Google Earth in India: officially free of censorship

12th November 2007

The popularity of Google Earth and the constantly improving quality of its satellite snapshots causes concern of some countries not eager to present a detailed visual information on their objects for Internet users. To avoid the problems, Google has to hold meetings with the authorities of the countries, the latest talks being held in India. This time, the leading technical specialist of the developing department of Google Earth, Michael Jones himself negotiated with the local authorities. The result of the meeting was positive in all senses of this word: the project can function in India without any restrictions.
According to Jones, Google does not want to have problems, thus, it constantly holds meetings with the authorities to find out their attitudes to the service. The government of each country is concerned about the new developments and only wants to make sure they will do no harm. "We demonstrate everything that we have. Once we receive the material we publish it," - said Jones. Only during the last summer Google already faced several requirements to limit the information accessible through images. The Canadian government has required to hide personsâ€™ faces on the streets and in Australia in connection with one of the high-level meetings it was imposed a restriction on "Zoom," for certain territories.