The Fincancial Times reports (last item of 3) that Google has aroused anger in China for tinkering with the map to call Taiwan Taiwan after Taiwan complained. Quoting at length as this article is liable to disappear:

“This has drawn rage from Chinese officials and the people” said Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, which added that the California-based company had bowed “under pressure of extremists in Taiwan’s pan-Green camp”.

…

If Google has truly awakened the wrath of the Chinese dragon it can expect a whole arsenal of countermeasures such as increased red tape, fines and even a complete shutdown – all of which have been used in the past against tech firms who won’t toe the line.

Most US companies are careful to abide by China’s rules with Microsoft even drawing criticism for helping the Chinese authorities restrict free speech.

Google could also face a boycott from China’s vast numbers of internet users at a time when national pride is on the rise.

So who needs who more? Undoubtedly Google wants/needs access to the Chinese market, while the Chinese government is likely not at all keen on the individual empowerment Google’s “products” tend to foster. This argues in favor of Google eventually caving in and toeing the line regarding how one “officially” treats Taiwan, in return for unimpeded access to the mainland. But then Google has also promised to do no evil, and a change back to calling Taiwan China would be such an obvious piece of brown-nosing that I don’t think most Google employees could stomach it. In the end, Google should stay on the side of those most likely to share its core beliefs — right now, that’d be the Taiwanese.

Nature‘s Declan Butler has been covering the spread of the avian flu for months. In August, he set up a network link that mapped locations of outbreaks to Google Earth, with links to corrresponding news articles and information. He’s now updated the link and posted it to fluwiki.

Dear Stefan,

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My website is the local community of GE users in Thailand. I send this mail to you because I want to promote one of my members’ 3D Model of Thai Temple to the GE user around the world.

It’s one of our famous temple “Wat Arun”. I also attached the file with this mail. I think it’s very good example for the integration between east and west, culture and technology, especially on GE where the offline and online meet.

Hope that you will excite when you see this kmz [988 KB] as same as I was.

Best Regards,

Max

Global Connection (NASA + Google + National Geographic + Carnegie Mellon) has announced new high-res Google Earth overlays for quake-affected areas in Pakistan, with more slated to appear later today. Kathryn Cramer has some screenshots.

Kathryn Cramer writes that she was interviewed for a BBC The World Tech Report podcast, and she calls it “a must-listen for Google Earth enthusiasts” because the show has many interesting things to say about the Global Connection collaboration between Google, NASA and National Geographic. Available online (episode #55, it’s already in the feed, though not in the archives yet).

And while we’re on the topic (see previous post), The Australian, a real newspaper, actually interviewed actual Indian military personnel (unlike the Times of India) and manages to get quotes such as these:

“I don’t think it poses a security threat,” C. Uday Bhaskar, the deputy head of New Delhi military think tank the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses said.

…

An Indian navy source said the pictures in themselves “do not pose a serious threat to security”.

Another army officer, who wished to remain unidentified, agreed.

“Everyone knows where the (Indian) president’s palace is, everyone knows how many rooms it has – these details are there in school books. As for the location, there is no mystery about that either.”

The officer noted that satellite imagery is not a foolproof tool, and cited the US’ failure to detect preparations for India’s May 1998 nuclear tests.

What’s interesting is another case discussed in the article — when India moved tanks closer to the Pakistani border during the 2002 escalation, the US did pick this up via their satellites, and “asked” India about it. This is precisely the kind of intelligence that Google does not provide, however — Google Earth’s priority is showing images taken when skies are clear, not when tanks are moving. And as we’ve learned from the challenges of acquiring fresh images post-Pakistan earthquake, clear skies are not nearly as prevalent as we think, and thus images are refreshed at best intermittently.

It’s not my idea to harp on about the more nationalistic elements in India and their problems with the revelatory powers of Google Earth. But wherever Times of India (ToI) goes, Ogle Earth will follow.

In their most recent article on Google Earth, they revisit a topic first raised on Google Groups a few weeks after Google Earth was released: Kashmir:

ToI: “Google’s googly: PoK is shown as part of Pakistan!”

One blogger, arZan, can’t get enough of this outrage (oh the exclamation marks!) and delivers the incriminating evidence as screenshots — on which you can see that Google Earth uses the Line of Control as the de facto border between India and Pakistan across Kashmir.

if you’re not going to show the contours of the disputed area, and don’t want too take sides between India and Pakistan, than this is indeed the most correct approach to take, as it depicts the situation on the ground. If disputed areas are to be shown, then the entire Kasmir entity should drawn separately, both on Pakistan and India’s side. National Geographic does this, though it additionally marks the area as disputed. That might not sit well with ToI and the above blogger, but that’s how international maps of record tend to show it.

Google Earth’s borders feature turns on rudimentary yellow lines. It need not be thus forever. Perhaps a collaboration with National Geographic on this front could produce a borders layer with more nuanced context. Such a layer would also inure Google from further nationalist anklebiting — Google could then just argue that nobody bothered to complain about National Geographic’s maps, which are easily the ones with the most gravitas internationally. I’d be all in favor of outsourcing border decisions to that venerable institution, whose maps are the very model of evenhandedness.

And of course, ToI and the blogger in question are always free to make their own layers with borders, through which they can see themselves in control of as much territory as they wish.