As you may have heard, Google have endured a great deal of trouble thanks to their Street View service. They have had court cases and privacy wrangling and naked people…not to mention the accidental Wi-Fi data stealing.
In Germany, almost 3% of the population have opted out of Google Street View, by choosing to have their property blurred from the map. This is of course fair enough, but this decision seems to have brought some serious Google activists to their door with an eggy protest.
Deutsche Welle reported that houses in Essen, whose owners chose to have the images blurred, have been tracked down by vigilantes and pelted with eggs. (Can’t have been that hard when you think about it.) They supposedly even left notes stuck to their victim’s doors saying “Google ist cool” which means…ahem…”Google is cool”.
- This House May Not Have Been Egged
So where did these vigilantes come from? How far have Google mind melded with the globe to get the point where people will physically attack the homes of people who opt out of their services? This is basically an anti-privacy protest, whether they meant it that way or not. People have the right not to have Google display images of their home online, especially if they are concerned about security.
Google of course have come out and said (to Search Engine Land) that this is not acceptable behaviour.
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