Google Has Stopped Street View Photography In Germany

In most locations, Google sends its Street View cars out on a repeated basis “to make sure the information is accurate and kept up to date,” as the Street View website explains.
But that’s not happening in Germany.
Despite the recent German court ruling that declared photography from streets legal in Germany, Google has stopped Street View photography there and says it has “no plans to launch new imagery on Street View in Germany.” A Google spokesperson says the company’s priorities have changed:

Our business priority is to use our Google cars to collect data such as street names and road signs to improve our basic maps for our users in a similar way that other mapping companies do.

Google will continue to show its existing Street View photos for the 20 German cities that are online now, but there won’t be any updates to those photos. It’s unclear if this decision is final, or if the company might change its plans in the future.
Aside from the mention of new priorities, the company isn’t saying why it’s stopped Street View photography in Germany. It’s easy to assume that the service’s difficult birth has factored into the decision. German officials raised objections almost as soon as Google announced plans to launch Street View there. After lengthy negotiations, Google eventually agreed to let German residents opt-out of having their buildings appear online, and nearly 250,000 German households and businesses took Google up on that offer. I’m not a programmer, but I can’t help wonder if the presence of so many blurred buildings — and the potential challenge of updating Street View while maintaining their privacy — is a factor in Google’s decision.

Woman Follows Google Maps “Walking” Directions, Gets Hit, Sues

Is Google responsible for giving out bad directions through its Google Maps service? We’re about to find out. After Googling walking directions for a trip in Park City, Utah, Lauren Rosenberg claims she was led onto a busy highway, where she was struck by a vehicle. She’s now suing Google for damages.
The case, Rosenberg v. Harwood, was filed in Utah, in the US District Court’s Central Division (Gary Price of ResourceShelf tipped us to it today). Harwood is Patrick Harwood, the person who actually hit Rosenberg, according to the suit. Both Harwood and Google are being sued in the same case, for damages “in excess of $100,000.”
Rosenberg used Google Maps on January 19, 2009, via her Blackberry, to get directions between 96 Daly Street, Park City, Utah and 1710 Prospector Avenue, Park City, Utah. Google provided these, telling her as part of the route to walk for about 1/2 mile along the calm-sounding “Deer Valley Drive.”
That’s an alternative name for that section of Utah State Route 224, a highway that lacks sidewalks, the case says. Rosenberg wasn’t warned about this, putting Google directly at fault in the accident, the case claims:

Defendant Google, through its “Google Maps” service provided Plaintiff Lauren Rosenberg with walking directions that led her out onto Deer valley Drive, a.k.a. State Route 224, a rural highway wit no sidewalks, and a roadway that exhibits motor vehicles traveling at high speeds, that is not reasonably safe for pedestrians. The Defendant Google expects uses of the walking map site to rely on the accuracy of the walking directions given….
As a direct and proximate cause of Defendant Google’s careless, reckless, and negligent providing of unsafe directions, Plaintiff Laren Rosenberg was led onto a dangerous highway, and was thereby stricken by a motor vehicle…

Here’s the route:

In the screenshot above, you can see that Google quite clearly warns:

Walking directions are in beta. Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.

That would seem to negate part of the suit’s claim — except that Rosenberg used a Blackberry. The Blackberry version of Google Maps might not have carried this warning. I don’t have a Blackberry so can’t see myself, but I’m checking on this. I know that on the iPhone version, there is no warning.
Certainly it seems embarrassing for Google to be routing people onto busy highways when they explicitly use the “walking” directions option. But then again, Google’s not alone. Bing does the same thing in its directions, which also contain a warning (at least in the web version):

Part of the issue seems to be that there’s no easy-to-find pedestrian path between these two points in Park City. Looking at the satellite view on Google Maps, there appears to be an alternative dirt path that runs roughly along the same direction. But I can’t tell if this was open to public use or not. Since it’s not along a major road, it’s something that Google Maps probably didn’t pick up.
Instead, Google’s making its best guess. That can be laughable to annoying, when it gets things wrong. Some examples:

• Google used to advise swimming across the Atlantic Ocean to get from the US to Britain, as a joke
• Google, before walking directions were added in July 2008, took a lot of ribbing for turning a 30 second walk in Sydney into an 18 minute car trip
• When Google Maps rolled out its new bike directions feature in March, I found in my area, it made some wildly bad guesses

But are Google’s bad guesses also dangerous? I suspect a court is going to find that despite getting bad directions from Google (or a gas station attendant, a local person or any source), people are also expected to use common sense. So when you come to an intersection like this, as Rosenberg would have come to before crossing onto the highway:

You might be expected to consider for yourself whether it is safe to continue. Or when you’re walking down the road itself, and it looks like this:

It becomes self-evident there’s no sidewalk and probably not a good place for pedestrians to walk, regardless of whether you got a warning from Google or not.
Here’s to Google improving its directions and perhaps using more common sense of its own, understanding whether a street is a busy highway and maybe simply not offering routes when it doubt, rather than guessing.
And here’s also to common sense about anyone following any directions they’re given.

