I really never understood why Germans don't like to expose the outside of their public facing houses to Street View. It would be very frustrating not to be able to see in advance where I'll be going to the next day and prepare accordingly. Examples: Is that shop really at that address? Is there some parking in front of that house? I've been using Street View like that for ages.

What is more important, your convenience or the resident's right to privacy?

The residents should decide because they are, welll, residents. My partner's parents had their house photographed with the garage door open showing a rock & roll poster with the f-word on the inside of the door. A French guy was photographed while taking a leak in the bushes in front fo his house, that he was trimming. He sued Google and won.

Their right, of course, but I wonder what happened in Germany that didn't happen at that scale in any other part of the world AFAIK.

or "I want to break into the house, which windows are hardest for the neighbors to monitor"

so it kind of depends on what you mean by "I'll be going to the next day and prepare accordingly."

The linked article says people thought Street View was a live feed of their houses. This is pure conjecture coming from a single person, and sounds like a massive straw-man.

I know several people who have blocked their houses on Google and absolutely none of them had this assumption. Anecdotal, I know, but in the article there is zero data backing that assertion.

As I said, can't find more now. But I remember even reading about fears of it being live in the local newspaper in Flensburg.

I was working in online media back then. They loved these crazy ideas and promoted them because of massive outrage. Outrage generates clicks and clicks === €.

And then they wrote pieces about what kinds of idiots didn't want to have their houses filmed. And about people who had their shop front blurred, because people in the 5th floor didn't want the house to be in the clear on street view.

It was outrage porn at it's best.

And one of the things that made me decide that I maybe should do something else with my life.

Yeah, agreed. As a teen I did an internship in journalism, way before becoming a coder, and crazy stories like those were the bread and butter of newsrooms. :(

> making people think there would be live cameras showing them on street view

that was in no way a mainstream "idea" about it.

Oh yes it was! Did you talk to „normal people“ in Germany back then? It’s not like that was the way it was reported by the media, but that’s what people understood.

Yes, and I never encountered that sentiment from actual people.