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I've been seeing current pictures of my house (in Germany) and surrounding towns on Google Street View for at least four years now. They've been uploaded by som

I've been seeing current pictures of my house (in Germany) and surrounding towns on Google Street View for at least four years now. They've been uploaded by some third party. No one cared in the slightest. I don't understand why this is news now.

ido 3y ago
Anecdotally, in Berlin almost all street view pics are from 2008. It's actually kinda nice to take a tour of the past that way sometimes!
- Marvy_a 3y ago
  Google Maps has a function to view older panoramas - "See more dates" button at the top left.
  - roelschroeven 3y ago
    It looks like that feature is going to be pretty limited in Germany. From the article: "Google is working closely with a German government privacy agency, ensuring that its imagery meets the country’s data privacy regulations. Among them is a requirement to delete older images, which means that you won’t be able to use Street View to travel as far back in time in Germany as in other countries once the new imagery is live."
    - bspammer 3y ago
      Historians 200 years from now are going to curse our name.
      - netrus 3y ago
        That kind of data should definitely preserved for future generations - national libraries and archives could be trustworthy guardians of such data that is only meant to be accessed again with some time delay. Or we encrypt it very well, throw away the key, and wait for computation to catch up :)
slkdjfalzkdfj 3y ago
As all Geoguessr players know, official Street View coverage in Germany was extremely limited and all very old. There was a small amount of coverage in around a dozen or so of the largest cities that dated back to the mid-2000s and that's about it. There's also various bits of crowdsourced unofficial coverage in the country which you are perhaps referring to, but it's very limited. Just go to Google Maps, look at Europe, and grab the Street View person, and you'll see.
capableweb 3y ago
> They've been uploaded by some third party. No one cared in the slightest. I don't understand why this is news now. Not saying it's right or wrong but there is a big difference between some random people uploading photos every now and then VS a huge conglomerate with huge resources repeatedly mapping everything with 360 photos. I can understand why one might make the news and the other doesn't.
- mr_mitm 3y ago
  It's not random people, it's some company that does it: https://www.rolling-rotors.de/ https://www.rolling-rotors.de/ It's done at scale, not a random regular picture here and there. It's all 360 and almost indistinguishable from Google's material. You can only tell by the car and the logo on its roof, which hasn't been cropped out unlike Google's pictures.

ido 3y ago

Anecdotally, in Berlin almost all street view pics are from 2008. It's actually kinda nice to take a tour of the past that way sometimes!

Marvy_a 3y ago
Google Maps has a function to view older panoramas - "See more dates" button at the top left.
- roelschroeven 3y ago
  It looks like that feature is going to be pretty limited in Germany. From the article: "Google is working closely with a German government privacy agency, ensuring that its imagery meets the country’s data privacy regulations. Among them is a requirement to delete older images, which means that you won’t be able to use Street View to travel as far back in time in Germany as in other countries once the new imagery is live."
  - bspammer 3y ago
    Historians 200 years from now are going to curse our name.
    - netrus 3y ago
      That kind of data should definitely preserved for future generations - national libraries and archives could be trustworthy guardians of such data that is only meant to be accessed again with some time delay. Or we encrypt it very well, throw away the key, and wait for computation to catch up :)

slkdjfalzkdfj 3y ago

As all Geoguessr players know, official Street View coverage in Germany was extremely limited and all very old. There was a small amount of coverage in around a dozen or so of the largest cities that dated back to the mid-2000s and that's about it. There's also various bits of crowdsourced unofficial coverage in the country which you are perhaps referring to, but it's very limited. Just go to Google Maps, look at Europe, and grab the Street View person, and you'll see.

capableweb 3y ago

> They've been uploaded by some third party. No one cared in the slightest. I don't understand why this is news now. Not saying it's right or wrong but there is a big difference between some random people uploading photos every now and then VS a huge conglomerate with huge resources repeatedly mapping everything with 360 photos. I can understand why one might make the news and the other doesn't.

mr_mitm 3y ago
It's not random people, it's some company that does it: https://www.rolling-rotors.de/ https://www.rolling-rotors.de/ It's done at scale, not a random regular picture here and there. It's all 360 and almost indistinguishable from Google's material. You can only tell by the car and the logo on its roof, which hasn't been cropped out unlike Google's pictures.