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OpenStreetMap Reports Data Vandalism From Google-Owned IPs
An anonymous reader writes "Following reports of misconduct by Google employees in Kenya and India, It has been found that Google IP addresses have been responsible for deliberate vandalism of OpenStreetMap data. While it is unlikely that this was a deliberate or coordinated attack by Google HQ on the competition, multiple such reports does raise the question of whether or not Google has become too big to effectively enforce its 'Don't be evil' philosophy across its massive organization."
It's starting to sound like Google needs to reign in their over-eager foreign subsidiaries.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Disconcerting. What next now, Norton producing viruses?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
All the companies that I used to love are doing shit these days. What's happening?
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
Google has become too big to effectively enforce it's 'Do no evil' philosophy across its massive organization.
It's all coming from one branch.
Google karma points are are 1/5th the cost in Kenya and India, but Indian workers come back as ...
These stories are so suspicious, partly because all the accounts commetning seem to be registered at roughly the same time. Is there a reference from OSM?
There's really no money in defacing OpenStreetMaps. With the admitted contracting of an Anti-Google campaign by FaceBook at least, I wouldn't put this past their competition.
OpenStreetMap is a very good project, it is basically the Wikipedia of Maps. Wikipedia even links to OpenStreetMap when you look up co-oridnates for articles such as cities. It can also be more up-to date in areas that are having heavy construction. For example a major new bypass road was built in my city and it was added to OpenStreetMap the day it opened. Google maps still doesn't have it even a year later.
Support OpenStreetmap, I hope they do a SOPA blackout to show how useful they are in places where Google Maps isn't as good.
On the same blogpost,
Tom Hughes said...
As the person who (in my role as an OpenStreetMap system administrator) first discovered this `incident' let me start by saying that I consider this post to be grossly irresponsible and wholly inappropriate.
The board of OSMF are making mountains out of tiny pimples here. It seems that they want this to be some sort of organised corporate malfeasance on the part of Google which is why they have tried to link it to the recent Mocality incident where there was indeed clear evidence of such behaviour.
The reality in this case is that there is no evidence that this is any different to the numerous other incidents we get all the time where users either accidentally or deliberately make bogus edits. The only difference in this case is that there happen to be two accounts (though we do not know if that is two people) and the user or users involved happen to (presumably) work for Google.
That is the sum total of what we know, and on the back of that, and without approaching Google at all, two leading board members have decided to reveal personal information about two of our users.
It seems to me that this is just an attempt to get some cheap publicity by trying to like the project to the Mocality incident, and I cannot support such behaviour.
The larger organizations get, the harder it becomes to enforce whatsoever organization-wide. They acquire their own dynamics; one of the most important of that self-perpetuating dynamical processes & characteristics is mediocrity. Doing bad things, or at least a readiness in some individuals to do them, is part of that mediocrity. It is similar to what made many IBM products almost too complex to use, and an ungovernable mastodont out of, say, Bell and IBM, as corporations. I personally noticed the same thing at Airbus.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Ok, so some disgruntled employees of Google have been caught munging and corrupting data intentionally.
That's a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
But it misses the most important question to me: WHY would someone do this?
To discredit Google, revenge on a "cruel" and "vicious" employer or manager?
To cause mayhem and accidents in India and elsewhere?
To make sure their favourite curry shop can't be found by others so they don't have to wait in line with the "stinking masses"?
What would POSSIBLY be the purpose of messing up street map data?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There's really no money in defacing OpenStreetMaps
I have adblock plus so I don't know, but can someone verify if maps.google.com has ads?
Damage to a competitor results in more ad impressions amongst people not smart enough to use an ad blocker, leads to real money...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
There's really no money in defacing OpenStreetMaps.
So a company that decided to try to make money off their maps has no interest in devaluing a competitor that doesn't charge anything for maps?
If it hadn't gotten attention, it would be very profitable to vandalize OpenStreetMaps, just have marketing use a line like 'most accurate' for Google's maps and point to some of your subtle damages on the open model when asked about that tag line. Even better if some third party discovers the errors and you can have a bundle of complaining blog posts from OSM users.
So... just for clarification, does an IP identify somebody? or not?
