you they want to do there--and your decision to go was spur of the moment. After you picked up your kids, you just told Google Maps you wanted to go to the Nature museum, and Google knew where that was based on your location and the data available.
And the nice thing? All this is available now, or could be in coming months.
