Google Maps

• 1. Introduction

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  Google Maps was being used by more than one billion people every month as of 2020, and in February 2020 an artist named Simon Weckert showed how easily it could be fooled. He used 99 cell phones to fake a traffic jam on the service. It was a prank, but it points to something strange about the product. The service began as a desktop program written by a handful of people in Sydney. Today it guides drivers, walkers, cyclists and transit riders, and it even decides what a stretch of ocean is called.

  Three questions run through this documentary. How did an Australian start-up's software end up on so many phones? Who really draws the map: satellites, aircraft, paid contractors, or the crowd? And what happens when the map is wrong, or when two governments want it to say different things?

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• 2. A Sydney Start

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  Four people built the first version of the service at Where 2 Technologies, a Sydney company founded in early 2003. They were two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, plus Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma. Their creation was a C++ program that users would download and install on their own computers.

  The team then pitched Google's management on something different, a purely web-based product. That pitch changed how the software would reach people. In October 2004 Google Inc. acquired the company, and all four developers joined Google. The desktop program became a web application.

  Google was collecting related technology at the same time. In September 2004 it bought ZipDash, a company that analyzed traffic in real time. In October 2004 it bought Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization firm. Keyhole's marquee software suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as Google Earth in 2005, and other parts of its technology flowed into Maps.

  The launch was announced on the Google Blog on the 8th of February 2005. The front end relied on JavaScript, XML and Ajax. As a user drags the map, new grid squares are fetched from the server and dropped into the page. Searching for a business works the same way, with results arriving in the background so the page never reloads. A hidden iframe with form submission keeps the browser history intact. Data travels as protocol buffers rather than JSON, a choice made for speed.

  In September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, Google Maps rapidly refreshed its satellite imagery of New Orleans so users could see how far the flooding had spread.

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• 3. Views From Every Angle

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  On the 25th of May 2007, Google released Street View, which offered 360-degree panoramas taken at street level. On its first day it covered only five cities in the United States. It has since grown to thousands of locations around the world, and in July 2009 Google began photographing college campuses and their surrounding paths and trails.

  Street View drew controversy almost immediately. The panoramas were uncensored, and people worried about privacy, even though the photos were taken only on public streets. Google later used automated recognition to blur faces and license plates.

  The cameras went to stranger places over time. In late 2014 Google launched Underwater Street View, including 2300 km of the Australian Great Barrier Reef in 3D. Special cameras turned through 360 degrees and took a shot every 3 seconds. In 2017 the interior of the International Space Station became navigable. In October 2017 the service added imagery of planets and moons such as Titan, Mercury and Venus, with direct access to the Moon and Mars.

  The view from above has its own story. Most high-resolution city imagery is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 to 1500 ft, while most other imagery comes from satellites. A 2011 report said much of it was no more than three years old. On the 27th of June 2016, Google rolled out new worldwide imagery from Landsat 8, more than 700 trillion pixels of fresh data.

  For years the map used a variant of the Mercator projection, which could not accurately show areas around the poles. In August 2018 the desktop version zoomed out to a 3D globe instead. That same month, 3D models of hundreds of cities in over 40 countries joined the satellite view, built with aerial photogrammetry.

  Earth Timelapse, released in April 2021, lets users watch the planet change across 37 years. It was assembled from 15 million satellite images, roughly ten quadrillion pixels, boiled down to 35 global cloud-free images.

  At the I/O 2022 event, Google announced Immersive View, which stitches Street View and aerial photos into composite 3D scenes using neural radiance fields. A September 2022 preview offered 250 photorealistic aerial images of landmarks. Full launch came in February 2023, and in October 2023 the feature extended to routes in 15 cities. It can also forecast weather, traffic and busyness up to a month ahead.

  Artists noticed all this. The German geo-novel Senghor on the Rocks, from 2008, pairs a Google Maps location on each left page with story text on the right. Emilio Vavarella's The Google Trilogy includes glitchy images and unintended portraits of the drivers of Street View cars. The Japanese band group_inou built a music video for its song EYE from Street View backdrops. The Canadian band Arcade Fire went furthest, making a customized video that shows each viewer their own childhood home.

