Users can now glide along the trees, mountains and even visit remote villages, thanks to Google’s Street View. Teaming up with Apa Sherpa, who holds the record for reaching the peak of Mount Everest 21 times, and Nepalese non-profit organization, Story Cycle, Google has managed to scale and photograph the Khumbu region of Nepal for ten days. This created the new Street View images and has helped in improving the maps of the area the Sherpa people have called home for centuries.

Gorak Shep is the closest one can get in this virtual trek. Also, indoor imagery of the Everest Summiteer [...]

A German privacy regulator fined Google €145,000 on Monday for its systematic, illegal collection of personal data while it was creating its Street View mapping service, and it called on European lawmakers to significantly raise fines for violations of data protection laws.

It found that while specially equipped Google vehicles took city snapshots between 2008 and 2010 for its Street View function, which supplements its standard map service, they had also picked up data from unsecured wireless networks.

“Among the information gathered in the drive-bys were significant amounts of personal data of varying quality. For example emails, [...]

Google has agreed to pay a $7 million fine to settle claims from 37 states and the District of Columbia that the search giant improperly collected data from unsecured wireless networks across the United States using its “Street View” vehicles.

The announcement of the settlement is expected to be made by the states early next week, according to the person, though some of the final details of the deal were still being hammered out on Friday. Google has said the incident was a mistake.

A group of states, led by then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, began the [...]