Deadlock looms over Microsoft's panorama photo service in Germany

Apr 8, 2011, 14:34 GMT

Berlin - A German privacy commissioner warned Microsoft Friday he may prohibit its planned panorama photo service.

The US software company's chief rival, Google, took a bruising in Germany one year ago when it launched a similar service, Street View. Some 250,000 Germans demanded their houses or apartments be removed from the collection of street-frontage images before it went online.

Thomas Kranig, privacy commissioner of Bavaria state, who has legal powers to decree and punish, demanded that Microsoft promise to delete images on demand before its new service, Streetside, launches.

'We have agreed about many points, but on this one we differed,' Kranig told the German Press Agency dpa. 'We'll be discussing it again soon.'

He said that, if pushed, he would prohibit Microsoft publishing its street images. This would lead to a court battle. Kranig is responsible for the issue because Microsoft's main German office is in Munich.

A Microsoft spokesman said house owners and tenants would be able to go online after the service launches and mark those images which they consider an invasion of their privacy. Microsoft would delete or modify these within 48 hours, he said.

Google Street View was the first service to comprehensively depict German city streets.

After a massive public outcry, Google gave the Germans special treatment not accorded anywhere else, acting on all the objections before the service went live. The controversy has since died and Germans have become active users of Street View.

Plans to extend Google Street View to Switzerland effectively died when a court agreed this week with a privacy advocate and imposed draconian limits on the service, requiring all images to be edited by hand.

Microsoft said advance deletions would be very costly and would require it to create a special database listing the objectors.

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