"No problem with the Indian government", Google states

Nov 2, 2007 11:20 GMT  ·  By

Since Google Earth is able to show all the details discoverable from satellites, some of the countries which are supposed to get updated imagery raise privacy concerns because the Google tool might show too many photos to the Internet users. But India is not one of those countries, Google's officials sustained. According to NDTV.com, Michael T Jones, chief technologist, Google Earth, stated that the Mountain View company talked with the Indian authorities and there was no problem with the content provided by Google.

''We talked to them. We meet with them. We travel constantly to India. We do not want to be a problem. We go and talk to them and say how do you feel about this? Of course every country is nervous; nervous is the wrong word; when something is new and more dated than before. They are just curious if this is going to be good or bad'', he said for NDTV.com.

There were several countries which were afraid that Google's imagery might have some dangerous consequences. For example, Canada's officials stated that Google Maps Street View must censor people's faces and the registration numbers because the service might infringe the nation's privacy laws. But all those countries have reasons to be afraid. There were several cases when the terrorists or other malicious people used the Google Earth imagery to organize attacks. For example, a long time ago, some extremists captured information provided by Google's mapping solutions to launch attacks against the UK troops located in Basra. At that time, Google replaced the photos with older ones, captured before the departure of the army in the area.

''Everything, we have we show. As soon as we get data, we publish it. We buy satellite data. We buy airplane data. That is what we show in Google earth, all the date we have got so far'', the Google official added for the same source.