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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
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.
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?
man this post has been up for 10 minutes already without some /.er correcting you on the correct use of the "question begs to be asked" .... you guys are slipping.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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'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.)
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.
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.