Germans to Google Street View: Nein!

When Google Street View launches in Germany at year-end, at least 3% of the homes in the country's 20 biggest cities will look pretty darn fuzzy—intentionally. Some 244,000 of the 8.5 million German households located there have requested that their homes be blurred out before the launch, the Wall Street Journal reports, and that number could soon climb once the rest of Germany is included.

A data-protection official in Hamburg said he expected more than a million homes to request blurring. Google says there may be a few glitches at first, leaving some households briefly visible despite their request. But the firm remains “confident,” according to a spokeswoman, who noted that the number of opt-out applications shows most Germans are willing to have their homes appear.