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Comment by rustymonday | Hacker News Reader

I just want to add to this that when I first heard about this virus I searched the WIV on Google Maps. I believe that was 14 January 2020. When I searched it again a few weeks later, the location on Google Maps had changed.

I have no screenshots of this, but I did find it quite odd at the time.

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Addresses of things change on Google maps. They fix problems and find issues and it's entirely possible that an address changing means something was updated. Or there's an international address conspiracy that Google is part of, you'll have to decide for yourself!

This change of address is initated by an authority of that region or owner of that business. What exactly is your motivation is spreading FUD on this matter?

You don't have to be a business owner to change the location of a business on Google Maps. They rely on the general public to correct inaccuracies - I've done this a few times for certain locations near me. Presumably they use some kind of scoring system to determine whether the request to make the change is valid.

I don't think it's fine. When I worked at Google, we got updated address information for businesses periodically and we had an official process that applied updates to the data we had stored. It was actually a colossal pain in the butt. I could see that still being the way that addresses can get updated?

omniglottal, I wish you'd comment further about address info changing. Like the other responder to you, third parties can ask to update address info. It's absolutely not conspiratorial. Can we agree it's not a conspiracy?

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