Hamburg - Google said Wednesday it had met objections by German privacy watchdogs to its Street View service, which offers photographs of buildings in major world cities taken from street level. Johannes Caspar, data safety commissioner of the state of Hamburg, had given Google a Wednesday deadline to allow property owners to opt out. Caspar said he welcomed Google's assurances, but still believed it was illegal of Google to remove the raw pictures to US servers.
Caspar, who is handling the Google issue for all of Germany, has powers to impose fines which can then be disputed in the law courts.
"We met the deadline on time," said Google Germany spokesman Stefan Keuchel.
The US-based internet search portal has a fleet of cars with cameras on their roofs which photograph streets. Some Germans object to their homes being pictured on Street View. Google says it will delete pictures when requested by a property owner.
It says it has met the other German objections and will not photograph properties at all if the owner objects in advance, but the details have yet to be worked out with the privacy commissioner.
Caspar said he still objected to Google moving its "raw" picture files out of Germany to the United States, because the data would then be beyond the reach of German privacy checks.
No parts of Germany are yet visible on Street View, but the service is available for the United States, the Netherlands and many other nations.
