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Originally Posted by u crank
Very nice Sky. Very relaxing. 
I am baffled that doing this is illegal. Wow. |
Visit Google Earth, check Europe for Streetview, and be amazed. Germany is a white spot that has almost no streetview available.
Back when Google did the work for it, German government decides that the germans should not have Streetview, and that it is too offensive for people's rights. So they set up so many regulations and limits and demands that Google finally was fed up with the germans, packed its things and said: we're done with you. Only the 12 or 20 biggest cities in Germany have streetview, amognst them of course Berlin. The cities as they were 15 years ago, that is. The data gets not updated by Google.
Actually streetview is very popular with the Germans. Two years ago click data showed that nobody in Europe uses it more than the Germans. I use it too, in VR. Its fantastic, and I am thankful for it. Its one of the things thatn Google did very very well, and its one of the few opportunities when I fullheartly thank them for what they do. I would even wil to pay a yearly fee, if it is reasonably and not too high. 5 Euros per month or so would be worth it for me. However, i have no Google stuff active on my smartphone, and no Google maps. What they do well for PC, they do terribly ill on mobile users.
The German government wanted to get away with telling the Germans that Google got so many demands for pixelating private houses that this was what made them move away. Google strongly objected to that lie and illustrated that actually in germany there were fewer demands for pixelating private houses than there were in the UK or in France: each of the two countries had more such demands than Germany, while Germany has a clearly bigger population than France or the UK.
If you ever visit germany, dont forget to set your watch back by twenty years or so.