German resistance to Street View was widespread enough to force massive opt-out processing

Evidence

In Germany, Google allowed residents to request that their homes be blurred in any Street View images. Nearly 250,000 households made opt-out requests in 2009–2010, requiring Google to hire 200 temporary programmers to meet the demand. Google was fined 145,000 euros by the Hamburg data-protection supervisor who had first discovered the Street View illicit data gathering, just short of the 150,000 euro fee he could have imposed. It was the largest fine ever to have been levied by European regulators for privacy concerns. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 467

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail that nearly 250,000 German households opted out and Google hired 200 programmers just to process blurring requests—and the largest privacy fine ever levied at the time was still just 145,000 euros—is a striking specificity worth citing in any privacy debate.
• XREF: connects to: Google Street View triggered worldwide legal and public resistance — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 454; Google’s Street View cars secretly harvested personal Wi-Fi payload data. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 452

Broader Connections

• Google Street View triggered worldwide legal and public resistance #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 454
• Google’s Street View cars secretly harvested personal Wi-Fi payload data. #complicates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 452