How a small German Village killed Google Street View

Google Street View exists since 2007 and is available today on almost every phone and in almost every European country. Only in Germany the situation is different: Here you will find huge blank spots on the map and only recordings that are up to 15 years old. How did that happen? Turns out: There is a quite funny story behind it, that I'm gonna tell you in today's video.

A film by Matthias Schwarzer.

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Here are the articles mentioned in my video:

The first news about the Molfsee protest, published in 2008:

Molfsee is searching for a loophole in the law (2008):

More about the Molfsee protest in 2009:

The British village Broughton stops a Street View Car:

Ratingen wants to charge Google:

Jeff Jarvis about the German Street View problem:

Activist Jens Best wants to publish the pixelated houses:

A theory why Germans care so much about data protection:

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Intro Music:
MÆT - Start Again

Music:
Epidemic Sound

#google #googlestreetview #germany #internet #socialmedia

[MatthiasSchwarzerEnglish]

A quick update on this story: Today (July 25) Google released new images of Germany in Street View, just as mentioned in the video. And surprisingly, these are not just shots of larger cities, as previously announced. Also smaller villages are available now. Including: Molfsee.

[mcbohdo]

I always was super annoyed looking at the pixelated houses in street view. However, it's the same Google that secretly collected network data while mapping the streets, so being concerned about privacy issues is kind of justified.

[Chili_]

The cool thing about it is for the few places that actually have street view in Germany, it's like a time capsule. You can go to maps and when you zoom in close enough for it to change from the normal map to street view you'll see newer buildings disappear or older buildings pop up. You can see a lot of older cars on the street that have become a rare sight 15 years on. Especially if it's places you remember from back in the day it's really interesting to look at.

[SewardWriter]

Street View is weirdly useful. My dad has dementia, and I managed to calm him down by showing him the house where he lived before the care facility, and where Mom still is. It assured him that she was safe. Not sure what I'd have done without it.

[colorbugoriginals]

lived in Germany when this happened. the fear often stated was of criminals using maps to more easily find homes that looked worth targeting. among us tech folk it was often joked that robbers will simply look for the blurred out homes to hit and pass by the unhidden ones.

[realtk]

I love and understand english, but as a German I hate it when youtube translates the title of youtube videos so you think its in your language but then its in english.
Its not even every video I see, it translates random. So annoying.

[mbirth]

I remember when StreetView was introduced in Germany back then, the media spun it like it's some kind of live stream of everyone's living room window. The police even said they might be able to use this for chasing criminals.

[cacklebarnacle]

Molfsee has a pretty cool Freilichtmuseum (open air museum), in wich you can see and enter 60 historic buildings. The special thing about this is, that these buildings have been taken from their original places all over Schleswig-Holstein and been transportet brick by brick, rebuild in the original orientation and then gotten a historically accurate interior as well. The oldest buildings are around 500 years old. And you can see the different cultural influences mirrored in the buildings as well.
There are also several businesses run in these houses, like a bakery, a smith, a creamery etc. and you can buy goods from their productions.

[crybabyteej]

As someone from Grafenwöhr who was forced to move away as a kid because of my stepdad at the time being US Army—it always made me sad I could never seen how my home village was doing for so long. Thanks to this video, now makes sense why I never learned of these 'protests' and why my village wasn't ever viewable.

Thankfully, after 20 years, I finally got to go home again last year in 2022 and makes me happy that in 2023—I can finally view our Stadtpark, where I have so many childhood memories, on street view.

[cheeseionyt]

I agree with the idea about having warning that a google street view car will be updating their maps in your town with notice to the local council because I know people who don't want to be seen on google maps and be possibly judged for years.

[KrisThroughGlass]

I loved Asterix and Obelix comics as a kid. "The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders." (Wikipedia). I like Molfsee 😅

[thespacexplorer]

fun fact: here in Hamburg, in the south part at the industrial area, there's an old abandoned factory from the early 19 hundreds. And it's been abandoned since 2009. Today it's a very run down place, however the street view is from 2008, so the footage seen is when the factory was still in use. That really shows just how outdated google street view is in Germany, because only very rarely will you see footage from anywhere after 2008. Sometimes you'll see some footage from 2010 if you're lucky, but anything later is basically impossible to find.

[shagrat]

I remember, when it leaked to the public, that google not only took photos of the houses, but scanned ALL WiFi networks (SSID) with location etc.
So they can pinpoint an SSID on anyone's smartphone to a location...
Another city I've heard of that was pretty open to collecting all sorts of data, was Amsterdam (Netherlands), where Hitlers armies could easily go through the extensive data of a census ("Bevolkingsregister") that listed religion, among other irrelevant data for a census. It took them just a few days to identify everyone with the "wrong" religion marked behind his name. If those people would have objected to the collection of data, that wasn't required for a census, some of those may not have ended up in concentration camps... Makes you think about privacy and data collection on a "need to know" basis. 🤔

[timknight]

An actual piece of journalism! Told a story. Gave room for several perspectives. Food for thought without influencing the audience's interpretation. No bias, no slanting, no propaganda. Well done, sir!

[tomstein]

@MatthiasSchwarzer: The "Panoramafreiheit" (right to take a picture of everything that you can see from a public place) applies only to pictures taken from the hight of your eyes, without any tools. As Google mainly used cameras from a higher viewpoint (about 1 m on top of a car), those photos are partly illegal, depending on what they can see.

[tonycutler]

Great video! Honestly, I was surprised when I saw your sub count, I was expecting at least 100x that, the quality of this video is on the level of the YouTubers with hundreds of thousands to a few million subs. You deserve way more!

[AKKK]

Living under soviet occupation really wasn't only a german thing.

[AN-ntuv]

I have been there during elementary school in the 80ies and actually Molfsee is the home of Schleswig-Holstein's open area museum displaying houses and lifestyle from 1600 onwards....so much more important than some internet issues.

[frtzkng]

This whole situation means that Street View in Germany inadvertendly turned into a time capsule. Some places have seen massive changes since 2008, and on Street View you can see them before all of these changes- e.g. buildings which have since been demolished, ground which wasn't built up yet or roads which had a different setup.

[edwardpaulsen]

I think I may have a unique perspective on some of this... My Aunt and Uncle lived in Göppingen and took care of me as a wee lad almost sixty years ago... I had the opportunity to serve as a foreign exchange student and a bit later I managed to get stationed fairly close to my Aunt and Uncle when I served in the US Army back in the '80s... I had the opportunity to speak to many of the people that had direct experience with the events in the 1940s... Many of the Germans were very sensitive to those events and there was a VERY strong determination to NEVER allow that kind of thing to happen ever again. They had first hand experience of the horrors as well as the intense distrust that developed because of those actions. I can very easily understand the trepidation and distrust from the older population in regards to a foreign entity essentially invading their privacy to that level. Most people today have little to no connection to what happened and I observed many younger people exhibiting an almost flippant attitude towards it even back then. I still have a certain coin and a copy of a certain book from a certain Austrian Painter that was handed to me when I went back to the US that would have had me arrested by the Polizei if they had known about it. I fairly strongly believe that there was still a fair proportion of the population that still remembered and were holding true to some of the vows they made regarding that time period and the excesses that were put into play. As time has marched on and the direct memories have stopped being passed down, I think that history has become far more diluted. I hold great respect for the Germans who made those choices, and I understand the blurring and lessening of the events for the younger generations. Germany has struggled for its' past and I can agree that the time of healing has arrived. Then again, I also recognize the very real hazards that are making a comeback due to those fading memories. I can only mournfully wonder, why we have failed to learn and maintain the harsh lessons we have so painfully learned from history...