Google’s much controversial StreetView service is not yet available in India. However, as a part of its campaign to collect India centric data, a bunch of Google owned cars were on the prowl across various cities in the country so that they could start offering it in India as well. However, after what seemed to be a non-eventful exercise, Google StreetView hit a sudden roadblock in Bangalore when the Bangalore Police authorities objected to Google’s data collection using StreetView cars.
We had a premonition of sorts, this was coming. Back in May, when we reported the commencement of the StreetView procedure, we had said as to how the Indian Governemnt would react to this. A month later, looks like we were right after all!
Google India has confirmed that they have received a correspondence form Bangalore Police headquarters and that they have as of now stopped the data collection exercise. Back in May when Google had started the exercise, it was thought that the process would have been a rather eventless procedure because Google claimed to have been in talks with the local authorities to keep them informed on the process. Google has also said that in StreetView images, license plates of cars and faces of people would be blurred.
It is not clear why the Bangalore Police has asked Google to stop its cars from collecting imagery. That said, this is not the first time Google has run into issues with the government. A few years ago, when Google Maps and Google Earth were new kids on the block, there were grave concerns regarding the security of sensitive installations in the country, all of which were visible in the satellite photos. That controversy though, died a silent death.
