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Schmidt: I 'misspoke' over Street View

Gaffe-prone search kingpin puts Opel in reverse

Google CEO Eric Schmidt today said he "misspoke" when he suggested that people who don't like pictures of their homes appearing on Street View should "just move".

A Google spokeswoman contacted The Register this morning with further musings from her gaffe-prone boss.

"As you can see from the unedited interview, my comments were made during a fairly long back and forth on privacy. I clearly misspoke," he said.

"If you are worried about Street View and want your house removed, please contact Google and we will remove it."

As we and many other outlets reported yesterday, Schmidt made another of his pronouncements on privacy during a CNN interview. It was highlighted despite being edited out of the final video.

"Street View, we drive exactly once," he told the hosts when asked about international concerns over the opt-out service, adding, "so you can just move, right?"

This latest creepy half-joke follows Schmidt's recent brainwaves that young people should change their names to escape embarrassing records on the web; that if you're concerned about the personal data Google may have on you, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing; and, finally, that those same records mean Google "can more or less know what you're thinking about".

The suggestion that you should move house if you want to escape surveillance by his fleet of black Opels is therefore a coherent position for Schmidt. However, the fact that Google has charged its PR operatives to massage the message this morning shows we're not the only ones who think his frequent "misspeaking" is a liability. ®

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