I guess a bit of global graffiti wasn t enough to scare Google to end Map Maker, its crowdsourcing editing tool that allows users to make changes to Google Maps.
Google not only plans to reopen Map Maker, but says it is ceding even more power to the mappers, The Guardian reports.
As we wrote about in May, Google shut down the tool shortly after the image of an Android robot was spotted peeing on the Apple logo on Google Maps. It had been added using Map Maker to the map near the Pakistani city of Rawlpindi.
At the time of the shutdown, Google said that Map Maker had been subject to escalated attacks to spam Google Maps.
Now Map Maker will begin opening in stages starting in August.
In a blog post, Pavithra Kanakarajan, product manager of Google Map Maker, said Google will select mappers in each region who will be regional leads and who will oversee the edits made in their region. Google operators will only occasionally moderate these edits, she said.
Isn t this inviting more trouble?
The community devoted to editing Google Maps actually offers the best response to digital vandalism, Kanakarajan wrote:
Every time we observed someone attempting to vandalize the map, many of you acted quickly to remove the offending feature and demonstrated real ownership for maps within your region. We have come to the conclusion that of all the defenses available to keeping our maps clean, the interest of a community of well-intentioned users, is among the most reliable and fast.
Above: The Google logo. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)
