Just yesterday, the world caught wind of a sensational new Google Maps mashup: Shoot View, which let you stomp around real world cities with an assault rifle and shoot at people, dogs, cars, or whatever else got your dander up. Less than 24 hours after it hit the blogosphere, Google pulled out the banhammer and brought it down on Shoot View with a resounding thump.

The Google Maps mashup was created by Dutch Ad agency Pool Worldwide. Although Shoot View was nothing more than a graphical overlay atop Street View scenery that you couldn’t actually impact with your virtual gunfire, it’s one of the most wrong uses of a Google API in history. Unfortunately, it was also buzzworthy enough to generate a huge amount of publicity for Pool Worldwide, so it worked for them in an ends-justify-the-means kind of way.

It’s unfortunate that some people chose to take advantage of Google’s generosity with its data and services like this, but thankfully we see many more fun and useful creations than mindless dreck like Shoot View. Some who reported on Shoot View felt that it wasn’t such a big deal — there are plenty of real first-person shooters out there where squeezing off a round causes a digital adversary to die, after all.

But you make the call in the comments. What’s worse? “Really” taking out virtual adversaries in an FPS or shooting at real people in something like Shoot View, even if you can’t actually kill them?

In the meantime, I’m waiting for Pool to come back with a second effort that lets you use that new laser gun the UK police plan to use to control rioters.