Google Maps Caught in Border Dispute | Hacker News Reader

Google Maps Caught in Border Dispute

blogs.wsj.com

20 pointsmburney12 comments

There was a much longer article about Google Maps role in political disputes earlier this year in Washington Monthly: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.gravois....

"Google maintains thirty-two different region-specific versions of its Maps tool for different countries around the world that each abide by the respective local laws."

It's amazing how the "deliberate ambiguity" policy that seems to surround most border disputes breaks down when there are online maps that most people tend to accept. Even saying areas are disputed tends to cause outrage.

The true solution, which won't work until everyone thinks of the Internet or Earth as their nationality, is to do away with borders altogether.

I don't think this is a real solution. Borders occur at all levels, not just at a national level. Your town boundaries determine how much tax you pay and what school district your kids are in. Your county boundaries determine whether you can open a bar on your land. And don't get me started on states' rights.

The issue is largely that the law is different in the two countries which dispute the region. In Northern Ireland for instance, the law was largely biased against Catholics, which is the root cause for the violent independence movement that followed.

While I agree with the notion that we are all one planet, I think that the issue of borders is far more complex than nationality you want to be. Rather, it's allowing people to decide under which rules they wish to be governed, which is a far more important issue than simple tribalism.

This reminds me of the changes Microsoft had to make to the timezone map in Windows 95:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...

Google Maps must diffuse metadatas with their maps : date, origin/source, level of quality, scale of usability, etc.

It's the least they can do to reduce the occurence of such problems. Any honest and serious map data diffusion present metadatas. Cf. the EU "Inspire" directive for public geographical data diffusion.

Google should just draw a zigzagging line in the middle of the disputed terrain and be done with it.

It's not a disputed land really, the official maps for both Costa Rica and Nicaragua show the area belongs to Costa Rica. Blaming Google Maps is a bit of a red herring from the nicaraguans.

Some areas have a dotted line for administrative borders.

For example, Kashmir: http://goo.gl/maps/y58a

FYI, I was making a joke regarding the situation Google is in. Don't really know if you're just trying to be informative or if you're correcting me or something :)

In maps.google.co.in it's not marked with dotted line .

You're right, very interesting!

.com: http://goo.gl/maps/y58a .co.in: http://goo.gl/XP6a3

And China has its own take on the border as well:

http://goo.gl/9E4zb

I couldn't find a Google Maps site for Pakistan, but am wondering if there are any other countries that might take issue with the borders here?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com