I understand people's fear of Google's power. Really, I understand their privacy concerns and fully share them. What I just don't understand is this stupidity about blurring houses in Germany's Street View. 240,000 houses have just been censored like this.
It doesn't make any sense. When I can drive to, say, Kielganstraße 25 in Berlin and look at the building with my own eyes, does it make sense to have it blurred? Why? It's a public place, anyone can see it. It's just there. By doing this, the German government and the 240,000 idiots who wanted their houses blurred are just maiming a very useful service. In fact, they are actually stealing a technological advantage from their citizens in the name of a media-driven nationalistic crusade against Google. This is especially bad when other German companies offer exactly the same service, providing with photographs of all buildings in their own street navigation web sites.
I'm glad the rest of the 81 million Germans didn't go into this senseless privacy frenzy. Hopefully, no other morons in any other country will follow up. People, there are more important privacy battles to be fought and won. [Greg.org]