Criticism on Google Privacy – Street View

Google's online map service, "Street View", has been accused of taking pictures and viewing too far into people's private homes and/or too close to people on the street when they do not know they are being photographed.

Information collection from WiFi networks

During 2006–2010, Google Streetview camera cars collected about 600 gigabytes of data from users of unencrypted public and private Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries. No disclosures nor privacy policy was given to those affected, nor to the owners of the Wi-Fi stations.

Google apologised and said that they were "acutely aware that we failed badly here" in terms of privacy protection, that they were not aware of the problem until an inquiry from German regulators was received, that the private data was collected inadvertently, and that none of the private data was used in Google's search engine or other services. A representative of Consumer Watchdog replied, "Once again, Google has demonstrated a lack of concern for privacy. Its computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar." In a sign that legal penalties may result, Google said it will not destroy the data until permitted by regulators.

The Streetview data collection prompted several lawsuits in the United States. The suits were consolidated into one case before a California federal court. Google's motion to have the case dismissed, saying the Wi-Fi communications it captured were "readily accessible to the general public" and therefore not a violation of federal wiretapping laws, was rejected in June 2011 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and upon appeal in September 2013 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The ruling is viewed as a major legal setback for Google and allows the case to move back to the lower court for trial.

Currently Google no longer collects wi-fi data via streetview, they now use the Android devices Wi-Fi positioning system, however they have suggested the creation of a unified approach for opting-out from taking part in Wi-Fi-based positioning systems. Suggesting the usage of the word "_nomap" append to a wireless access point's SSID to exclude it from Google's WPS database.