A few concerns were raised in Europe wherein the regulators had doubts that Google’s mapping service violates the European privacy laws. Google has thus come up with an adjustment on Tuesday which gives wireless, or Wi-Fi networks the right to forbid Google from listing them in a vast database which has been built on by Google in the past few years. Google’s top privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer blogged on Tuesday that the ‘opt-out’ choice would be available this autumn. Google has planned a step to ease many Wi-Fi network owners all over the world as the search engine giant has backed off.
Some might think as to how would it affect Google’s working for getting locations. The thing is that Google relies on the signals which are publicly broadcasted from neighborhood Wi-Fi networks. This helps them in getting a better detailing of the locations of cell phone users. The coverage gaps which have been created by information from cell phone towers which have been inaccurate, while at times even the global positioning system is unavailable. These coverage gaps are thus filled in by these networks in the Wi-Fi database.
Google has been of the thought that if one is online, they even have a few beneficial points to note when their physical whereabouts are known. One of those beneficial points could be like the information obtained could help one in knowing about the discount offers that are running at a nearby merchant’s place. A lingering thought would be that this would be beneficial to Google too as their revenue would be boosted by selling more ads. 
Privacy watchdogs and regulators however were concerned because the location database which is maintained by the search engine giant and others for that matter too, maintained by Google and others could turn into tracking services that compile histories of people’s movements. To put that query to rest, Google said that it does not compile any records on the locations of individuals. Additionally, Google even stated that the names even of the people who own the Wi-Fi networks (feeding Google’s location service) are not identified by Google, which keeps the privacy factor intact. Fleischer even wrote, “We think we can go further in protecting people’s privacy.”
The privacy related problems started last year when Google lost some credibility among privacy experts as it was reported that Google cars along with its information collection for its online mapping service, had even vacuumed up emails and other personal information which were transmitted over neighborhood Wi-Fi networks. It was revealed that the problems were noticed in the U.S., Europe and other parts of the world. At that time, Google had an explanation wherein it blamed the intrusion on an unauthorized program, which was set up by one of its engineers.
Google on its part had a number of apologies which were made to those who faced problems because of the Wi-Fi intrusions. Google even imposed regulatory fines and promised that it would tighten up its privacy controls on its employees, which had a count of almost 30,000.
In the related case, Microsoft and Apple have even faced similar problems pertaining to automatically collecting data from Wi-Fi networks.
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