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Google Street View Comes to Germany, but Much Will Be Blurry

Where: Germany
August 17, 2010 at 3:46 PM | by | Comments (0)

You can use Google Maps Street View to find the world's most picturesque street. Or to virtually wander around the San Diego Zoo. Or to plan a bike ride through Boulder. What you can't do is use it to view any part of Germany, since privacy watchdogs have been holding up Mountain Views's expansion into the country. There are currently 23 countries with Street View-enabled cities, and exactly none of them are German. All of that is going to change in the coming months, now that the search giant has met the German government's demands for privacy protections. Twenty German cities are slated for addition by the end of the year.

Under the deal, Google will blur out faces and license plates automatically. Homes will of course be included by default, but Google has agreed to blur them out too if owners submit a simple request. Even a fax will work. Reports say that 10,000 Germans have already submitted their requests, which is a huge number of people who don't want pictures of their front yard on the internet.

Google isn't out of the privacy woods yet though. Just as things began to go well in Germany, South Korean police raided Google's local offices. The investigation is ongoing and involves Google's mishaps with collecting private wifi information. Any number of European countries are also set to get involved in the controversy, since the data collection almost certainly violates EU regulations. France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are already in the mix.

All of that said, there's definitely a degree to which people are getting a little bit too paranoid over Google. Example: a Google executive with an interest in aerial robotics recently bought a drone to play with, because—you know—lhe's interested in aerial robotics. Rumors immediately started to spread about how Google was dispatching drones to circle over urban population centers and take pictures for Street View. "Street View fleet could soon take to the air," screamed the Telegraph, moronically.

[Photo: Bob Bobster / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· As Google Street View ramps up in Germany, Korea clamps down [CSM]
· Europe Travel [Jaunted]
· Germany Tavel [Jaunted]

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