I'm fairly certain that when I visited the GooglePlex they had a publically accessible WIFI connection. Do those count as Google owned IPs?
Is OpenStreetMaps a credible competitor to Google Maps? I've only used their data for maps in the Caribbean where it is okay, but leaves a lot to be desire (which is reasonable since there is likely less of a crowd to source from). Is it better in the US?
raise the question of whether or not Google has become too big to effectively enforce it's 'Do no evil' philosophy across its massive organization.
Do not confuse a marketing slogan for a philosophy.
Disable adblock for a minute, and check it yourself. :)
They don't have the regular adword ads. They do have business listings in the map. Most of the business listings show up if you search for something like "pizza near 10011".
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I agree, I like the idea of OpenStreetMaps, but I'm not really sure that it's at the point where it can compete with Google Maps. Which is why if this article were true it would be so stupid. Or perhaps brilliant, sabotage the competition before anybody thinks they're competitive.
As others have pointed out, this seems to be a storm in a teacup. If it leads to more participation in OSM, however, it'll be a good thing. I recently installed the Navfree android app (free onboard maps GPS, there's an IOS version too), and noticed a number of small inaccuracies in my neighborhood. Correcting them was really pretty easy; the maps around me already seem pretty usable, and with a bit more tweaking will be as good as any of the commercial alternatives. When I had first looked at it a couple of years ago the maps around me were pretty dire, so they've come a long way. House numbering seems to be the big remaining issue for navigation system use.
I'm told that IP addresses are not identity.
IP addresses can be spoofed as can mac addresses.
Is this true?
Or maybe there are different rules when the Big Bad Google is involved?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Is Hollywood running a smear campaign? Did RIAA/MPAA execs order staffers to dig up as much dirt as they could against their new enemy? What is the involvement of Rupert Murdoch and his personal vendetta against the "Silicon Valley paymasters"?
Next on 60 minutes.
Google has open public WiFi available on many of its offices that you can pick up from across the street. You can't easily tell machines on those networks from internal machines.
Just pointing that out.
Seriously, why is it "unlikely that this was a deliberate or coordinated attack by Google HQ on the competition"
Just because Google's motto is "do no evil" they sure don't live up to it...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
They stalk you because you are loved.
But let's be honest, looking at your post history, one would expect you to insert a Google bash here.
Google's motto isn't "Do no evil", it's "Don't be evil". You can do as much evil actions as you want as long as you're doing them for a good cause (Google's success), then you aren't being evil.
Sadly, I'm an anon, so nobody will read this, BUT:
Google used to have a product called "Google Web Accelerator" which was, essentially, a Google proxy that operated similar to the idea behind Kindle Fire: Make the proxy crunch images and the like to make the browser work faster.
While using it, I noticed that IP reporting sites would all show that I was coming from Google in Mountain View, CA. ... who's to say that a savvy vandal simply isn't using GWA?
IP addressed do give out their identity, just not, usually, enough to narrow down to a person that actually performed the action. If it is part of a static block owned by someone, you know it is was used somewhere within their network (unless you suspect the IP was faked at the BGP level, and the attacker is skilled enough to perform it, and what was gained is significant enough). To narrow it down to the person that actually performed it, you would need the logs of all network activity, which associates network access with some sort of person identifying authentication. I dont think any one really does this, so there you go, you cannot identify the person, but you can identify the network.
You have no opinion on it, yet you came into the thread to... what, check if the first comment was an anonymous attack on you so you could defend your good name? Come off it - you were clearly up for another anti-Google rant and are just acting affronted now that you've been caught out ahead of time. How is this kind of shilling not illegal?
Sure there's money in defacing OSM –it lowers the quality of the competition, and increases the chance that people will pay to use google maps.
Basic Google API for commercial use costs $10.000/year. You can't get it for less no matter how little you use it. That said, i don't think Google tries to do any damage to OpenStreetMaps.
In a lot of areas, their data is way more accurate and detailed than google's, unfortunately, in a lot of areas, their data is significantly less complete.
Sorry, but "starting to" suggests Google's recent actions are somehow different or new. Google has been deliberately and willfully evil for years now. If memory serves, Google has revealed the names of Chinese dissidents in the past (single citation being used, though going back you do find more), and gleefully gave in to the Chinese government too many times to cite all of them, all in the name of a bit of dosh.
