Google redraws the borders on maps depending on who’s looking | Hacker News Reader

Google redraws the borders on maps depending on who’s looking

washingtonpost.com

117 pointsaxiosgunnar67 comments

While this sounds bad, this is quite normal and expected by any multi-national corporation using a map service. Companies don’t get to choose the favored boundaries when doing business in Russia or China, given having the wrong lines can result in legal issues or even expulsion from the market.

Is this good for a freer world? Perhaps not. Is this better for everyone’s bottom lines? Most definitely.

Source: I run a map company. (For now, we default to the boundaries as defined in OSM and include the data regarding disputed boundaries, which can by styled our customers as they wish.)

Addendum: Google is one of those multi-national companies. If they choose to only display the lines as the UN would draw them, they would not have a market in many countries.

As a Pakistani, I thought this was common knowledge. When Google Maps hosted localized maps on country-specific domains, Pakistanis found the Indian version on the .co.in domain and it was a whole thing [1]. Pakistan's even complained to the World Bank for a map of the country that excluded Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir during a (literally one) book launch. Some Governments, especially my own, feel slighted at the smallest of things—you don't want to get on their bad side if you're trying to do business with them.

By the way, if you want the official map of Pakistan, it's released by the Survey of Pakistan here[2].

Edit: I want to point out that Pakistan literally bans any website arbitrarily. YouTube was banned for three years in Pakistan[3], and social media websites have been banned many times in the past including (ostensibly) to chill coverage of protests[4]. It isn't too far-fetched to imagine a Pakistan without Google Maps if Google doesn't play nice.

[0]: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1163447/google-maps-shows-azad-...

[1]: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1262447/pakistan-protest-world-...

[2]: http://www.surveyofpakistan.gov.pk/images/downloads/pak3m.pd...

[3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-youtube/pakistan...

[4]: https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/press-release-drf-and-net...

It is common knowledge. Here's a video that goes into more detail: https://youtu.be/P_UVPTdjxC0

While I do work for Google, this is just standard practice for any map maker since they are required to follow local laws. I find this article to be incendiary singling out a single company and acting as if they are doing this with bad intent which is not the case here.

I think most map makers probably aren't doing business in the countries in question and can just do whatever they feel like.

(The average cartographer isn't working on maps intended for consumption everywhere...)

I don't know if this is accurate, but the article implies that printed maps don't do this kind stuff, or at least less so (e.g. "We try to show as much information as we can, when we can, to help people understand what's going on in a part of the world").

I don't know how Google maps compares to other online maps.

> as if they are doing this with bad intent

I didn't really read any implications of "bad intent" here, but rather indifference or callousness regarding these issues.

If printed maps could be changed based on a viewers location, that would definitely be done. However, it can't be done, and authorities recognize that

In many cases where the online maps are required to change the view, you won't be able to offer a paper map that disagrees with the official perspective.

Printed maps are printed _somewhere_, and have to follow that where's laws. Naturally, a (for example) US-printed map can draw foreign disputed borders as disputed or either side's.

Now, if that same map was to be distributed in one of the disputing countries, that's another story, and even representing disputedness can be illegal.

Since Google wants to distribute their maps globally, they can either show the "correct" maps, or block access from people in countries with disputed borders. Their business model being what it is, they chose to redraw maps when necessary.

I've seen printed maps of Greece which had an actual label with the word "FYROM" layered on top of the neighboring country if Macedonia. The map was obviously printed outside of Greece

Imagine if google didn't do this... How much outrage would there be when google made a decision over where to draw the border?

I can't think of any circumstance where i want a multinational corporation to be making decisions about where disputed borders are drawn.

Once we are done talking about country borders, let's talk about flags.

Red Hat/Fedora "no flags" policy: https://lwn.net/Articles/333623/

Resignation of an important Debian kernel maintainer because a flag of Taiwan is included in a Debian package: https://lwn.net/Articles/86925/ https://lwn.net/Articles/86923/

Jesus. People falling all over themselves to miss the point and claim that no one should care about these things. Well, people do care, and there are no easy solutions here. Because people are more complicated than computers.

That resignation is hilarious. GPL extremism is tolerable but a Taiwanese flag was "too much". Good riddance.

This happens with all american books with maps in India too - it isn't a Google problem. It's a government problem.

I don't think this article has good reporting, because it suggests that the company has some hidden agenda, when really all it's doing is complying with local laws.

It's neither a Google not a governmental problem. It is fundamentally a people problem, and unlikely to change as long as anyone draws breath.

This is /very/ old news. Maybe not even news. It's the norm since maps depicting administrative areas of some sort exist.

