Google Fans Throw Eggs At Houses Blurred In Google Street View

Some people who chose to blur their houses on Google Street View in Germany received an unexpected real life blurring: Google fans who threw eggs at their homes.

Deutsche Welle reports that on Saturday, several homes in the Bergerhausen area of Essen that opted to be blurred were hit with eggs. “Google’s Cool” notes were also taped to their mailboxes. Der Westen reports similarly, in German here. Neither gives the exact number of homes involved nor are pictures of the eggings posted.

To the right, an example of one of the blurred homes in the area.

Google Street View launched in Germany this month, initially with images of the small town of Oberstaufen and then last week in 20 major cities, including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

Concerns about Street View led Google to allow people to blur their homes before the service went live (usually, this is something only allowed after-the-fact). About 3% of the households in Germany (2.89% or 244,237 in all) choose to blur their homes.

I asked Google about the incident and received this response:

We respect people’s decision to opt out and by no means consider this to be acceptable behavior.

For more background about Google Street View and some objections to it around the world, see our Google Maps Privacy: The StreetView & Wifi Scorecard article.