“Just five years since the release of Google Maps and Google Earth, the corporation may well be the worlds most important mapmaker. More than 600 million people around the world have downloaded Google Earth. As a testament to ambition, that number alone would be remarkable. But Google is also intent on upending our very notion of what a map is. Rather than produce one definitive map of the world, Google offers multiple interpretations of the earths geography. Sometimes, this takes the form of customized maps that cater to the beliefs of one nation or another. More often, though, Google is simply an agnostic cartographera peddler of place browsers that contain a multitude of views instead of univocal, authoritative, traditional maps. We work to provide as much discoverable information as possible so that users can make their own judgments about geopolitical disputes, writes Robert Boorstin, the director of Googles public policy team.”
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