Google Stops Taking Street View Pics in Germany

[LaurenG]

There won’t be any new Street View pics of Germany from Google. Even after the company won a battle in a German court in March, which ruled that it’s legal in Germany to take pictures from the street even from the Street View camera’s height of 10 feet, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that it has other priorities:

Our business priority is to use our Google cars to collect data such as street names and road signs to improve our basic maps for our users in a similar way that other mapping companies do.

Existing imagery of streets in the 20 cities already covered in Germany will remain. There’s no further info about Google’s reasons for halting its Street View photography, but we’re thinking one reason could be that the company’s growing weary of blurring pictures of buildings requested by German citizens, the number of which is pushing 250,000 at the moment and growing ever larger.

Google’s been acting in good faith throughout this drama, negotiating with the Germans, letting them choose whether they’d like to be included in the Street Views, and facing accusations of gathering data from open Wi-Fi signals, which Google said was inadvertent.


http://mashable.com/2011/04/10/google-street-view-5/

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. From one of Google's offices you can see Alaska...

[Canuckistanian]

2. Not surprised. There's remarkable public resistance to Street View

Google was forced to offer "opt-outs" to Germans who objected to having their properties on Street View.

It may have to do with past government intrusions on privacy such as the Nazi regime or the Stasi in the former East Germany, but Germans in general DEMAND their privacy rights now.

And I say, good for them.