Berlin — Internet search engine giant Google’s most controversial application Street View, which has been scrutinized in many countries on Thur said that nearly a quarter of a million Germans out of the 8.4 million households snapped by its Street View cameras have have asked Google to block images of their houses, the US Internet giant said as it prepared to launch its Street View service in the country.
That totals up to approximately 2.89 percent of the homes Google has photographed for Street View, a mapping feature that offers up 360-degree, street-level photographs of major cities throughout the world.
“Out of a total of 8,458,084 households we received 244,237 request to opt-outs, which equals 2.89 percent of households. Two out of three opt-outs came through our online tool,” Andreas Turk, product manager for Google Street View in Germany, wrote in a blog post.
A Street View car in Berlin in September. Many Germans want to opt out.
The latest figure was in harmony with what German data protection officials had previously guessed. The officials predicted that several hundred thousand people would opt out.
The current stats come about two months after Google announced plans to extend Street View to 20 German cities by year’s end, including Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremburg, and Düsseldorf. Residents in the 20 cities who did not want photos of their homes included in Street View, Google gave people until Oct. 15 to notify the company via google.de/streetview.
“This describes that 97 percent of German households have no problem with Street View,” said Kay Oberbeck, a Google spokesman in Hamburg. “We have gone out of our way to make sure everyone’s concerns have been addressed.”
Oberbeck mentioned that Google had hired 200 people in Hamburg and Munich to authenticate and process the requests before Street View starts working. In addition to adjusting the photographic database, Google has sent residents requesting the removal their houses unique PIN numbers by postal mail in an effort to verify the veracity of each request.
Nevertheless, German regulators have criticized that Google did not offered people ample time. The notification, which was revealed in mid-August, a month when many Europeans are away on holiday. A deadline “must be carefully planned, coordinated, and announced,” John Caspar, Hamburg’s commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, said at the time.
In response, Google said processing opt-out requests and applying blurring is a complicated task that takes time; those who missed the deadline can still ask to have their homes removed via the “report a problem” button, Google said.
“Given how complicated the process is, there will be some houses that people asked us to blur that will be visible when we launch the imagery in a few weeks time,” Turk wrote. “We have worked very hard to keep the numbers as low as possible but in any system like this there will be mistakes.”
Some people, for instance, requested Google to blur their house but neglected to provide a precise location. They will have to use the “report a problem” function. “The same is true of faces and car license plates that our automatic blurring technology may have missed,” he said.
While residents in other countries can choose to request their homes be removed once Street View is active, Germany — home to some of the world’s most demanding data protection laws — has been the only country where Google has agreed to provide the opt-out option ahead of the launch. Street View will be available in 32 countries, including 10 in Europe.
Google has been trying to conciliate with privacy regulators in Germany over Street View, and over personal data that Google inadvertently obtained off unencrypted Wi-Fi routers while collecting information for the service.
Lena Wagner, spokeswoman for Google Street View, said the number of applications showed the majority of Germans had no issue with the service. “We were quite confident that Germans will see it as a valuable service as well, and the number shows just that,” she said.
In September, the Czech Republic banned Google from expanding Street View beyond Prague, citing privacy concerns. Several days later, Google announced that Street View is now available on all seven continents with the addition of Brazil, Antarctica, and Ireland.