Richard Martin Blog: Google Earth’s Uncertainty Principle

The Washington Monthly, normally not a bastion of tech journalism, has a terrific story by United Arab Emirates-based American writer John Gravois on the trouble Google has run into because of the ambiguous plane-names on Google Earth maps. Headlined “The Agnostic Cartographer," the story reports that, in places as distant as the disputed border of China (Tibet, actually) and India, in the Himalayas, the likewise disputed border of Cambodia and Thailand, and the  Persian Gulf – called by some Arab nationalists the “Arabian Gulf" – locals have expressed outrage at Google’s policy of not choosing sides in contentious border or place-name disputes.

“If different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s then-director of public policy (now the U.S. deputy chief technology officer), in a statement responding to an online petition (signed by hundreds of thousands of Iranians) demanding the reference to the Arabian Gulf be deleted from Google Earth.

The story’s money graf: “Unpopular as it may be, such uncertainty has become a central dynamic of life on the Internet. The erosion of traditional authority is followed quickly by anxiety over its absence, from Google to Wikipedia to the lesser-known precincts of PetitionOnline … The digital culture that encourages the inclusion of multiple names for a single feature on a map is the same digital culture that has encouraged hundreds of thousands of Iranians to voice their discontent. The very medium incites nationalism, yet also frustrates it."