Google Street View Images Quite Bizzare
The controversy surrounding Google Street View in Germany has taken a bizarre turn, less than one week after the online mapping service was launched.
Two images - one of an apparently naked man sitting in the back of his car, and another of a fake birth on the side of the road - have been the subject of frenzied online speculation, as anti-privacy vandals pelted the homes of Germans who opted out of the service.
Three per cent of Germans - about 250,000 people - chose to opt out by having their homes blurred. But their actions reportedly sparked a backlash from anti-privacy vandals, who pelted homes in Bergerhausen, Essen, in western Germany with eggs and stuck “Google’s cool” notes on their mailboxes, Deutsche Welle reported.
The image of the apparently naked man - which can no longer be seen on Street View - and what he was doing in the boot of a Mercedes convertible parked in the driveway of a home in Mannheim in Germany’s south-west have been the subject of frenzied speculation.
Was he actually naked? Was he clearing the junk out of his car? What was in the orange bottle besides the vehicle?
The photo of a woman appearing to give birth on a pavement in Wilmersdorf, a Berlin suburb, was revealed as a fake by Google Germany - but not before online denizens debated its validity, pointing out discrepancies in the photo and where it was reported taken.
The street was just a few blocks from a hospital, so it was asked why the woman did not drive straight there to deliver her baby.
If one entered the actual address of where the image was recorded, one gets a blurred image of a house.
A Google Germany spokeswoman said the search company “distances itself completely” from the egg attacks.
Google’s Munich office block is also blurred out, after another tenant in the building opted out, but it remains to be seen if the vandals will target it next.
The German images are just the latest in the line of bizarre photos captured on Street View by specially equipped Google cars.
In October, Street View images from Brazil captured corpses lying on streets, children doing drugs and gang members being searched by police.
In August, Street View captured images of a nine-year-old girl “playing dead” on the pavement of a street in England.