Wow. I have to think that once this goes live, the lawsuits will start flowing.<p>My prediction is that some of the billboard companies will freak out and demand revenue sharing, claiming misappropriation of their advertising assets.
I have to suspect that this sort of manipulation would reduce the value of Street View for a lot of people - those who use it to see what somewhere <i>actually looks like</i> (or at least did when the Google cars drove by).<p>Further, considering all the cases where driving directions or identification of addresses has gone wrong, I imagine that there could be a lot of ads ending up on walls, in the air, or otherwise not superimposed on a billboard.
Microsoft did something similar in 2006, but with virtual billboards.<p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-mapping-goes-3D/2100-1032_3-6132967.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-mapping-goes-3D/2100-1032_3-6...</a>
At least in southern California, most to nearly all billboard ads are positioned along freeways. LA being an exception where you can throw an ad onto just about _anything_ anywhere.