The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.
Google Map Maker suspended after it was used to draw Android urinating on Apple logo
Service has been experiencing ‘escalated attacks to spam Google Maps’, culminating in the high-profile peeing vandalism
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Google has pulled the tool that allowed users to make amendments to its Maps service, in the wake of a huge prank that saw a user draw the Android logo urinating onto the Apple one.
Editing the maps at all is now disabled until the company improves the moderation system, the company said. That is likely to “take longer than a few days”, it said.
The peeing prank was the end result of “escalated attacks to spam Google Maps over the past few months”, the company said.
“The most recent incident was particularly troubling and unfortunate - a strong user in our community chose to go and create a large scale prank on the Map,” wrote Google employee Pavithra Kanakarajan on the company’s product forums.
After the urination prank, the site made it so that all edits had to be manually reviewed. But Google said that process was taking too long and was contributing to a big backlog of edits that meant additions took a long time to appear on the site.
“Given the current state of the system, we have come to the conclusion that it is not fair to any of our users to let them continue to spend time editing,” wrote Kanakarajan. “Every edit you make is essentially going to a backlog that is growing very fast.
“We believe that it is more fair to only say that if we do not have the capacity to review edits at roughly the rate they come in, we have to take a pause.”
Google’s user-generated mapping data is a large part of what has made it so successful and well-used. Since users can add new businesses and plans as soon as they are found, the maps are kept up to date quicker than those generated by internal teams.
But the edits seemed to have been made in protest at Google's policy for edits to its maps. Another huge edit to the east of the Pakistani site of the urinating Android explicitly called out the company's policy for reviewing updates.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments