The politics of Google Maps |
Soon after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Google and Apple disabled some key features of their popular maps services in the besieged country, including real-time vehicle and foot traffic data. The concern was that live insights into what streets or shops were busy would create a safety hazard for Ukrainian citizens, who might not have realized their smartphone locations and movements could be exploited by Russian forces.
This sort of data is collected in the aggregate by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. as people use their map apps for driving directions or to search for nearby restaurants and retailers. Such features normally offer huge convenience—users can get to a destination faster or look up when to avoid a crowded venue—but their temporary halt in Ukraine highlights the complexity tech companies face in digitally mapping a world where borders, and contests for outright sovereignty, are never quite settled.
When Google Maps launched nearly two decades ago, the premise sounded straightforward. In an understated one-paragraph announcement, then-product manager Bret Taylor (who, incidentally, later became Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer and is now Co-Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce.com Inc.) noted that maps can be “fun and useful” and that Google saw an opportunity “to simplify how to get from point A to point B.”
The reality of developing hyper-local digital cartography was a bit more complicated. For one, creating a successor to MapQuest required gobs location data (exponentially more so during the iPhone era) and introducing novel features such as 2007’s Street View, a panoramic mapping layer Google crafted with camera-strapped cars photographing basically every highway and alley on the planet. This data collection sparked privacy fears from South Korea to Germany, where much of the country is not accessible via Street View. Some areas such as Gaza even only have blurry satellite maps, likely due to security concerns.
Maps also raised a separate set of thorny questions: how to draw borders around countries and figuring out what to call them. In the early days of the product, Google Maps took heat when it referred to Taiwan as a “province of China.” In 2010, a disputed boundary line on Google Maps almost caused a conflict between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In 2014, Russia’s version of Google Maps controversially recognized Crimea as a Russian territory following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion there.
Google has said the company seeks to provide the “ground truth,” remain neutral and localize users’ experience, even if that means providing several or different identifiers depending on the mapped location—or your location. With Northern Ireland, for instance, Google Maps displays map labels for both “Derry” and “Londonderry” rather than taking a side in the flashpoint city of the Troubles. If you search the app from Pakistan or India, you’ll see different borders based on regional views of the dispute. Google and Apple have said they follow local laws, while Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, albeit a smaller industry player, has said it relies on guidance from international bodies such as the United Nations.
Of course, disputes over cartography have existed long before the internet, but with millions and millions of people depending on Apple and Google for precise location data, their maps have come to represent some kind of definitive truth, even though the reality is much messier—and inevitably subject to financial and geopolitical pressures. It's another weighty responsibility the world has essentially outsourced to Big Tech. Perhaps outside oversight or regulation could bring more consistency to online mapping systems, or maybe showing historical edits (akin to how content removal now shows up in corporate “transparency reports”) could make the process clearer. Until then, expect maps from Apple and Google to be unaccountably different from those developed by China's Baidu or Russia's Yandex.
Put another way, getting from point A to point B will never be that simple. —Austin Carr