Although Project Street View by the web gigant Google has been halted temporarily in Germany, Google Maps starts to display street photos. The feature has been activated in Germany too.
However, Google does not make use of the imagery photographed with the Google cars. Instead, the user photos made by users themselves are displayed. From now on, these photos are used by Street View as well.
To access this limited Street View feature, click the small yellow buddy icon and drag it onto the map. The user photos are then displayed as small blue dots. Generally, these voluntarily contributed user images can show faces, while Google’s own photos have them blurred.
To be honest, I am not too fond about this “backdoor” method that Google is using. Photos made by users cannot reliably hide faces, license plates. Plus I cannot see the big Google car taking a photo of me. Any geo-tagged tourist photo might be eventually published in Google Maps. Great.
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