A western Pennsylvania couple sued Google Inc., saying pictures of their home that appear on the Web site’s “Street View” feature violated their privacy, devalued their property and caused them mental suffering.

Aaron and Christine Boring bought the home in Franklin Park, a Pittsburgh suburb, in October 2006 for a “considerable sum of money,” according to their 10-page lawsuit filed Wednesday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

“A major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy,” the lawsuit said.

The suit targets the Mountain View, California, company over images on its Web site, which allows users to find street-level photos by clicking on a map. To gather the photos, Google uses vehicles with mounted digital cameras to take pictures up and down the streets of major metropolitan areas.

The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled “Private Road,” and that violated their privacy.

“There’s no merit to this action,” Google spokesman Larry Yu said. “It is unfortunate litigation was chosen to address the concern because we have visible tools, such as a YouTube video, to help people learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal.”

He said Google has links on the Web site that let property owners request that such images be removed if they cite a good reason and can confirm they own the property depicted.

“We absolutely respect that people may not be comfortable with some of the imagery on the site,” Yu said. “We actually make it pretty easy for people to submit a request to us to remove the imagery.”

Yu also said that if the Borings made such a request to Google, especially arguing that the images show a view from their private driveway, he is confident that the image would be…