And there is no difference even. In the past you could take a paper map drawn by A and showing a disputed border between A & B to B and show them.

Nowadays you can spoof your GPS and/or IP to purport you are at A (although your are at B) and see the map people at A are commonly shown.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21648633

Microsoft chooses to display a border as disputed, which I guess is more honest here than selling different borders to both sides.

Bing, too, follows local laws that could otherwise get people arrested. At some point they didn't even show the Kashmir border as disputed: https://splinternews.com/how-airbnb-google-and-microsoft-vie...

The whole situation, managing border depictions worldwide, is a rathole. You just can't win.

> You just can't win.

This, in a nutshell. Some border disputes are straightforward, and choosing one depiction over the other could be considered ethically better than choosing the other depiction. Other disputes are intractable without just displaying based on the worldview of the viewer.

By picking a side, you can't do any business in a country, often. By showing the worldview (or legally mandated worldview) of the viewer, you abide by local law and don't have to worry about your employees being arrested.

Pick your fights and your venues wisely. :)

I'm pretty sure you can be jailed for not including certain areas in a country's map. Right or wrong, UN recognition or not, your team in that country might be charged with treason.

"a country" ? which country is that ...

You actually made me search, when these things are obvious. Here's one, since that's all I "owe" you:

7-year jail, Rs 100 crore fine soon for showing PoK, Arunachal as disputed

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...

Edit to add another one:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3ddmzv/if-youre-a-foreign...

According to Sohu, China's surveying administration investigated and handled nearly 40 cases of "foreign illegal surveying and mapping" since 2006. An amendment proposed last year to the national law on surveying would impose fines and jail time for makers of maps that “fail to demonstrate China’s complete territory.”

In Russia, Bing shows Crimea as Russia. When I'm using it with VPN terminated in UK, it shows it as Ukraine.

Google Earth shows some disputed borders in red.

If you show a Greek map of Cyprus to Turks, you’ll get pissed off customers. If you show a Turkish map of Cyprus to Greeks you’ll get pissed off customers.

I know this because I’ve been in a team dealing with exactly this set of issues.

As much as anything Google’s map borders are about good customer service.

Isn't this what traditional printed map makers would do? Or were maps of the pre Google maps era mostly produced by local entities?

Yes, and yes. By nature of it, they were produced for a certain language, at least, which in most cases implies a certain worldview.

Makes sense.. borders aren’t some universal truth, they’re relative to the observer. Especially when you get down into the weeds, every country has border disputes.

This is how you survive as a company in the world we are in today. We all know public gets knee jerk reaction towards those issues, and why drive fire towards yourself.

This sort of journalism feels capricious. Is this supposed to be surprising? The way it’s presented makes it seem like something should really be questioned here and that readers should walk away with some kind of unnecessary ideological reaction about the evils that be in Big Tech. What is the point of this?

I wonder what is shown when you're living inside one of those 'disputed' locations.

No surprise, because there are laws in many countries that tell you how a map must look like.

Related West Wing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k9IlR3-_-A

Borders should be drawn based on the states that control them. So oddities like Transnistria would be shown, even opposing sides in civil wars.

Aren't they required to in many countries?

https://archive.md/byuYt

Could they use this to troll the ego’s of world leaders? i.e. show Putin he owns all of Ukraine, etc.

I really hate the whole non-determinism in sites. First we have A/B testing, then we have google search showing different results depending on what computer/account/country of the ip address you are using, youtube showing different recommended videos (rather than basing it on the current video), etc.

It would be great if instead they had a deterministic way of looking at it. For example give an easy way to anyone to select a different "perception" for the map borders.

How is that non deterministic?

My guess is non-deterministic is not the correct word. More like determined by factors not disclosed to the user. Social media does this as a feature.

There must be a line though. I certainly wouldn't want laws in my country to force Wikipedia to alter facts based on my location. I suppose it's possible that's already happening.

This is sort of like if snapchat altered the faces of the people who look into its camera to make them more attractive to match what they look like in their own heads. The correct way is to not fuel delusions about the individual and get everyone to reach a consensus about the real world that we all live in. But if snapchat presented reality they probably wouldn't have a market either.

> get everyone to reach a consensus about the real world that we all live in.

I think that’s the point. This is impossible. The only way the entire world agrees on every single boundary is, barring world peace another way, a single world government.

That’s simply not the world we live in or do business in.

Also, this isn’t, shall we say, dressing up the pig. It’s two, potentially legitimate, competing claims to the same piece of ground. There is, in many cases, not a single “this is the valid claim.” And perhaps the fact we’re fighting over how the lines are drawn is an indication things are better than they used to be? (Because those competitors aren’t all at war over those lines and we aren’t drawing them all as war zones.)