Why is ANY of this a surprise? Companies that have a great product, a great service, that lose focus on what their foundation is in favor of making money, will always do this, at least every instance I've seen. Even smaller companies. I'll use a local example; Here in the Boston area there is (or I should say "was") a great ice cream store named more or less for the neighborhood it was founded in. The ice cream was, to put it mildly, pure heaven. Even in the dead of winter people flocked to their locations, what they had was just that good. Over the years the quality has gone down considerably in direct proportion to how much the founder began making. Once he got some investment money from other parties, the bottom line became a bigger issue. Employees who had been with him from the first day he'd opened were fired because they looked "different" (it was a haven for artistic, counter culture people back in the 80s and to the mid 90s) and didn't fit in with his new "professional" look. The product they made became just sort of average. Walk into any chain ice cream store, and you'll get the same product. However their profits skyrocketed and they continue to do business not due to the ice cream, but the name.
Google has become no different. They own the market, and they know it. Rather than focus on doing what they do best, and NOT doing it in an evil way, they what... Release a browser, a (rather sad) OS, they see Facebook take off and using a page from Microsoft's playbook say "Why didn't WE think of that?" and come out with their own, much to the delight of dozens. Now Google is stooping to the same bush league dirty pool that other companies do.
Is anyone really surprised?
If Google is doing this, it's not good. However, when you think about it... If a map CAN be defaced, can it be reliable? Perhaps they need some sort of moderated change system. This system need not be heavily reliant on human oversight. But for something that need be authoritative, changes should be controlled.
Do No Evil? Every company does the opposite of their motto. Think Different? This Changes Everything? Your World Delivered? Think? Yeah, not really.
it replicates itself through advertising and marketing and stupid hosts. once it installs on some computer, it doesnt go away unless wipe the thing clean with a format.
i installed it once in 1996 or something. the shock was so great that i have never, ever used anything that was remotely affiliated with norton. what's more appalling is that, they have not changed their behavior since the passing 14 years.
Read radical news here
You started believing everything you read online without anything close to proof. It's not the companies that changed, it's your level of gullibility.
If Google Central come down hard on "their" Kenyan employees, or at least install mandatory checking on the machines that send via that IP address (their own hardware, so it's possible to check out IP addresses being spoofed) to find out definitely that their employees are at fault before sacking them for criminal acts, then this will be a storm in a teacup.
If they find someone spoofing the IP addresses and locating that entity, that will be 100x worse for them.
So this is definitely a manageable problem for Google: this act is criminal. You CAN sack your employees for committing a crime.
Slashdot not publish stories like: Apple sued for extortion, Microsoft licenses patents to LG for Android, Microsoft confirms UEFi fears and locks down ARM devices?
Why does every unconfirmed Google smear story by this "TechGuy" shill seems to be immediately published?
In Germany, OpenStreetMaps is *much* more complete than Google Maps with regards to actual mapping. Even small pedestrian paths, for example in the woods, are usually present, while Google Maps just shows a green blob. Car navigation is a different piece of cake, though, with lots of disconnected paths making OSM navigation off the main through roads an unpleasant endeavour.
In France, it's the other way around: for some villages, OpenStreetMaps only has the outline of the village and the main road, with all other details (including all other roads!) missing.
It's great in Europe. Major cities have fantastic detail, far better than Google maps -- footpaths, cycle paths, phone boxes, every bus stop, name/number of every building, etc. Last time I looked (2 years ago?) the place my parents live (small village in England) was just a couple of main roads, but since then someone has filled in the rest of the roads, and the public footpaths, electricity pylons, etc. Google still have "Xxx Road" instead of "Xxx Street" for the road my parents live on, which sometimes causes confusion for visitors. And Google is useless for walking or cycling directions, it's very car-centric.
(There is far more detail on the OSM which isn't shown on the normal map, random stuff like the voltage and gauge of an electric railway line, but also the number of cycle racks outside a building (good for the cycling map), or codes/URLs for bus stops to retrieve next-bus information (good for a public transport next-bus-near-me phone app.)
I have no opinion about this.
