14 DAY TRIAL // The Mountain View-based company plans the expansion of Google Maps Street View, the web service which shows street-level panoramas only using your browser. According to several reports, multiple Google cars supposed to be used for capturing Street View photos, were spotted in Australia, a matter which attracted, once again, the privacy infringement dispute into the spotlights.
As you probably know, Google has always been criticized for the amount of details that Google Maps shows because Street View is capable of showing all kinds of information, such as people faces, vehicle registration numbers and other high-resolution photos with users' houses. That is why some of the countries and states which had received the Google Maps function requested the removal of certain photos while people appearing on the service urged Google to censor their faces.
This is exactly the same case as the Australian privacy advocates know that the arrival of Street View in the country means showing the faces of the residents and the cars' registration plates on the web, through a freeware service.
However, just like usual, Google's representatives defend the company by saying that Street View shows no more than what's accessible from the street. "The imagery available in Street View will contain imagery of neighbourhoods, cities and local terrain and has been a highly requested feature by Australians," Google spokesman Rob Shilkin told The Australian.
But what's interesting is that it seems like Google has a different perspective over what privacy infringement means as the folks at The Weekend Australian requested the addresses of the Google Australia officials in order to take photos of their houses. Although it sounds funny, it's somehow like "you show our faces on the web, why can't we show yours in our newspaper?". However, the Internet giant refused to give them the details because "providing those details would be completely inappropriate," as the Google representative told the publication.