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By DHANYA ANN THOPPIL
BANGALORE—Google Inc. on Thursday launched a fleet of cars to capture street images it will use to create its online mapping in India, even as the Internet giant is under fire from several overseas governments for invading privacy.
The company said the drivers of the StreetView vehicles will photograph streets in the
southern Indian city of Bangalore and that the service will eventually cover the rest of the
country. It didn't give any specific timeframe on when the images will be available on StreetView.
StreetView is already available in 27 countries. The feature, available on Google Maps, has
become popular as it allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighborhood through panoramic street-level images.
In a bid to protect privacy, the vehicles will capture images of public places alone and blur out
faces of people as well as vehicle licence plates to make them unidentifiable, said Vinay Goel, Google India product head.
The company will accommodate requests from users to additionally blur any images that feature them and it will take several months before images go live on the search engine, he added.
Google came under intense scrutiny from several western governments last year after its StreetView vehicles inadvertently collected email addresses, passwords and other personal information from Wi-Fi networks.
The search giant, which launched the StreetView services in 2007, had been collecting and keeping such data since then. Google had apologised for what it said was a mistake and shut down its StreetView Wi-Fi collection soon after an internal investigation discovered it in mid-2010.
The company was investigated by authorities in Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy and New Zealand on this issue.
Mr. Goel said that the StreetView vehicles in India aren't collecting information from wireless networks. The StreetView services will be available on both mobile phones and personal computers, he said, adding that information required to identify a particular location is collected from cellular towers.
"StreetView is designed to comply with all local laws, including those related to security and privacy in India," Mr. Goel said. The company has engaged with both the local and federal government on the launch of such services in India, he added.
Write to Dhanya Ann Thoppil at dhanya.thoppil@dowjones.com
please give me comments thanks
southern Indian city of Bangalore and that the service will eventually cover the rest of the
country. It didn't give any specific timeframe on when the images will be available on StreetView.
StreetView is already available in 27 countries. The feature, available on Google Maps, has
become popular as it allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighborhood through panoramic street-level images.
In a bid to protect privacy, the vehicles will capture images of public places alone and blur out
faces of people as well as vehicle licence plates to make them unidentifiable, said Vinay Goel, Google India product head.
The company will accommodate requests from users to additionally blur any images that feature them and it will take several months before images go live on the search engine, he added.
Google came under intense scrutiny from several western governments last year after its StreetView vehicles inadvertently collected email addresses, passwords and other personal information from Wi-Fi networks.
The search giant, which launched the StreetView services in 2007, had been collecting and keeping such data since then. Google had apologised for what it said was a mistake and shut down its StreetView Wi-Fi collection soon after an internal investigation discovered it in mid-2010.
The company was investigated by authorities in Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy and New Zealand on this issue.
Mr. Goel said that the StreetView vehicles in India aren't collecting information from wireless networks. The StreetView services will be available on both mobile phones and personal computers, he said, adding that information required to identify a particular location is collected from cellular towers.
"StreetView is designed to comply with all local laws, including those related to security and privacy in India," Mr. Goel said. The company has engaged with both the local and federal government on the launch of such services in India, he added.
Write to Dhanya Ann Thoppil at dhanya.thoppil@dowjones.com
please give me comments thanks
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