by: Karin Matussek | Bloomberg

Google Inc. (GOOG), operator of the world’s largest Internet search engine, was fined 145,000 euros ($189,230) by a German regulator for collecting wireless-network data by its cars taking photos for the Street View service.

Google’s cars from 2008 to 2010 captured the data, including contents of e-mails, passwords, photos and chat protocols, Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar said in an e- mailed statement today. He had reopened the probe after prosecutors dropped a related criminal case last year.