How Google Maps Caused An Accidental Invasion [Oops]

Recently a Nicaraguan military commander invaded a Costa Rican territory and ordered troops to take down a Costa Rican flag and replace it with Nicaragua’s. He went through all this trouble due to an error on Google Maps .

A Nicaraguan military commander recently invaded Costa Rican territory, and ordered troops to take down a Costa Rican flag and replace it with Nicaragua’s. Was this the work of a brash commander, going rogue on his superiors? A new policy of Nicaraguan imperialism? Neither. The incident was brought on by an error in Google Maps.

SearchEngineLand translates the small print from La Nación, Costa Rica’s largest newspaper, which reported that commander Eden Pastora blamed the incursion on a misleading border on Google Maps that was off by some 3000 meters.

La Nación points to a disparity between the borders on Bing and Google. We’ve highlighted the realm in question:

A Google spokesperson was unsure what caused the mapping error. Whatever the answer, this may play into Bing’s next marketing strategy: Bing, the hunt engine that doesn’t cause international disputes.

You may blame the Nicaraguan military for using Google Maps – which, for all its usefulness in lifestyle, is a relatively imprecise tool for official exercises near borders. Nonetheless it’s been little more than three years since the British Navy had an identical problem, straying into Iranian waters unintentionally (Iran being way more dangerous than Costa Rica, which doesn’t also have a full-time military) and blaming its military-grade GPS equipment for the error. A month before that, the Swiss military blundered into Lichtenstein on a training exercise – because, they said, it was dark. That, at the very least, was one border crossing Google Maps may have prevented.

[Photo by Alex Steffler ]

Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the longer term of commercial.

Source

This post is tagged: commercial source, costa rican flag, gps equipment, international disputes, marketing strategy, military commander, swiss military