USA–Google Inc. will lower the cameras on the roofs of the cars of its uses in Japan to reshoot views of streets for its map service, after privacy complaints. The company’s race to put street-level pictures of cities and towns all over the world into its maps has revolutionised the way people look for addresses. Now someone can see the building they are looking for before they go there.
In Japan — where personal privacy is highly valued — the cameras also looked over the tops of fences and showed images into some private homes. Google will lower the cameras about 16 inches for the reshoot.
Google did not answer a question about when the new images will go up. It did not mention the privacy complaints in an email reply to a request for comment, saying only, “In order to improve the experience of Japanese users and respond to user feedback, we plan to update our existing imagery of Japan with images from the lower camera.”
