Moogle Gaps, for when you want to be misdirected. TrendWatching: “Whipped up by two Australian ex-Droga5 creatives, Paul Meates and Henry Kimber, Moogle Gaps is an anti-wayfinder. Users input their navigational query as they normally would, but instead of the most efficient route from A to B, the app offers misdirections — or as its builders put it, ‘a way to get lost, visit a bar that‘s not local, or go to a restaurant where no one knows you.’” [Tara Calishain]
Tag: Google Maps
How Google Maps Disappears Restaurants from Search Results
For the Guardian’s “It’s Complicated” feature, Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks at how great restaurants end up being invisible when you search for a place to eat on Google Maps. He talks with data scientist Lauren Leek, whose London Food Map tries to surface restaurants that, according to a machine learning model, should have a higher rating than they do. Lauren points to the Google’s ranking system’s reliance in part on “prominence”—a factor that bestows cumulative advantage on already-visible locations.
Minnesota’s Unmappable City
The wealthy enclave of North Oaks, Minnesota got itself removed from Google Maps Street View 2008 and has stayed invisible to the service since then, thanks to the fact that the entire city of 5,272 residents, a former gated community, is private property—the property lines end at the middle of the street, so there is no public property per se, and driving the streets is considered trespassing.
Chris Parr decided to get North Oaks onto Street View anyway. Taking advantage of the fact that property rights don’t extend into the airspace above the property, he got a drone licence, collected some aerial imagery, and uploaded said imagery to Street View. Where it lasted for approximately three whole days before it was taken down, because it’s not like Chris was going to succeed where Google failed. As the 404 Media report notes: “Parr’s experiment and documentary raises questions, of course, about who gets to have privacy in America. A wealthy enclave has set up the legal and surveillance infrastructure to be able to prevent being mapped. The rest of us, meanwhile, are subject to all sorts of surveillance by our neighbors and law enforcement.” (See, for example, the cameras at every entry road enforcing North Oaks’ privacy.)
To be clear, this is specifically about Street View (and Apple’s Look Around, same deal). North Oaks is on the map on every platform. It’s not blurred in satellite imagery. It’s not a naval base or a nuclear facility, just an immensely privileged neighbourhood that wants to keep even the virtual riff-raff away.
Google Maps AI Updates: Ask Maps, Immersive Navigation
Google just announced a couple of fairly major Gemini AI-powered updates to Google Maps. Ask Maps is a a chatbot that produces personalized responses to questions—essentially an intermediary that sifts the data so you don’t have to, taking into consideration your known preferences (with all that entails: not necessarily good). Immersive Navigation is a 3D mode full of suggestions:
When it’s helpful, Maps will highlight critical road details like lanes, crosswalks, traffic lights, and stop signs to help you make that turn or merge confidently. This spatial understanding of your route is made possible with help from Gemini models, which analyze fresh, real world imagery from Street View and aerial photos to give you an accurate view of things along your route, like landmarks and medians.
Includes voice guidance in more natural language and explaining the pros and cons of alternate routes. All of which requires that the underlying map data be accurate and up to date. We’ve already seen what happens when people blindly follow GPS/satnav driving directions that are in error or out of date; if anything people have proven to be more even credulous with AI chatbots. So we’ll see how this goes.
Google Maps Granted Access to South Korea’s Map Data, with Conditions
Reuters: “South Korea will soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps doesn’t work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers.” Prior to this decision Google Maps had to use lower-resolution map data in South Korea because it was forbidden from storing South Korea’s high-resolution data on its own servers outside the country. Google will have to abide by certain restrictions, including blurring military and other sensitive facilities and disallowing lat/long coordinates on South Korean territory—South Korea really doesn’t want Google Maps to be used by a military adversary. [Tara Calishain]
Previously: South Korea Deciding Whether to Grant Google and Apple Access to Domestic Map Data.
South Korea Deciding Whether to Grant Google and Apple Access to Domestic Map Data
TechCrunch: “South Korea is nearing a decision on whether to allow Google and Apple to export high-resolution geographic map data to servers outside the country. The detailed maps, which use a 1:5,000 scale, would show streets, buildings, and alleyways in far greater detail than currently available on these platforms. However, several regulatory and security hurdles remain unresolved.” South Korea, which is technically still at war with North Korea, restricts data from the National Geographic Information Institute from being used outside the country, and has denied previous requests from both Google and Apple; Google, which stores its map data outside South Korea, has hitherto had to make use of less-detailed, lower-resolution data.
The Unofficial Street View Economy
Back in September 2024, Phil Edwards explored the hidden, unofficial economy Google Street View, where third parties spend money and resources uploading 360-degree imagery to promote a region or tourist attraction or local business or whatever, in this 22½-minute YouTube video.
