German Home owners Opt out of Google's Street View Service

Essen West Germany and homes have been bombarded with eggs and had signs posted on their door saying 'Google's Cool' victims of anti-privacy vandals.

Many properties have opted to be blurred on the Google Street View service.

Google itself are not getting involved in the vandalism - of course - saying that people have the right to remove themselves from the street view and they do not condone vandalism for whatever reason.

The German government were adamant that its citizens should have the option to removed before the pictures went live.  Almost a quarter of a million people have requested their homes to be blurred out on this service.

The mayor of Oberstaufen wanted his town on the Street View map

Since going live in Germany, the service has captured a series of bizarre events, including a naked man climbing into the boot of his car on the driveway of a house in Mannheim, south-west Germany.
Another camera appeared to capture the birth of a baby on a street in a Berlin suburb, although there are question-marks over the veracity of the incident.

Germany is the first country to have negotiated with Google to allow citizens to opt out before the service goes live.


But in a recent blog on the German roll-out the search giant warned that it would not be able to respond to all requests immediately.

"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 int any system like this there will be mistakes,"  (Andreas Turk - Product Manager for Street View in Germany said in his Blog at the beginning of the month)


Street View was launched in May 2007 to allow Google users to explore the world through images. At the time, coverage was limited to just five U.S. cities.