Google’s Street View cars will be back on the road after spending the past few months parked up because of the Wi-Fi data issues.
The image capturing vehicles will restart their journeys in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden next week, but Wi-Fi detecting equipment will not be on board.
In May, the search engine marketing giants admitted their cars had been collecting Wi-Fi data, as they drove around the country taking pictures for their street view service. However, Wi-Fi data wasn’t the only information picked up as personal information from unsecured connections was also retrieved, although Google claims this was unintentional.
Google is currently under investigation in both Europe and the United States after admitting its mistake. They recently apologised to their Australian users for breaking privacy laws whilst there, but agreed to assess the impact the collecting of such information has on privacy.
The Street View service allows users to click on maps and see a 360 degree view of roads, but Google have faced regulatory disputes in several countries, with the Californian based company forced to provide the authorities in France, Germany and Spain with the data it unintentionally collected.
According to an article on PC Pro, Brian McClendon, vice president of engineering for Google Geo said in his blog: “Our cars will no longer collect any Wi-Fi information at all, but will continue to collect photos and 3D imagery as they did before.”
“We recognise that serious mistakes were made in the collection of Wi-Fi payload data and we have worked to quickly rectify them,” he added.