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• 4. The Pocket Navigator

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  In November 2005, a beta called Google Local for Mobile arrived on phones that supported J2ME. It was renamed Google Maps for Mobile in 2006. A Windows Mobile version followed in February 2007, and a Symbian version in November 2007. In 2007 the app also came preloaded on the first iPhone, under a deal with Apple.

  Early phones struggled with slow downloads. In 2006 engineer Sanjay Mavinkurve devised a way to reduce the color depth of map tiles, which cut load times by 20 percent.

  On the 28th of November 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 introduced a beta My Location feature. It used GPS or assisted GPS when a phone had it. Otherwise it estimated position by comparing signal strengths against a database of known cell transmitter locations. The app reached India in 2008. On the 23rd of September 2008, the day Google announced the first commercial Android device, it released a Maps app for the Android operating system.

  The relationship with Apple soured in 2012. Apple replaced Google's service with its own Apple Maps when iOS 6 was released on the 19th of September 2012, and users complained of inaccuracies, errors and bugs. The Guardian reported a day later that Google was preparing its own app. It arrived on the 12th of December 2012 and was downloaded more than ten million times within two days.

  Reviewers were warm. USA Today wrote: "The reemergence in the middle of the night of a Google Maps app for the iPhone is like the return of an old friend." Jason Parker of CNET called it "the king of maps." Bree Fowler of the Associated Press granted Apple's maps a stylish look but judged Google superior in depth and information.

  By 2013, Google Maps was the world's most popular smartphone app, used by over 54% of global smartphone owners. The Android version passed five billion installations in March 2019 and 10 billion by November 2021.

  Features piled up along the way. Offline maps reached Android in June 2012 and iOS in May 2014. When offline maps were relaunched at the end of 2015, a downloaded area could not exceed 120,000 square kilometers. In April 2017 the app learned to remember where users parked. In December 2017 an Android two-wheeler mode appeared for users in India. Google Maps Go, a lighter version for lower-end devices, entered beta in January 2018 and had over 10 million installations by September. In 2020 the app won a Webby Award for Best User Interface in the Apps, Mobile and Voice category.

  Toll calculation arrived in June 2022. It reports toll costs on routes in the United States, India, Japan and Indonesia, covering around 2000 toll roads in that first phase.

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• 5. Keys and Listings

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  In June 2005, Google released the Google Maps API, after reverse-engineered mashups such as chicagocrime.org and housingmaps.com proved how much demand existed. Developers could now embed maps on their own sites and overlay their own data. The API started as JavaScript only. It later gained a static map image service and web services for geocoding, driving directions and elevation profiles, and an Adobe Flash version that Google announced it would deprecate in September 2011.

  Use was free for years. Commercial use was permitted if a site was publicly accessible, charged no admission and stayed under 25,000 map accesses a day. Bigger sites could buy the Google Maps API for Business. More than 1,000,000 websites eventually used the API, making it the most heavily used web development API.

  In May 2018, Google announced a restructuring that was due on the 11th of June. It collapsed 18 endpoints into three services and merged the basic and premium plans into one pay-as-you-go plan. For users on the basic plan, that meant a 1400% price increase with only six weeks of notice. Developers reacted harshly, and Google pushed the date to the 16th of July 2018. From then on, an API key tied to a billing-enabled Google Cloud account was required. Today the platform hosts about 17 APIs under the themes of Maps, Places and Routes.

  Businesses have their own relationship with the map. Google gathers listings from many online and offline sources and merges duplicates automatically using address, phone number or geocode. The merging sometimes fuses separate businesses into one inaccurate listing. Owners can claim and verify their data through Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. Google has staff in India who correct listings remotely, and teams on the ground in most countries who check physical addresses in person.

  The system can be gamed. Some people place unverified listings on directory sites, knowing the data will flow into Google. They skip registered business names and stuff keywords and location details into the title, which can outrank credible businesses. Genuine companies in Australia in particular have noticed a wave of fake listings across many industries. Honest owners use local search engine optimization to win visibility fairly.

  In May 2024, Google announced it would end the chat feature in Google Business Profile. New conversations were disabled from the 15th of July 2024, and all chat functions stopped by the 31st of July.

