Street View goes live in Germany

Yesterday Google Street View went live in Germany, and lucky us, we're in a coverage area. Or, we were when we lived in town when they took the photos.



We immediately could tell when the photos were taken, 2008, because our yellow car was parked in front of our apartment (Geocaching sticker visible), and Baasha's shelter was already built, meaning he lived there when they drove by.



Here's our apt, we were in the top middle.

It's unbelievable how many people have blurred out their homes, as you take a virtual walk down a German street.

Even our church is blurred from the sides and back (which is not allowed because it's a city-owned building, not a residence).

Did people consider that opting out actually draws attention to that building, because it makes the address more interesting, not less. When you walk down the street in real life, you remember which ones are hidden, and you cannot help but look.



I'm not against opting out, although it's a shame when one apartment resident blurs the entire building for everyone. But anyone can go by and take a photo of any blurred house and post it as a tourist photo on Google Maps, so if you've blurred your house, you might also want to do this:


















I understand why some people are against SV - we found some sort of incident in the middle of a street - a bunch of cops and some bystanders, curious what happened there. But likely a neighbor will have the entire scene blurred, because it doesn't look good.

We also saw a student that could have been crying (or just bored) on the steps of my man's high school. Will she be horrified to see this photo? My guess is that these kids on the steps are very popular today as they attend classes.

You know why I love SV. I am far from home and it lets me visit when I miss Seattle. It's not just fun though, SV helps the tourism industry, and helps people decide where to buy a home. It also gives people who cannot travel the means to see places of their choosing, at their pace. It's as though you're standing there, 8K kilometers from home.

Next month I have to be scanned at the airport and they'll get to see a picture that is most definitely not available from any street. *sigh*

Welcome to Germany, SV. I think we'd better use it now before much more gets blurred.

In the news (Spiegel Online)

Google's controversial online Street View service went online in Germany early on Thursday morning, launching with panorama images of streets in the country's 20 largest cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich.

In contrast to other countries, the launch of Street View was met with considerable resistance from politicians and privacy protection advocates in Germany, including the country's consumer protection minister, Isle Aigner of the conservative Christian Social Union, who criticized the service as an incursion on people's privacy. Google sent its camera-equipped cars around the country several years ago, but the controversy surrounding Street View led to considerable delays before its introduction.

As was widely expected, one doesn't have to look very far in Street View to find homes that have been blurred out. Prior to the introduction of the service, more than 244,000 households in the first 20 cities to be placed online submitted requests to have their homes blurred out. Google claims the figure represents only 3 percent of households. Ultimately, it would seem to be a relatively small figure, especially given the controversy and the fact that some polls showed that more than half of Germans oppose Street View.

A Hole-Filled Vision of Germany

Nevertheless, there are considerable obstructed images in the German version of Street View. In any instance where an apartment renter asked to have their flat pixilated, Google blurred out the entire building they live in. Data protection authorities believe that up to a million households across the country have been blurred out by the company.

Google has stated that residents who want their homes blurred out can still do so following the launch. In addition, the company says that it blurs out faces and vehicle license plates.

Currently, street views of 20 German cities can be found on the service including Berlin, Bielefeld, Bochum, Bonn, Bremen, Cologne, Dortmund, Dresdent, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Mannheim, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Wuppertal.

One more, with a pic of Wuppertal's Schwebebahn:

Google Maps Blurry Street View Available in 20 German Cities