Search engine: Google renews German street images in the Street View service

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Google renews German street images in the Street View service

Google wants to update its Street View service – step by step. photo

© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa

The images of German streets on Google Street View are more than ten years old. Fresh pictures are coming soon. If you want your house to continue to be pixelated, you have to submit a new application.

After more than a decade, Google will renew the images of German streets in its Street View street panorama service. From June 22nd, the group’s camera vehicles will take new pictures, as Google announced on Thursday. After that, the Street View service is expected to be gradually updated from mid-July, initially for the 20 cities where it was previously available.

With Street View, you can see photographic views of streets from Google’s map service and move around on the screen.

Street View was introduced in Germany at the end of 2010. The recordings for this were made in 2008 and 2009. At that time, relatively many in Germany exercised their right to blur the view of the buildings in which they lived. Google has not updated Street View in Germany since then, but in other countries it has. If you want your house to be pixelated after the update, you have to submit a new objection; the objections from 2010 no longer apply.

Legal questions about data protection

More and more people and companies in Germany have asked Google over the years “about the differences between the Street View images and the real world in which they live,” according to a blog entry on Thursday. In its map service, which many access primarily on the iPhone, Apple has a competitor offering with much fresher recordings.

Google had camera vehicles drive through streets in Germany last year. Their recordings have so far only been used to improve the digital maps. Now some of them are also to be used when updating Street View. Faces and license plates are automatically pixelated in the street panorama services.

According to Hamburg data protection officer Thomas Fuchs, Google approached him in March to clarify legal issues relating to the publication of new images. He emphasized that at the time the 2022 camera recordings were made, the public was not aware that they could also be used for Street View. According to Google, this was not intended at the time. He asked the group to inform about the changed plans. Google announced that the update was being carried out in close cooperation with Fuchs. He is responsible because Google has its German headquarters in Hamburg.

dpa

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