Why does Germany barely have any google street view (on google maps) + random German police car with pride flag off internet.

3 comments

1. >Why does Germany barely have any google street view (on google maps

   Use the search function. I guess we average out at this being asked once a month

   >+random German police car with pride flag off internet.

   Is that a question?

2. This might surprise you, but until just a week or two ago only a couple of German cities were on Street View at all, and the images were up to 10 years out of date.

   When Street View first came to Germany, the tabloid press whipped up a hysteria about mass surveillance which the public, which had seen what the Nazis and the communist East German regimes had done with mass surveillance techniques, reacted very strongly to. And then it was discovered that Google Street View cars were illegally snooping on people’s wifi signals — this happened in other countries as well, but in Germany the resulting bad press and court judgements were the final straw for Google, which then left Germany for good.

   And so things remained until Apple started its Look Around service which launched in Germany without any trouble and was very successful. So now Google is currently in the process of putting Germany back onto Street View. It’s a long process, so there are still a lot of holes, but it’s way, way more than what we had before.

3. we are big into our privacy laws so google street view is kind of colliding with it. As I am a private person I am not unhappy with that.