EU Privacy Push May Drive Google To Stop Updating Street View In Europe by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Mar 8)
Stret views anywhere are useful to tourists or others new to the area. But some find it an invasion of privacy - picture of your home available to anyone (could be legitimate worry), picture of you walking on the street - even if the image is blurred. The EU gets more upset about this than we do in North America. Interesting - since the UK and Europe have done much more in the line of surveillance.
However, street views aren't popular.
According to Bloomberg: The EU’s privacy watchdog said in a Feb. 11 letter to Google obtained by Bloomberg News that “it is disproportionate to retain unblurred copies of the images for one year,” and urged the company to cut the period to six months. Street View, which offers photos of roads and intersections, was introduced in 2007 in the U.S. and is being rolled out across Europe.Posted by Gwen at March 8, 2010 10:09 PMIf the EU continues to press Google on the issue the company may decide against any future updates of Street View images.