The Germans are strong-willed, and now have come to terms with Google’s Street View services. Google decided that, from today, they will cease the recording of street images in Germany, most likely due to privacy concerned raised in the last months, not only in Germany, but also in other parts of Western Europe and Israel. The company agreed to let German residents opt out of having their neighbourhood areas appear online and 250,000 went for it. At the moment, Google is displaying images from 2 cities and Germany that will remain un-updated.

Microsoft was not wise enough to learn from Google’s mistakes, and after recently introduced its mapping services, Streetside, the company faced a series of objections from the German government, as expected. German officials are against Bing’s options of allowing German citizens to opt out after the upload of images. On the other hand, Bing allows German citizens a two-day period to file such requests, and their procession as the company provides an online schedule for the Streetside car routes.

The debate over privacy has been going on for some time.  Last month, European Union justice chief Viviane Reding submitted a proposal regarding European data protection law, specifically targeting social media players such as Google, Facebook, but also Yahoo and Microsoft. If the amendments will be passed, which is expected to happen in July 2011, the users of the above mentioned services will have the possibility to withdraw their information from websites, so as to prevent users’ information from the online environment to be exploited. 

It will be interesting to see how the German will react to Bing mapping services. Until now, the German’s reactions stand to reason, but there is also the possibility for the matter to go even further … like in France for example, where overzealous authorities have taken privacy matter a bit too far. According to the decree passed by the French State Council, companies such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo et al will need to hold users’ connection data for at least 12 months and hand it over to French authorities if requested as part of an investigation.