Reports: Google CEO Page Ties Bonuses To Social Success, Reorganizes Google Mgmt. Team

2011 bonuses for Google employees are reportedly being tied to how well the company fares in its efforts to integrate social elements across Google products. That’s according to two reports from Silicon Alley Insider — reports that say the news first spread in a company-wide memo last Friday from co-founder (and now new CEO) Larry Page.
There are also reports tonight that Page has promoted a half-dozen Google execs to new senior vice president roles; more on that below.
SAI has published a screenshot that it says is an internal Google FAQ describing a “2011 Multiplier” affecting employee bonuses. The screenshot says, in part:

For Googlers on the Company Plan, the multiplier has both an upside and a downside. It can range from 0.75 to 1.25 depending on how well we perform against our strategy to integrate relationships, sharing and identity across our products. If we’re successful, your bonus could be up to 25% bigger. If not, your bonus could be as much as 25% less than target. We all have a stake in the success of this effort and this multiplier is designed to reflect that.

(emphasis is mine)
Google’s missteps in the social space are well documented. Google Wave has already been shuttered, and Google Buzz has caused the company a number of headaches … not to mention lawsuits. Google bought services like Jaiku and Dodgeball, but later closed both.
Last September, Google began talking about a new plan: a social layer across its products. That plan has started to be realized in recent weeks with the expansion of social signals on search results’ pages, and last week’s launch of Google +1.
Page hints at the importance of Google Profiles when he refers to “identity” in the quote above. Most, if not all, of Google’s social efforts are dependent on getting searchers to create Google Profiles – and the company has been improving, promoting and emphasizing those for a few years now.
But for more and more Internet users, profiles belong to Facebook. Facebook gets about 25% of all US page views and was the most visited US web site in 2010. And it’s not just a US thing. Just look at comScore’s 2010 Europe Digital Year in Review, which reported that Europeans spend more time on Facebook than Google and showed Facebook’s dominant position among social networking sites in more than a dozen countries.

So the big question might be this: Do users really want Google to be more social? Or has that ship already sailed? Google employees may get an answer in their Q4 bonus checks.
There’s more discussion of this on Techmeme.
Meanwhile, the LA Times is reporting that Page also completed a major overhaul of Google’s management structure today (Thursday). The Times reports the following promotions to new Senior VP status:

• Andy Rubin to senior vice president of mobile
• Vic Gundotra to senior vice president of social
• Sundar Pichai to senior vice president of Chrome
• Salar Kamangar to senior vice president of YouTube and video
• Alan Eustace to senior vice president of search
• Susan Wojcicki to senior vice president of ads

Gov’t To Okay Google-ITA Deal After Google Agrees To Burdensome Conditions

The Justice Department (DOJ) has signed off on the Google acquisition of travel software company ITA, but says Google must meet certain conditions. The Justice Department said that as originally proposed the acquisition would have “substantially lessened competition among providers of comparative flight search websites in the United States.”
The DOJ is requiring Google to do a number of things if it wishes to proceed with the ITA acquisition:

Google will be required to continue to license ITA’s QPX software to airfare websites on commercially reasonable terms.  QPX conducts searches for air travel fares, schedules and availability.  Google will also be required to continue to fund research and development of that product at least at similar levels to what ITA has invested in recent years.  Google will also be required to further develop and offer ITA’s next generation InstaSearch product to travel websites, which will provide near instantaneous results to certain types of flexible airfare search queries.  InstaSearch is currently not commercially available, but is in development by ITA.

In other words, Google must effectively operate ITA as though the acquisition had not been made: continue software development and continue to license the platform to competitors. The proposed settlement also restricts how Google might use information it obtains from its operation of ITA:

To prevent abuse of commercially sensitive information, Google will be required to implement firewall restrictions within the company that prevent unauthorized use of competitively sensitive information and data gathered from ITA’s customers.  The proposed settlement delineates when and for what purpose that data may be used by Google.  Google is also prohibited from entering into agreements with airlines that would inappropriately restrict the airlines’ right to share seat and booking class information with Google’s competitors.

Beyond this, there will also be an enforcement mechanism to ensure that Google complies with the above and doesn’t do anything “unfair” with ITA:

The department said that Google will also be required to provide mandatory arbitration under certain circumstances and provide for a formal reporting mechanism for complainants if Google acts in an unfair manner.

It’s now Google’s move. The company could simply walk away from the acquisition or it could accept the DOJ’s settlement terms or fight the litigation.