You’re a company. You have the power to influence the opinions of millions, those millions can - by vote or brute force - hold their government accountable. Do you take an independent choice based on your morals and the information you’ve seen, or do you take the road to the biggest pile of cash?

>Do you take an independent choice based on your morals and the information you’ve seen, or do you take the road to the biggest pile of cash?

You mean, do you force your moral viewpoints on the rest of the world? I would have figured that the last 500 years of colonization showed the issue with viewing one's own morals as superior to the rest of the world.

Eh, that seems rather harsh. The question is whether or not Google should show these borders as disputed, and I don't think anyone can reasonably deny that, in fact, these borders are a matter of dispute. Showing them as disputed is considerably more neutral than just taking one side (whether that's also realistic/feasible politically is another matter, and also not agreeing with the parent commenter btw).

Then the viewpoints you are forcing becomes whether the border is 'disputed' which is not much better and it makes your map a mess.

When the dispute is only formal, yes, it's a subjective question whether both parties are important enough for us to take the dispute seriously. But when a border is disputed in the 'troops and border skirmishes' sense? Ignoring that is verging on denying physical reality.

Well, yeah; maps are a mess sometimes; that's just the way it is. The core criticism in this article is that Google presents maps as simple without context while in fact they are not.

Who in the offended country is being forced to use an external map they find annoying? Those governments can make their own maps and share them with your population, like any other product or service that conflicts with regulations in some jurisdictions.

What they're looking for, and some corporations are willing to provide, is the appearance of endorsement by external authorities for their political stance. Anyone in the country who disputes the border layout can be 'refuted' with 'just check Google, that proves the border runs thus and so.'

False binary. You can just put things out there as you see them and then other people can take it or leave it as they see fit.

I don't think that's a fair assessment as the alternative might well be their services being blocked by that region and a local service implementing this exact status quo.

Exactly the same outcome just without Google. Its a bit of a Pyrrhic victory to withdraw from those markets on ethical grounds.

I'm not sure what Google should do, but someone else made a good point that I think applies here: 'Google says X' probably has much greater propaganda value than 'this local company that is clearly under our government's authority says X'.

Unfortunately, it’s not this simple and certainly not this idealistic.

1) A (public) company’s first duty is to increase shareholder value, ergo, you take the cash.

2) That company wouldn’t have any influence on those millions if they aren’t in the market, so the point is moot. They’re either in the market under the constraints by the governing body or they aren’t in the market.

I’m not saying this is how I think the world should work; I am saying this is how it does work.

This isn't strictly true. A public company's first duty is to fulfill its stated purpose in its articles of incorporation. While that's often to maximize profits, it's not always the case. For example, your for profit company might also have a stated purpose to protect the environment.

Ah, yes, valid.

Unfortunately that’s precious few public companies.

How would you decide on the issue of Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands)? What is the independent morally correct answer?

No, companies are there to make value for their shareholders.

They have to do it in an ethical way, sure. But there's also the practical reality of which country the region is affiliated with, and what was the voice of the people living in said region. Denying this voice, just because it hasn't been recognised internationally, is not the sort of activism that for-profit companies should be engaged in.

It’s not that simple. The Indian government literally bans maps that depict the national boundaries as different. It’s even a question on their customs forms [0]. Taking a position like you suggest is always a debate and is rarely black and white. Draw the maps differently and suddenly Google stops working. Now what? Not only do you lose business, but any other value you could provide to people in the country has now been nullified.

[0] http://www.cbic.gov.in/resources//htdocs-cbec/customs/forms_...

I concur, and it's the same on the Pakistani side[1]. If you don't play by the rules online, you're blocked in the country.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22337891

you're discounting that they might mean Google should influence the American government to change India's maps by brute force.

"Gun boat diplomacy" comes to mind

"those millions can - by vote or brute force - hold their government accountable."

I am sort of speechless. You advocate people taking up arms against their government all upon advice of "high morals" spread by corporations.

Are you saying that if Google choose to display certain borders, the real borders might follow?

I might call that "delusion of grandeur by proxy"...

But surely google could just buy Kashmir, or Nagorno-Karabakh, and lease it to the relevant parties?

Your poetic post seems to imply there is some "right" border to be drawn between conflict zones?

How do I know who's right? I guess I'm not as smart as the 10xers here on hacker news who seem to always know the "right" side to take.

I don't know what side to take on England vs Ireland, India vs Pakistan, Russia vs Ukraine, and dozens of others around the world (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes )

So I'm not quick to judge. I don't even know if there exists an ethical and moral answer to these questions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com