Will Google roll out Street View worldwide despite privacy issue?

"However, Google's technology is too invasive, and goes too far," Rodriguez said. "We expect some degree of anonymity while we are walking on the streets."

The Street View program has drawn criticisms from worldwide, especially in German,  where the response has been overwhelmingly negative despite h Google's assurance to have Germans' images of their homes kept out.

On Tuesday, the South Korean police raided Google's office, alleging the company had collected sensitive information through its Street View program. South Korea is the latest country taking such an action against Google Street View, following the U.K. and Austria.

However, some experts believe Google will eventually win the battle and spread the service worldwide.

"I do think that Google will succeed with its strategy of rolling out Google Street View worldwide, as long as the definition of success does not include having footage as open and uncensored as it is for most U.S. cities," said Evan Bailyn, a recognized expert on search engine optimization in the U.S..

According to Bailyn, Google has a way of "spreading its core services out slowly and chipping away at the resistance they encounter slowly and consistently".  

Bailyn gave the example of Google Books, which, while not as open as they had originally intended, has effectively indexed all those books and become a valuable resource that no company but Google would have been ambitious enough to create.  Google initially aimed to give open access to every published book in the world.

"They met with huge resistance from the organizations that govern authors' rights when they embarked on Google Books, and yet made it through with a less-open, but still quite incredible and useful product," Bailyn told IBTimes.

"And that product continues to evolve," he added.

Bailyn expects Google Books will allow users much more latitude than just a few pages of previews in 5 years, as Google will continue pushing the limits of authors' rights and making monetization deals until they get the freedom of information they are seeking.  

"Similarly, Google Street View is an incredible product that opens the world up to anyone with a computer," Bailyn said.

"Even if certain views are blocked, Google will find a way to make it widespread and useful enough - and figure out clever enough monetization models to tempt the cities that are currently limiting Google Street View - that eventually, more and more freedom will be granted to the service," he concluded.  

Google already blocks out people's faces and car number plates in the other countries featured on Street View and will also do so in Germany.

Currently Google is providing the Street View program in 23 countries, and the company has not disclosed the exact dates when any particular locations will be added in its global expansion plan.

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