Remember when an imagery of an Android mascot urinating on Apple’s logo appeared on Google Maps? It was pretty funny and entertaining when it was first discovered, but for Google, the case is anything but fun. After some investigations, the company found that it was a user-created prank submitted through the company’s own Map Maker service and hence, they are suspending it, for now at least.
According to Pavihra Kanakarajan on behalf of Google Map Maker team, Map Maker will temporarily be unavailable effective today, 12 May 2015. The company initially wanted to just turn off auto-approval and user moderation however, that means that they’ll have to manually review all edits submitted by users around the world. This would take a couple of days and create a huge backlog, and edits could take a long time to get published.
Hence, starting today, Google has no choice but to suspend the entire Map Maker service until they have figured a solution. This is only a temporary action, and they wish to overcome it as soon as possible.
“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. 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.” – Pavithra Kanakarajan on behalf of Google Map Maker team.
