stuart test blog

I’m a little underwhelmed by the announcement that Google have released a localised version of Google Maps for NZ. Sure, it’s nice to be able to type a “.co.nz” address to get to the site, and maybe it will be helpful to look for a plumber in Wellington – but when are they going to release updated aerial photos in Wellington??

Here’s the house we lived in a year ago:
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=35+reuben+avenue…

We lived there for over two years and when we moved in the owners, had built a huge deck long before. Notice the lack of a deck in the photo? But the strange thing is, at some point in the past (can’t remember exactly when) I definitely visited Google Maps and saw the deck plus the neighbour’s deck which had only just been built about 2 years ago. So at some point, Google have switched providers of their aerial photos and have gone back in time to show outdated maps.

There are lots of other examples that I can find, but don’t have the time to link to them all here – so I’ll leave that up to you to explore. Feel free to post links here in the comments.

Please Google – get these updated.

(by the way – if you ever read this post, and you can see a deck out the back of our old house, it means that Google have finally updated their maps. Thanks Google in advance.)