Mischievous Maps II

The case of multiple versions of Google Maps was covered by me a few days ago with regards to the depiction of Kashmir in the Indian sub-continent. What Google has been doing is showing different maps to different countries according to what the government and people there demand... regardless of ground realities. I had also mentioned how there was a political and media fuss a couple of years ago against Google in India for precisely this reason. Today, however, it seems the issue has come back (as reported in the media). Only this time its not Kashmir in focus, but rather Arunachal Pradesh (an eastern state of India claimed by China).

Now we have seen for years that Arunachal Pradesh has been marked as disputed (with the dotted lines) in western maps. While China might claim it... it is a de-facto part of India. There is no 'occupied territory' and the Chinese claim is based on old and historic reasons. Now as with Kashmir, Google has found a great way to keep everyone (Indians and Chinese in this case) happy. BURY ALL THEIR HEADS IN SAND. What they can't see couldn't possibly bother them... eh Google? Below is what Indians see in Google Maps...

Arunachal Pradesh & Aksai Chin in Google Maps - India

And this is what the Chinese see...

No Arunachal Pradesh & no Aksai Chin In Google Maps - China

Now isn't this just lovely! What could be better? Well... what the western world gets to see ofcourse!

Arunachal Pradesh & Aksai Chin shown disputed in Google Maps - US

As you can see, the third map is the closest to ground realities barring of course Arunachal Pradesh (and some parts of Uttrakhand). There is really no reason to show that as a dotted boundary and leave other more 'internationally' disputed territories like Tibet totally inside China. The rules should be the same for everyone. Like Tibet is under de-facto Chinese control so is Arunachal Pradesh under Indian. Infact... India didn't 'capture' Arunachal Pradesh by military action either. In the case of Aksai Chin, China did move faster to claim and subsequently incorporate it within its territory and all India could do was complain about it being a part of Ladakh.

Like I said in the last related post, Google should just keep things levelled globally. Use the same version of maps everywhere! Depicting ground realities! Regardless of the fact that some of our parliamentarians might raise objections and regardless of how China might want to arm twist them... middle ground can be found (as demonstrated by the continued re-direction of Google.cn to Google's Hong Kong website).

The point is that currently both Google Maps India and Google Maps China are completely inaccurate! Patriotically satisfying sure... but inaccurate. I'd rather see the dotted lines and disputed territories and be aware of them rather than be shown a sand boxed and unrealistic depiction that is just misleading.

[Update] It seems the issue has gained traction in the main stream media. Here is a clip of an NDTV discussion of the issue with Sachin Pilot (Member of Parliament) on the course of action available to the Indian Government regarding all this.

While I agree its sort-of deceitful, I don't think India can or should force Google to show the 'Indian version' of the map globally. I think a modified version of the Google.com map (Arunachal Pradesh & parts of Uttarakhand inside India) should be put up instead... leaving the disputed parts of Kashmir marked as disputed. That would be more accurate for students and others.

Mischievous Maps

Ok so this is not really that big a deal and something that I noticed a few weeks ago but is still a bit interesting... Observe the image below and see if you notice something odd...

The map of India is complete! Disputed territories are not shown. Why is this a big deal? Its not! Its just that before they were clearly marked... Now this is the 'Photos' app in iOS 4 which uses Google Maps... So I went to Google Maps India and looked up the subcontinent... This is what came up...

Full India... Entire Kashmir shown within India... Thats great then isn't it?! Well... till about the time you go to the US or the UK based Google Maps sites... And the following is what you see...

Google Maps US

Google Maps UK

Woops! Thats different! Thats what struck me as odd a few days ago... I had always seen the version of Maps on my phone and the web that showed the disputed areas as they exist in reality. The reason for that is that I was accessing the UK version being based in London and always presumed that Google Maps was uniform globally though hosted at various places and tweaked  for local 'flavour' sometimes. I guess I was wrong. I do remember there being protests or complaints about this a few years ago... but I didn't know that a 'different' version had been 'gifted' to us to keep us happy.

And Google is not the only one... Microsoft Bing duplicated the same effort to safeguard our flimsy egos...

Bing Maps India

Bing Maps US

The two places where I found uniformity was Yahoo! Maps (yes, such a thing exists) and Google Earth.

Yahoo! Maps

Google Earth on a computer

Google Earth on phone

Overall it is not out of the ordinary for something like this to happen. But I'm a bit vary of duplicity. This is NOT keeping things levelled globally (a challenging task no doubt but do-able in this case).  Did we really need an inaccurate (though official government line following) version of Maps? Is it right or fair that an Indian student should go online for reference and get a biased, un-realistic version? Are we not capable enough as a nation to accept ground realities and see them as they exist?

Interestingly, Google Pakistan does not have a local Maps version and uses the US version which shows them exactly what they want to see! :-p

[Update] Almost a month after this post, sections of the Indian media also caught on to the same thing (no... sadly NOT because of this post) and that aspect of the story has been covered here.