I like armchair traveling using the Google street view guy. I see that most of Germany is off the grid and I read that they’re more sensitive about privacy and don’t fancy the idea of their homes being visible on street view. There are a few major German cities on street view, but many homes and apartments are blurred out. I can’t say I blame them; I’m starting to get a bit paranoid myself.
But why on earth would a business want their signage obscured? I saw some cute taverns in Cologne that I wanted to google up and see what Yelp had to say about them. But their signs were blurred! What’s the sense in that?
Perhaps the pattern recognition algorithm mistook the sign for a number (license) plate. The face-blur routine does billboards as well as real people. I frequently see blurred signs on Street View.
How does blurring work, anyway? Can any private citizen call up Google Street View and say “I want my house blurred” ? Or how about a government agency,(say, a police department)?
Google street view blurs all kinds of stuff, and not just in Germany. I have seen it blur street signs in the U.S. It uses an algorithm to decide what to blur, and it gets things wrong sometimes.
The point about Google mistaking a business sign for a license plate makes sense.
After I posted this thread, I found this article, among others, discussing how to request having your house blurred. I had never seen any American house blurred out, so I was skeptical. But just for a lark, my husband followed the instructions and it worked! Our house is now blurred just like all the ones we saw in Germany.
I concur on the algorithm probably mistaking the signs for either a license plate or a face. Never heard of Google offering to blur signs on demand (a lot of whole buildings are blurred here in Germany - it only takes a request of one resident in the building)