Needless to say Google got some very bad press over this (as they should have) and was dragged into court to explain their actions. In the end regulators in the UK and EU reprimanded Google, gave them a slap on the wrist and told them to delete the data. As we mentioned above not all of the data was deleted as has been disclosed by Google today. We are pretty sure that this admission has a lot to do with the fact that they are facing privacy investigations in the EU. After all it would not do for Google to be claiming they are not violating anyone’s privacy if they have data they should never have collected still in their possession.
Google did issue a rather lame apology though saying; “Google has recently confirmed that it still has in its possession a small portion of...data collected by our Street View vehicles in the UK” and further “Google apologizes for this error.”

I am not sure about you, but personally I think they might have more than a small portion of the data in their possession. After all data collection is what Google does best and the original collection was said to have been something of a goldmine of user habits.  Why would Google want to get rid of all of that?  This situation is not going to help Google as they fight to maintain a good public persona and also to appease both regulators and governments of the countries they have set up shop in. It is a fine line that Google is finding harder and harder to walk as their operations grow and users become more interested in what is being done with their personal information.

We will be sure to keep an eye on this as it develops.

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