http://google-produkt-kompass.blogspot.com/2010/10/street-view-wie-viele-deutsche_8317.html

Philipp, can you please help with a quick translation :)

About 244237 households.
I counted them all.

here is a blogpost in english by google.

the 244k households is the number of these 20 cities which will be launched soon.
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-many-german-households-have-opted.html

Yeah, that was around the number I read about recently on spiegel.de too – apparently Google was pressured by some officials to release that number. 1 person per household is enough to get the full house blocked from view. I'm not sure all these submissions have been fully processed and verified yet though (they have been at least somewhat verified, the report by Spiegel stated). Google will lose the imagery permanently – until they reshoot the area – because they don't keep originals anymore (as that would defeat the purpose of true privacy, because e.g. a gov't agency might still subpoena for the original photos).

I suppose if it's just some percent then Google can simply write this off as data friction or something, a loss that can be easily lived with if it's the price for entering the German market. As long as the majority of houses is there, they might be happy enough. In fact, I wonder if some users will complain that some houses are missing, which might help Google's argument that people really want the Street View benefits?

Are privacy restrictions different with street view imaging than satellite or airplane imaging?