Marketing Pilgrim

Google Maps Street View continues its relentless march, despite privacy protests. Google has recently added two new countries to it quiver: Canada and the Czech Republic. Which will be the first to balk?

In Canada, they have added twelve cities in time for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. And naturally, they focused on major metropolises. Metropolii. Uh .. . Anyway, the cities: Vancouver, Whistler (population: 9000), Squamish (population: 15,000! WTG), Banff (populations <7000), Calgary, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax.

And, of course, no Street View would be complete without some strange photos—like a burning van Philipp Lenssen pointed out:

In the Czech Republic, they’ve focused mostly on Prague (ahoj, Praha!), although they did follow Highway D1 as far as Brno.

This brings the number of Street View countries to fourteen: Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and the U.S. Street View is also available on Google Maps for Mobile.

In many of these countries, we’ve seen various levels of protests (rational or not) that a car with a camera on it violates their privacy. (And a person with a camera?) England, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Japan, Australia and even America have had at least one lawsuit against the service. (If you’re keeping count, that’s half the covered countries, including the new ones.) Will Canada and the Czech Republic be next?

Oh, wait. It’s Canada.

So will the Czech Republic be next?

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