Google was compelled to halt its ambitious “Street View” campaign in Bangalore after the local police raised objections on the move. Almost three weeks ago, Google’s Street View cars started driving around Bangalore to take high definition images to provide users a 360 degree view of streets. Reports said that the local police raised objections to the data collected by the Google cars. Confirming the news, Google said that it was scrutinising the letter issued by the Bangalore police and has grounded the fleet until the matter is sorted out.
Reports further said that the search engine giant had received the letter from the police last week. However, Google added that it had received the permission from the traffic department of Banglaore police . Google launched Street View in Bangalore last month with an objective to cover entire India. The company said at the time that the feature would enable “users all around the world to access street-level imagery and virtually explore various streets in Bangalore”.
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The Google Street View feature, though very popular, has come under scanner of security authorities across the world. The data, however not shown in real-time, has raised privacy concerns. The feature saw resistance in several parts of world including Germany and Czech Republic. It sparked controversy last year when it admitted accidentally collecting data from some wifi networks through its Street View cars.
Since then Google’s Street View has been looked upon with skepticism. With India, or at least for now Banglore, seeming to be very sensitive to data collection by Internet companies, the future of Street View appears to bleak here. India has also previously criticised Google for displaying sensitive government installations on its Google Earth.