Will Google sue its UK CEO to get pictures of his house onto Streetview?

Game theorists differentiate between strong and weak "tells" in human interactions - ie if someone wants to persuade you to do something but you see they are putting very little into their side of the bargain, its a good idea to step away. I leave you to guess what it means if the persuading one is doing the opposite of what they want you to do....

Which of course brings us neatly to Google Streetview, which is taking pictures of everyone's houses to put up on Google for viewing by the global billions. Except for Google's UK boss, as the Times reports:

Google boss Dennis Woodside’s West London town house is not one of them. His residence is situated in a private gated development in Kensington, where the 40-year-old American lives with his wife and two children.

Last night a Google spokeswoman, Laura Scott, said Woodside’s house had not been omitted on purpose but was not included because it was on a private road, and no private roads were included.

One wonders if Google will take the pictures anyway and then challenge the attempts by residents in such private roads to remove them via court action. After all, they did in the US and even won their case.

Hmmm....but perhaps not in this case

Google also claims it uses face-recognition technology automatically to blur most faces and number plates captured by its cameras. This is bollocks, a number of friends went on Google yesterday and were busily counting unobfuscated number plates. We found our car with its number plate gloriously unblanked, along with others on our road. I note that now I've complained, much more blanking has occurred up and down the road. They are seemingly hoping that only a few people notice / care enough to make a noise and are relying on user generated discontent to drive takedowns.

We also await with interest as the London Newspapers and Privacy organisations dig up the residences of the Google UK CXO's and UK politicians and publish them, because they will as:

- Google can't sense it but I can - there is a growing sense of anxiety on this as people learn about it, especially among the (non geek) women I've spoken to. The British have a desire for privacy that Americans probably just cannot grasp. (They've reluctantly bought into CCTV for safety reasons, but Streetview does not promise that - the opposite in fact)

- The tabloids love a good scare story, and the whiff of hypocrisy is always an extra turn on

- It is a great drum for an aspiring politician to bang, and the UK is not (yet, anyway) quite as completely run by lobbyists as the US.

The Times notes that Richard Thomas, the information commissioner is considering an investigation into the new service if images [of kids] are found and that Google is facing threats of legal action in Germany as its image mapping threatens privacy laws.

Mr Thomas, if I were in your shoes and wanted to be seen to be pro-active and look relevant, (unlike certain banker watchdogs one could name) I'd probably start now. The European Privacy Law (Article 8 ) is suitably general, and there are enough examples (phone directories, copyright of owned, branded goods) to make going after Google in the UK a distinct possibility. And I suspect that if you don't, others will and will set the agenda.

Prediction - by late May this is going to get all very heated.