Really; so you can confirm you are not the anonymous submitter of it then?
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Just to be clear, you're criticizing the fact that you believe someone will post something well thought-out and sourced with links. The horror!
Notice how the very first post to this negative story on Google is a defensive, accusatory post intended to distract people from the story by turning everyone against anyone who will be critical of Google. You don't like the position someone will take on Google, and so that automatically means they're a troll and you get modded up? That's stupid.
The moderation system has broken down. My karma has suffered from "shill" accusations because I, too, have posted things critical of Google in the past and had this same anonymous person track all my posts. The new psychosis seems to be that you are not allowed to criticize anything Google-related or else anonymous accusers call you a shill, and enough moderators go along with it to filter you off the site.
... it's "Don't be evil".
Is it better in the US?
No. I've used their data in the past when I needed to sample data to demo web applications that would subsequently feed it into maps (i.e. it had to be real addresses.) The only area where they even had 1000 or so usable addresses was San Diego. The rest of their locations had significantly less data.
OSM is useful, but so far from complete it would be laughable for Google to consider them a threat.
Yesterday, it was too big to fail. Today it is too big to succeed. Everything is wrong and right and the moon, well, the moon is made of green cheese.
OSM and GMaps will only ever compete in certain areas of use. What makes OSM great is (for the time being) not its renderer(s) and certainly not its search but the free availability of the underlying data that allows uses way beyond a mere street map. What makes GMaps greats is certainly not the timeliness, accuracy and level of detail of their spatial data but the interconnection with any other information you can google. Which is exactly why I doubt that Google deliberately attacked OSM: People go to Google for the services, not for the map itself. OSM does no offer those services. So what would Google gain from a few minor vandalising edits?
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
What happened, you don't go to work before 7AM?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Incredibly there is lots of money in the Mapping, lots of income. Someone in Google probably saw OSM as a potential competitor and decided to do mischief. If you change the directions of one way streets that is dangerous. Especially if say Google was starting to use their map database to do not only directions but automobile autonomous control. Those kind of changes would sabotage anyone else's attempt at doing the same kind of project because the liability would be too high.
Bravo to whoever went in and knowingly changed essentially public map data. You have damaged Google's reputation to mightily and potentially killed some individuals that might have relied on that data in real life. We salute your intelligence, ethics, morals and good common sense, not to mention foresight and good long range planning for your company. You are a credit to all us IT folk and to your corporation. Let us know who you are so we can let the appropriate authorities recognize your contributions to society.
not ran by pro google people? Since they even say that google still has the "no evil" policy is just BS
They went into China for business and took part into privacy infringment of their users in streetview and what not!
They use opensource software, adjust and do not contribute back to the community (RPG license).
Please...... Google is just another company that would lvoe to become rich at your and other users it expense!
People got fired at google that did their job and people stayed that did not! I can continue for ages like this!
Search is supplying results these days I do not need and they say I do!
Please slashdot...... go get your head out of your ass and smell the sunshine instead of your own farts (Southpark)
Google has little, if any, financial interest in map data. They buy all of it from sources like NavTeq and GDI. I suspect Google could replace these sources with their own collection efforts - if they wanted to. It is a huge task and to do quality work takes a lot of effort. It would appear that Google would rather buy than build.
Now, if someone found NavTeq screwing with someone's map data I could understand. They have a huge financial interest (as in the whole company) in map data and being the primary vendor of routable map data for the US.
So, I can't imagine any purpose behind Google or Google's employees having anything to do with this intentionally.
I've only used it in the UK, France and Belgium, and in all of these places Google Maps is a joke in comparison. The level of detail on OSM is so much better that it astonishes me that anyone would use Google Maps. If OSM isn't any good in your locale and you have a phone with GPS, maybe you should think about contributing...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Shouldn't think of them as competitors. My neighborhood exists in Google Maps because I added it to OSM using the JOSM tool, tracing Yahoo satellite images (which was allowed at the time, no idea if it still is).
Google apparently consults the OSM data. The rule with OSM is you have to do it yourself, or use an open data set. So pretty much anyone can use it. Google used several of the major commercial data providers for a while, not sure if they own everything in-house at this point.
$10.00 a year? Sounds like a bargain!
