When Google began hiring in Zurich for its new engineering center in 2004, local officials welcomed the U.S. company with open arms. Google’s arrival is still bearing fruit for Zurich: 450 employees, about 300 of them engineers, work in Google’s seven-story complex in a converted brewery on the outskirts of the placid mountain metropolis.

But nearly five years into its expansion into Europe — where it has a headquarters in Dublin, large facilities in Zurich and London and smaller centers in Denmark, Russia and Poland, among other countries — Google is beginning to bump up against a web of privacy laws that threaten its growth and the positive image it has cultivated as a company committed to doing good — its unofficial motto.

In Switzerland, input protection officials are quietly pressing Google to scrap plans to introduce Street View, a mapping service that provides a vivid, 360-degree, ground-level photographic panorama from any address. Swiss privacy law prohibits

the unauthorized use of personal images or property.

In Germany, where Street View is plus not available, the simple process of taking photographs for the service violates privacy laws.

“The privacy issue will likely become increasingly urgent for Google as it continues to offer new services in Europe,” said Dirk Lewandowski, a professor of knowledge sciences at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg and an expert on search engine technology. “For the moment, most consumers are not aware their notes is being used by Google in some fashion. But I think as society become aware of that, there could be protests that Google will have to address.”

The clash does not end with Street View, which so far in Europe depicts only major cities in France, Spain and Italy.

notes protection advisers to the European Commission in Brussels are questioning Google about how faraway the company retains user…

Orginal post by Mike

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