Google me this

Despite this being another JN229 post, it has nothing to do with politics. Instead, I complain about our understanding of technology.

For an assignment in another class, I had to cover a Brantford city council meeting. One of the items discussed was a proposed extension of Old Park Road on the outskirts of the city's west end.

To get a better understanding of just what would have to be uprooted for this road to come into place, I used Google Maps to take a look at the area. Particularly, I was interested in what a local imam said about the road possibly going over a cemetery. Here's what Google Maps had to say:


Pretty simple, right? Oak Park Road carries on a little past the end of civilization as we know it at Hardy Street, and then you get a dead end.

Except that's not what happens. Switch to satellite view, and you get this:


There's other roads there. Some of them may be dirt (further zooming is mostly inconclusive although a couple are definitely paved). There's even a bridge over the Grand River.

Then I had the thought: I've seen this before. Google doesn't seem to add new roads to their maps - so since the satellite photos were added after Google Maps debuted, the satellite maps will show roads that the regular maps don't. Likewise, Street View will (where applicable) show even newer additions to the infrastructure.

One question jumps to mind right away. If 9/11 were to happen today, how long would it taken before the World Trade Center wasn't part of Google Maps? Google Satellite Maps? Google Street View? It's not like they update these things often.

I'm not suggesting that this is a glaring error on Google's part - at least not yet. After all, would you be able to stay on top of every new road and building that goes up around the world?

Down the road it could be more of a problem if my hunch is correct and the original Google Maps is never updated - at least a problem for Google, as they'd likely lose market share to more up-to-date maps. In this sense, the in-car GPS manufacturers' tendency to release an updated data pack every year or two is less money-grabbing than it is providing a useful service.

But there are two things that jump out at me. For one, it suggests that Google has a tendency to work on one of their services, get it as close to perfection as possible, and then abandon it when they have something new to play with (i.e. satellite photos). Considering Google's public reputation for being objective and infallible, this is a major blemish on their record. (Heck, the alleged objectivity of Google could be a nice blog post on its own if I were feeling a little more motivated tonight.)

Also, it leads me to think of Google Maps as less "this is the world, this is how the world is" and more "this is how the world was a few years ago" - but in a good way. Google can essentially act as historical cartographers for the entire planet, keeping archived maps of the entire world that would be tremendously useful for future researchers to see the evolution of cities.

Whether Google can be trusted with all that power is an entirely different debate - but it's not like we aren't already trusting them with far more.

--Ryan