14 DAY TRIAL // Google suffered yet another blow to its Street View program, when numerous complaints coming from all over Japan have forced authorities to ask the company to re-shoot all of its pictures in the country. Most of the people who had something to say about the pictures argued that they were too revealing, and that the cameras mounted on Google's cars were too elevated, allowing them to peer over fences, and into people's yards and other private spaces. Japan joins Greece in its disapproval of Google Street View photos, and also the UK, where citizens have voiced numerous concerns about their privacy.
“We have lowered the height of the camera due to the unique characteristics of many Japanese roads; they tend to be narrow, without pavements and driveways, and houses are built close to the street. We think the new camera height allows us to get a high-quality image of the street while respecting the privacy of homeowners,” the giant American search engine said in a statement. It also stated that it would ensure that the “locally appropriate modifications to ensure a better user experience” were made as well.
Google has big plans for its software, which it wants to merge with Google Maps, to form a new kind of online tool, available to anyone. Basically, if you look at a certain part of, for instance, the UK, using Google Maps, you can enable the Street View option when you are at a high zoom, and the actual pictures taken from the streets will appear. Most commercial satellites in orbit do not have the ability to take such detailed photos from above, and so the synergy is almost perfect, Google shared.
But some have argued that the company is taking its quest for knowledge a bit too far, invading people's rights and privacy, and subjecting them to being discovered in the program in offending postures or other compromising positions. Google has already announced that it will renounce any pictures that are deemed a threat, and that it will take them off the servers, which actually happened a number of times in the United Kingdom.
But authorities in Greece were not convinced by the company's plea, and told the search engine that it could no longer snap pictures of streets until more clarifications were made available. The status of the Greek situation is still unknown, but Google representatives said that they expected it to be solved soon.