PROTIP: The English-speaking world uses comma as the thousands separator, not a point. If you want to post on English-speaking forums, you should understand this.
An IP address does identify someone.
Let me put it to you this way.
An IP address is sort of like the phone number on a poster which reads, "CAT: must go. incontinence too much. free to good home. call xxx-xxx-xxxx before Valentine's Day if you want a live delivery."
It's someone's number.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
Sorry but isn't some Google bashing due here? And for that matter MS and FB don't figure here so why would you expect them to get mentioned? Predicting reasonable reactions doesn't make them trollish, just predictable.
Anyway if we wanted to know if this TechGuys is a MS/FB shill wouldn't it be enough to ask him: "Hey TechGuys, do you think MS/FB behave ethically?". Anything other than a negative would indicate such.
But... the future refused to change.
If an employee of an airline, or Walmart, Macy, McDonald's, Marriott's... misbehaves, every one need to know. Google is no exception. The company will have to clean up their acts with better training, better ethic standards for their employees.
By the way Firefox version 8's and 9's have been "calling home" to Google. If you are one Linux, turn on firewall logging for all out going packets, especially for port 443 (SSL), you will see continuous connections to google.com and 1e100.net -- even with Firefox sitting idle. Only puting Firefox in offline mode would these connections stop. Firefox is now one of Google's b!tches. I'm surprised no one call them out on this yet.
"Hey TechGuys, do you think MS/FB behave ethically?". Anything other than a negative would indicate such.
LOL! OK, you ask him, see if he answers.
They might get less vandalism if they limited data entry to Apps, not command line input.
Eg, most of our geo-data comes from apps. Its more trusted since its unpopular to spoof GPS in an app.
Jim Pruett, Director
WikiSPEEDia.org
App hooks to your cruise control.
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I look forward to the resulting Google defense that an IP address can easily be spoofed and does not equal a person (or company).
See Mr Judge, if Google says it the RIAA must be wrong.
You petulant little douchbag...
Depends on the area. Besides an individual can do a lot with them. Most of the things shown in Apple Valley, MN that aren't large bodies of water or roads were added by me. This includes buildings, places, parking lots, parking isles, fences, walls, smaller bodies of water, corrections to roads, land use, sports fields, schools, trails in the parks, power lines, water towers, park & rides, sub stations, etc. As others have mentioned there can be a lot more data given what people have tagged it with.
Time to offend someone
So I am not the only one who has noticed that. When I go on an OSM binge I notice a few days later that Google maps has magically updated with what I entered.
Time to offend someone
It's not the level of detail, it's other things like the lack of a satellite view and how Google Maps has translations of place names in China whereas OSM doesn't. Satellite view doesn't seem to be important until you find yourself trying to figure out where you're going and you realize that knowing what things look like roughly is a huge help.
IMHO, Google abandoned it's "Don't be evil" mantra long ago when they began evading taxes.
How is this kind of shilling not illegal?
Yeah, any criticism of Google can only be by a paid shill. Just fuck off. I am getting fed up with the shrill chorus of "shill! shill!" on slashdot everytime anyone criticises Google or Apple, or makes a comment about Microsoft that doesn't equate them with Satan
Also, I love how on slashdot everyone defends the absolute freedom of speech for neo-Nazis to dress themselves up in SS uniforms and call for racist genocide or whatever, but as soon as someone criticises poor little Google, that speech should be illegal.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm told that IP addresses are not identity.
IP addresses can be spoofed as can mac addresses.
Is this true?
Or maybe there are different rules when the Big Bad Google is involved?
IP addresses are not identity the same way cell phone numbers are not identity. HTH and HAND.
Sooner or later any large enough corporation is going to accidentally employ psychopaths into managerial positions.
The critical thing is that they identify them and remove them.
Looks like this might not be happening effectively at Google.
Maybe the OP was sensitive to Google blatantly copying OSM ways of entering data, specially in Africa.
I must say I indeed was shocked when reading, for instance, this relation:
http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/04/11/1635
Herve S.
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18/google_blames_contractors/
Two Google contractors are now ex-contractors, as one could have predicted.
lol
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Roger that.
I guess I'll get him at the next Google related article.
But... the future refused to change.