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• 6. The Crowd's Map

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  Since 2007, Google has painted traffic as a colored overlay on roads and motorways, shaded by how fast vehicles are moving. The data comes from the GPS-determined positions of large numbers of cellphone users. Google says the information is anonymous. It also says users can opt out in their phone settings, and stated: "Once you disable or opt out of My Location, Maps will not continue to send radio information back to Google servers to determine your handset's approximate location."

  Google acquired Waze in 2013, and Maps later borrowed one of its ideas. In January 2019, Maps added speed trap and speed camera alerts reported by other users. On the 17th of October 2019 it added incident reporting.

  On the 19th of April 2011, Map Maker came to the American version of Google Maps, letting any viewer edit the map. That gave Google local updates in near real time instead of waiting for map data companies to publish occasional revisions. Accuracy had long been a worry. Google Earth representative Brian McClendon said: "The biggest challenge is the currency of data, the authenticity of data." In March 2008, Google had already added a way to correct the locations of houses and businesses.

  Open editing also invited mischief. In April 2015, near the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, someone used Map Maker to add an image of the Android logo urinating on the Apple logo. It was removed and Google apologized, but Google disabled user moderation on Map Maker and, on the 12th of May, suspended editing worldwide until it could devise a new approval policy. In November 2016, Google announced Map Maker would be discontinued as of March 2017. Its contributions moved to Google Local Guides, a volunteer program with levels from 1 to 10, badges and points for reviews, photos, videos and corrections. From Level 4, a star appears beside the contributor's avatar.

  Pranks have continued. In December 2015, three Japanese netizens were charged with vandalism after adding an unrelated law firm's name and indecent labels to landmarks, including "Nuclear test site" on the Atomic Bomb Dome. In September 2024, several schools in Taiwan and Hong Kong were relabeled as "psychiatric hospitals" or "prisons." Hackers were first suspected. Police later revealed that local students had done it, and Google corrected the entries quickly.

  Privacy worries have followed the product too. Google Latitude, a feature for sharing your location with other people, was discontinued on the 9th of August 2013, and its features moved into Maps on the 22nd of March 2017. On the 27th of January 2014, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA and GCHQ had intercepted Maps queries from smartphones to locate users. A 2008 document stated that "anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system." In August 2014, Dylan Tweney of VentureBeat wrote that Google was probably logging your location step by step.

  Google added Incognito mode in December 2019. In June 2024 it began removing web access to Timeline, the daily summary of where a user has been, and kept that information on the local device instead.

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• 7. Wrong Turns

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  In Los Angeles, Google Maps brought back the name "Brooklyn Heights" from the 1870s and "Silver Lake Heights" from the 1920s. In Detroit, the neighborhood "Fiskhorn" turned into "Fishkorn." Because many companies use Google's data, these obscure or mistaken names then spread to realtors, hotels, food delivery sites, dating sites and news organizations.

  A former Google Maps employee, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said some submitted changes are judged by people with little local knowledge, such as contractors in India. Critics called names like "BoCoCa," for the Brooklyn area between Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, puzzling or simply made up. Some names were traced to amateur maps with typographical errors that survived into Google Maps.

  Sometimes the stakes are higher than a neighborhood name. In August 2023, a woman driving from Alice Springs to the Harts Range Racecourse was stranded overnight in the Central Australian desert. The directions led to the actual Harts Range rather than the rodeo. Google said it was consulting "local and authoritative sources" about the naming of the two places.

  In February 2024, two German tourists were stranded for a week after Google Maps sent them along a dirt track through Oyala Thumotang National Park, where their vehicle sank into mud. Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Roger James said: "People should not trust Google Maps when they're travelling in remote regions of Queensland and they need to follow the signs, use official maps or other navigational devices."

  In June 2019, after a crash on Peña Boulevard in Colorado, Google Maps offered nearly 100 drivers an alternative that led to a dirt road. Rain had turned it to mud, and nearly 100 vehicles became trapped. In November 2023, a dust storm closed parts of Interstate 15, and Google apologized after drivers were routed onto a bumpy dirt trail. Google then said Maps would no longer route drivers between Las Vegas and Barstow down those roads.

  In May 2025, a Brazilian tourist driving from Perito Moreno to El Calafate walked 25 km during a snowstorm after the app sent him onto an unpaved stretch of Santa Cruz's 29 highway. Police rescued him after five hours on foot in freezing weather. In November 2023, a hiker on the backside of Mount Fromme in Vancouver was rescued by helicopter after following a trail that did not exist. North Shore Rescue said it was the second hiker in two months to follow that trail, and it has since been removed.

