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Major strategic blunder: the whole world was updating their proprietary map data for them, but they failed to engineer the process to be spam-proof. Now they've had to stop accepting contributions as a result. Many contributors are likely to switch to updating someone else's map data, and Google risks no longer having the most up-to-date maps of the entire planet. Larry Page needs to kick some ass.

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>they failed to engineer the process to be spam-proof

That's a bit naive. They have been getting business spam constantly from the day they opened. Like businesses marking their competitors as closed, or moving their own location so it is closer to their customers.

"Spam-proof" is, since the beginning of (unix)time, an ever-receding ideal, not a point that you could actually reach, or even reach and hold. I believe that in the continuum between "lots of spam, some data" and "no spam, but also no data" a point needs to be chosen (and re-chosen) which is "good enough." Shutting the whole thing down is IMNSHO not this point, and certainly an overreaction.

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