Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) when it launched the Google Maps feature, quite literally, rewrote the rules of how digital maps are used. With its advanced street mapping technologies and satellite imagery, virtual travelling is even more of a breeze. All this has been possible due to clichés of volunteers or users who have on-location captured and provided the database for Google to later interpolate on its software.
Apparently, this user-generation model of mapping has led the software giant into some trouble in the past couple of months.
User-content censure
Just weeks ago Google Inc was left embarrassed and was battling censure for an illustration found on a remote Pakistani street. The illustration had a robot of an Android peeing on an Apple Logo. Google Inc, quickly closed down on the service called Map Maker which was used to create that image. The tool, Map Maker can be used by the public to create the maps.
The company has now suspended this service and has begun to review all the submissions made by a manual process.
White House Blotch
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) had another pending embarrassing issue for some time with the Google Maps search feature. The results of search in New York led to quite somewhere else. For a place which began with an N-letter or word and ended with a House, the Google Map results directed all to the White House.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Engineering executive, Jen Fitzpatrick reported that the problem was now fixed. He reported that the search algorithm had now been updated. It was now possible to fix ‘many’ of these searches. The global fix for this issue is expected to be rolled out later.
The executive also clarified that the map results were unexpected, when ‘offensive terms’ were used. The association is due to the use of these phrases online when referring to public places as well as businesses. Therefore, the Google search engine algorithm did not fail the location under discussion with that of the Maps results.
