Street View is a Google product which consists of photographs of
streets in the US. The company has faced criticism because people's
faces, car number plates and even views into their houses are
visible in the photographs.
Marissa Mayer, Google vice president of search products and user
experience, said that the company now removes faces or car number
plates on request.
"It's a good policy for users and also clarifies the intent of
the product," Mayer told News.com after a speech at a search engine
conference.
She said that the change was made just days after the launch of
Street View in May but not announced.
Mayer said that when Google receives a complaint about a face or
number plate it takes the offending photo down. She said that the
panoramic images are made up of a number of photos, so the removal
of one does not affect the whole image.
She said that the company had received "not even dozens" of
requests for removal, and that the request does not have to come
from the person whose face or number plate is pictured.
Google has faced a spate of recent questions and objections over
its privacy policies. It announced that it would keep search
records linking search terms to internet protocol addresses for a
shorter periods, sparking a row with privacy regulators and
users.
In the aftermath of the announcement the privacy policies of
other search engines also came under scrutiny.
Google then announced that it would reduce the length of time
that its cookies would remain on users' computers. Cookies are
small text files that can be used to track a user's activity.
