244,000 Germans Opt Out Of Street View

Street View has at times seemed doomed in Germany, with politicians, privacy advocates, and lots of private citizens protesting the program.  Fewer than 250,000 people opted out when given the...
244,000 Germans Opt Out Of Street View
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Street View has at times seemed doomed in Germany, with politicians, privacy advocates, and lots of private citizens protesting the program.  Fewer than 250,000 people opted out when given the chance, however, which from Google’s perspective, is something of a victory.

Granted, 250,000 is a very large number, and Google’s only counted opt-outs from 20 cities in which it’ll soon launch Street View.  The trick is that opinion polls had indicated half (or more) of Germans didn’t like the idea of the program.

Google now seems to have that percentage beat.  A post on the European Public Policy Blog explained, "Out of a total of 8,458,084 households we received 244,237 opt-outs, which equals 2.89% of households."

Also, "Two out of three opt-ots [sic] came through our online tool," so even fewer folks felt threatened to the point that they broke out pen and paper.

This is relatively good news for Google, then.  There’s just one more problem that the search giant may yet encounter when it comes to Germany and its opt-out program.

GoogleThe blog post stated, "Given how complex 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.  We’ve worked very hard to keep the numbers as low as possible but in any system like this there will be mistakes."

Google might want to brace for loud objections and perhaps a lawsuit or two as a result.

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