Some Asian Updates to Online Maps
Google has announced that Street View imagery is now available for Nepal.
Meanwhile, Apple observers are reporting that cycling directions are rolling out for Hong Kong and Taiwan in Apple Maps (AppleInsider, MacRumors).
Update, 22 Aug: And Singapore gets the Detailed City Maps treatment in Apple Maps.
Some Minor Updates to Apple and Google Maps
In what seems like a relatively minor update, Apple Maps will learn your preferred routes and remember visited places as of iOS 26, coming this fall. Meanwhile, Google Maps has announced some sustainable travel updates: recommending alternatives to driving, cycling route details, fuel-efficient routing, and marking low-emissions zones in Europe.
Online Maps Updates, Late March 2025 Edition
An updated disclosure on Apple’s website spotted by 9to5Mac says that imagery collected in support of the Look Around feature of Apple Maps (Apple’s Street View equivalent) will also be used to train Apple’s generative AI. Meanwhile, a recent Apple Maps glitch displayed baggage claims at ridiculously high zooms, and a Google Maps glitch deleted Timeline data for some users.
Google Maps Has a Lot of User-Contributed Imagery in the Wrong Places
Geography Now was poking around northern Chad in Google Maps and came across a bunch of user-contributed 360-degree images of business interiors that had nothing to do with Chad: they were associated with businesses in Brazil, India, Hungary and so forth. I’m inclined to think these were geocoding glitches or user errors, since the Gulf of Guinea (home of Null Island) seems to have a particularly bountiful crop of them, but I’m spotting shop and schoolroom interiors in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean too.
Google Maps: Rounded Corners and Live Updates
When not getting into trouble over which name of a certain international body of water to show to which users, Google continues to turn out smaller updates around the corners of their map services. No seriously, the corners: they’re more rounded in the Google Maps app now. Also, Google Maps supports Android’s Live Updates, viz., your ETA shows up in the status bar (which I admit is neat).
A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup
Two long reads on Apple, Google and the Gulf of America nonsense. Miguel García looks the history of places with multiple names, and how Google Maps in particular has handled them, using the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin, Monte Cervino) as an uncontentious example. John Gruber, whose Daring Fireball blog has covered the Apple side of the tech world for more than two decades, has a bracing, no-punches-pulled take that covers the utter lunacy of the name change, Google’s and Apple’s history of obeisance to autocratic regimes and the excessive compliance involved in showing “Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)” to the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, even Fox News and Newsmax are among the 40 news organizations who’ve signed on to a White House Correspondents Association letter protesting the White House’s blacklisting of the Associated Press for refusing to comply with the “Gulf of America” edict.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance.
‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance
Compliance
While it was reported that Apple would comply with the “Gulf of America” renaming, I wasn’t sure what Apple would do outside the U.S.; now it appears that it will follow Google’s lead and show both names. Above is what I see in Canada; I wonder what Apple is showing Mexican users.
Meanwhile, Axios, citing its mainly U.S. audience, is adopting “Gulf of America” (HuffPost, The Hill, The Wrap) but had this to say about the White House blacklisting the Associated Press: “At the same time, the government should never dictate how any news organization makes editorial decisions. The AP and all news organizations should be free to report as they see fit. This is a bedrock of a free press and durable democracy.”
Resistance
The name change is broadly unpopular and people are finding ways to resist it. If “Gulf of America” becomes a way to signal compliance with the regime, it looks like “Gulf of Mexico,” even on a t-shirt (which I’ve seen already), will signal noncompliance.
Bryce Bostwick has released a Chrome extension that restores “Gulf of Mexico” to Google Maps. As he says, “There are a lot of scary executive orders being issued right now. This is not one of the most important ones. But it might be the easiest to defy.” This apparently took some reverse engineering, as he explains in a 24-minute video.
MapQuest—remember MapQuest?—has not as yet complied with the Trump executive order; in fact, they’ve decided to have some fun with it, with a tongue-in-cheek tool that allows you to rename the Gulf yourself.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?
Google and the Gulf
Three weeks to the day after Trump’s executive order directing that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed Gulf of America, the new name now appears on Google Maps for U.S. users; outside the U.S. and Mexico, users see both names. A blog post by Google outlines who will see what where.
Andrew Middleton notes that review by the Board on Geographic Names “usually takes a while. Two weeks is a freaking speed run. The Board is completely nuts if they think it’s ok to approve a name that no one even heard of before last month.”
More coverage at BBC News, CNN, TechCrunch and The Verge.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’.