We talked about Bing Streetside from Microsoft being the software giant’s equivalent of Google’s Streetview before, and here is the latest bit of news concerning Microsoft’s Bing Streetside. It seems that the service has already been taken offline in Germany, where this occured after German citizens shared their worries about how Microsoft handles requests for the blurring of images. The entire slew of German panorama photos were made inaccessible as a precautionary measure, while Microsoft looks into the complaints of German citizens while working out an amicable solution that should be accepted by all, or at least, the majority.
According to Microsoft spokesman Thomas Baumgärtner, he is unable to predict just when or if the service will be reinstated. After all, the complaints that came in were limited and were not initiated by a data protection agency, claiming that “these are single incidents.” If it is any source of comfort, Microsoft is not alone in this boat of German privacy concerns, as Google too, ran into similar problems with their Street View service which pointed out photographs of German streets that are very close to what Streetside showed.
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