South Korea Crashes Google's Street View Party, Finally

Police in South Korea said they had raided Google's Korea head office in Seoul on Tuesday on suspicion that the subsidiary of the search engine company had illegally collected location data from application subscribers.

Appolicious - In a land where smartphone adoption rates are among the highest in the world, South Korea has become one of the most targeted areas for mobile development. Now that restrictions on game approval have been loosened, South Korea can join in the Android gaming fun. As The Wall Street Journal points out, approximately 40 percent of the South Korean population has purchased smartphones in just two years, jumping on a fresh opportunity after mobile software regulations were lessened.

The Korean Fair Trade Commission, that country's antitrust agency, raided Google's offices in Seoul.

Police raided Google's South Korean offices to probe potential violations of the country's telecommunication-privacy law, in the latest move by authorities to ratchet up scrutiny of the Internet search giant's practices.

The real world continues to push back against Google's virtual Street View. On Tuesday, South Korean police raided the company's offices as they investigated whether the search giant illegally collected personal wireless information.

I just got off the phone with my friend Ted, a former expat who has lived in South Korea for a couple years and he gave me an update of what it was like owning a BlackBerry in the country. South Korea is an interesting market – known as one of the more protectionist, yet tech savvy countries, Koreans love mobile culture and BlackBerry has been a tremendous success in the region.

Google resumed selling Android-based mobile-device games in South Korea, after accepting a remaining set of restrictions.

Police said Thursday that Google Inc.