Google has been talking about introducing its Street View service in Germany for years. But now that the launch has officially been announced, the German government appears to have been taken by surprise. It’s just another example of how the authorities are struggling to meet the challenges of the Internet age.Maybe Carsten Schneider has curtains in the windows of his home in the eastern German city of Erfurt. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he lives in a Communist-era apartment block, maybe in a villa. If you ask him about it, Schneider gets extremely cagey. “That’s nobody’s business,” he says. “Certainly not Google’s.” The way Schneider pronounces the company name, you’d think Google was a criminal organization.That’s why Schneider, who is the budgetary spokesmen of the center-left Social Democrats’ parliamentary group, wants to have his house blanked out when Google unveils the panoramic photos it has taken as part of its new Street View service in Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,712106,00.html
Internet Challenges Overwhelm German Government
Google has been talking about introducing its Street View service in Germany for years. But now that the launch has officially been announced, the German government appears to have been taken by surprise. It’s just another example of how the authorities are struggling to meet the challenges of the Internet age.