Since 2008, the Google Maps service has delighted those who want to travel without getting up from their chair.
You can explore the world, but not Germany.
Normal, our German neighbors have a big problem with Google Street View and it has been going on for more than 10 years
To understand, we have to go back between 2007 and 2011.
At the time, Google Cars (cars topped with a large camera) began to crisscross the countries of Europe to take pictures of every village and every road.
In France, that does not pose any problem, we simply ask Google not to show nuclear power plants, places related to the army or prisons (the Cattenom power station is blurred on the service just like the Metz prison- Queuleu) but for the rest, there is almost the whole country that appears.
In Germany, it went very badly
As early as 2008, many Germans did not appreciate Google taking pictures of their cities and homes. The government forced the American firm to blur the homes of those who did not want to appear and that made more than 400,000.
In 2011, Google decides in disaster to stop its work of mapping Germany … that’s why there is nothing today or so little.
– Google maps
We can still see the very big German cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne but the shots are from 2008 (before the company decides to stop everything).
A revenge from Google which decided to leave Germany “in its own way”.
The Terravision case
In 2014, Google was taken to court, Germany accuses it of having stolen the idea of ”Street View” from a German architectural firm which had launched in the 90s, Terravision, a service very similar to Google Maps.
Lawsuit lost by our neighbors.
Netflix even made a series of it in October 2021, it’s called “the billion dollar code”.
Now Germany accuses Google cars of having collected the personal data of the inhabitants via their wifi when they took pictures of the cities.
You are not ready to see Germany on Street View!