  Some incidents ended in death. In December 2020, a teenage motorist named Sergey Ustinov froze to death on an abandoned section of the Kolyma Highway in Russia, where the temperature fell to -50°C. His passenger, Vladislav Istomin, was found alive with serious frostbite. The pair had been sent down a route about 200 kms shorter than the usual one between Yakutsk and Magadan, and Google Maps was found accountable for directing them there.

  In 2024, three men from Uttar Pradesh died when their car fell from an under-construction bridge into the Ramganga river. The bridge had no warning signs or barricades. A police complaint named state road engineers and a Google Maps official.

  In September 2023, a North Carolina resident sued Google, alleging its maps sent her husband over the Snow Creek Bridge in Hickory the year before, and that he drowned. The suit says the bridge had collapsed in 2013 and that several people had warned Google. It adds that the barriers meant to block the bridge had been vandalized.

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• 8. Contested Lines

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  In October 2010, Nicaraguan military commander Edén Pastora stationed troops on Isla Calero, in the delta of the San Juan River. He justified the move by pointing to the border shown on Google Maps. Google later updated its data after finding it incorrect. The episode showed that a line on a screen can carry real authority.

  Google has handled disputed territory in different ways. On the 12th of April 2014, Maps was updated for Russia's annexation of Ukrainian Crimea. Users in Russia see the Republic of Crimea, users in Ukraine see the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and everyone else sees a dotted disputed border. On the 14th of July 2015, the Chinese name for Scarborough Shoal was removed after a petition from the Philippines on Change.org.

  Palestine is a long-running flashpoint. Google has said it never labeled Palestine on its maps and blamed a temporary bug for missing West Bank and Gaza Strip labels in 2016. Critics note that Western Sahara, also disputed, is shown, and call the approach inconsistent. A 2020 Change.org petition asking Google to add Palestine gathered over 2.1 million signatures.

  Names of water have caused similar fights. In 2012, BBC News reported that Iran might take legal action over the missing Persian Gulf label. Since 2016, Maps shows both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf, and shows local users one or the other depending on geolocation and language settings.

  In February 2025, after Executive Order 14172, the Gulf of Mexico was relabeled the Gulf of America for US users. Elsewhere it reads Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America), while Mexico still sees the Gulf of Mexico. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum asked Google to reconsider and said a civil lawsuit was possible. Google then disabled reviews of the gulf. In May 2025, Sheinbaum said a lawsuit had been filed. Also in 2025, an April update made the West Philippine Sea label easier to see, which Filipino officials praised and China's Foreign Ministry criticized.

  Even Washington, D.C. is disputed ground. Surveyors placed boundary stones every mile in 1791 and 1792, and many survive. Google Maps draws the city line along the centerline of Western, Eastern and Southern Avenues rather than through the stones. That creates trouble for emergency services, trash pickup and road maintenance.

  China requires its own rules. To show Chinese map data legally, Google must partner with a local provider, and since 2006 that partner has been AutoNavi. China's State Council mandates the GCJ-02 coordinate system, which is offset from the WGS-84 system used in most of the world. google.cn/maps uses GCJ-02 for street maps and satellite imagery. google.com/maps uses it for streets but WGS-84 for satellite images, producing the so-called China GPS shift problem. On google.cn, the border with India and Pakistan has no dotted lines, and Indian highways end abruptly at the Chinese claim line.

  Other countries supply data too. Street maps in Japan are leased from Zenrin, and Russian ones from Geocentre Consulting and Tele Atlas. Google replaced Tele Atlas as its main US supplier in October 2009. Security concerns also limit what appears. In 2005 the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation worried about terrorists studying the Lucas Heights reactor from satellite images, though the federal government did not back the complaint. Google had already colored over areas such as the White House rooftop.

  South Korea shows how hard these bargains can be. In 2016 the government offered conditional access to its geographic database, but Google declined because it would have to degrade imagery around sensitive sites. In February 2026, South Korea allowed Google to export map data at 1:5,000 scale under security conditions, after earlier attempts in 2007-2016 and 2025.

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