Google Street View Opt-Out Period Expired in Germany

In an unique move, Google allowed Germans to have their homes removed from Street View before the service went live in the country. This came after criticism from government agencies and privacy groups about the implications of the service.

The period in which Germans were able to opt-out of Street View ended today and the service is scheduled to go live later this year as was the plan.

Germany has very strict privacy regulations and Google's Street View was met with reservations and criticism from local authorities ever since Google announced that it planned to bring it to Germany.

There were several discussions last year with Germany demanding that Google not store the raw images on its servers for as long as it did, one year.

Street View cars gather the images and then send it to the Google data centers for processing. People's faces are then blurred and so are number plates.

However, Google also stores the un-blurred images in case errors occur, as they sometimes do, in order to improve the system. Google ended up making some concessions on how long it could store those photos last year.

But things went from bad to worse when Google revealed that it had, unwittingly, gathered payload data from public WiFi networks with its Street View cars, this after requests for inspection from the German authorities.

Still, Google pushed forward with plans to launch Street View in Germany in 20 cities by the end of the year.

For the first time, Google enabled users to remove their homes before the service went live. Normally, users can flag any image on Street View as inappropriate and request its removal, but only after it's available on the site.

Google gave Germans until October 15 to ask for the removal of their homes. The authorities claimed that hundreds of thousands of Germans used the system set up by Google, though they were unable to back up the claim.

Google says it has no idea how many of the requests are legitimate and it will have to analyze the data to know for sure. The plan to have Street View go live this year is still on track, Google says.