04/05/2026
GOOGLE ACCIDENTALLY GAVE A COW WITNESS PROTECTION ON GOOGLE MAPS 😂
In August 2015, Google Street View cameras captured images along the banks of the River Cam in Cambridge, England. As the cameras made their way through a meadow called Coe Fen, a cow crossed the road. Google's automatic face-blurring technology decided the cow needed privacy protection and blurred its face.
The image was discovered in September 2016 by David Shariatmadari, an editor at The Guardian. He took a screenshot and shared it on Twitter with the caption: Great to see Google takes cow privacy seriously. The internet immediately lost it.
Google's face-blurring technology is designed to automatically blur all identifiable faces and license plates within Google-contributed imagery to protect people's privacy. The system is entirely automated, scanning images and applying blurs wherever it detects what it thinks is a face.
In this case, the algorithm apparently decided the cow's face looked human enough to warrant protection. The technology had been a little overzealous, as Google later admitted.
According to Google's privacy policy, once an image is blurred, it's permanent. The company cannot unblur it. That means this cow will remain anonymous forever, whether it wants to be or not.
The image was retweeted over 9,000 times and sparked countless jokes about bovine privacy rights. People joked about the cow entering witness protection, needing anonymity after snitching on the farmer, or simply being camera-shy.
