Sunday, February 12, 2017

Googling Up the Mountains

I noticed a parking lot at the bottom of Twenty-First Street - it is the curvy country road beside Twenty Mile Creek that comes up behind Cave Springs Winery.  Dezi and I went for a walk, and the winding path went along a little beaver pond, and went up into Jordan.  Cave Springs is the square building on the right.  This made me wonder whether Google has videoed any walking paths that aren't accessible to vehicles.  We could google up a mountain and visit places via the magic of Google.  I haven't found anything, but along my journey found this article from 2010:

Nicaragua Mistakenly Invades Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps

"Why did Nicaraguan troops mistakenly invade Costa Rica last week? Was it really because of a Google Maps error? Wired's Danger Room explains:
Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the border, took down a Costa Rican flag and defiantly raised their own flag on Costa Rican turf. But the troops’ commander, Eden Pastora, told a Costa Rican newspaper, Google Maps mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua. Government officials in Nicaragua have also blamed a “bug in Google” for the error.
Now, the Organization of American States and UN Security Council are being called in to mediate the dispute, and find a solution to the problem caused by Google. “Costa Rica is seeing its dignity smeared and there is a sense of great national urgency,” said Costa Rica’s excellently-named President Laura Chinchilla.
Google has since apologized for the error (which can be traced back to bad information from the State Department) and is working to correct its erroneous borders. Most embarrassing, notes Wired, is that Google's competitor, Microsoft, uses correctly drawn maps.
[UPDATE]: As commenter Nippon Tico points out, the troops crossed the border and raised the Nicaraguan flag well before learning of Google's mapping error; the Google excuse was made after the fact. What's more, the Bing map is also a bit suspect."

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