Western Governments Stage Their Own Google Street View Protest [Ten Major Countries Complain To Google Over Street View, Buzz Privacy]

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The governments of some of the biggest countries in the world have sent Google a letter of complaint regarding their decisions regarding user privacy – particularly in their Google Street View and Buzz web services. The letter, co-signed ten government officials, says, they don’t understand “how a product with such significant privacy issues was launched in the first place.”

Government officials from Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom all co-signed a letter asking Google to enforce better privacy controls over two high-profile products, Google Buzz and Google Street View. Street View is (of course) unpopular because it shows photographs of homes and people on the street.

Buzz is unpopular because it will disclose a user’s contacts lists from Gmail on their Google Profile. This can be turned off in the settings, but it of course, offends the privacy-centric people.The EFF hit the nail on the head when they explained that Google wanted to create a competing service to Facebook and Twitter – so to jumpstart their service, they attempted to inject it with their tons of Gmail users.

The letter from the governments says that they are shocked that Google released such a product in the first place. As for Street View, nothing new there. They’re upset that Google didn’t start blurring faces immediately and they’re upset that you have to request to have your house blurred out. My personal opinion is that Street View was better before they started blurring out everything, but I guess most people don’t agree with me on that.

To sum it up, some officials from major governments around the world are not only concerned that Google has lax privacy settings, they’re also concerned that Google is releasing this new stuff (like Buzz) without any thought to privacy. Of course, Google isn’t the only provider with this sort of service, but these governments are looking to Google to be the “leader in the online world”.

Noticeably absent is Google’s own – the United States government.