Had you been paying attention, you would know that yesterday I wrote a post on the Google Buzz lawsuit, which lead to an amusing little Easter egg that’s now hidden in Google Maps. You can read that now. I’ll wait here.
Excellent. Now onto this post, to wit, Google Maps has popped up in my life once more, in the form of an odd little news story out of Central America. It’s very fortunate that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. are no longer using Central American nations as proxy armies to duke out the Cold War any longer because a recent foray by the Nicaraguan military into Costa Rica may have led to a major skirmish. Instead, the president of Costa Rica urged that her countrypeople remain “calm and firm,” reports CNN in the face of what amounts to an invasion.
This week a Nicaraguan detachment wandered into a disputed zone along the San Juan River, which divides the two countries. The soldiers took down the Costa Rican flag, replaced it with a Nicaraguan flag and, in what is probably the friendliest thing one can do after invading a sovereign nation, began cleaning up the river.
As news of the invasion spread, the Nicaraguan commander was pressed to explain why he’d wandered into the zone and set up encampment. It was Google Maps, he explained. The map he was using clearly showed that the Nicaraguan border included this 3,000-meter stretch of land past the San Juan River. The thing is, had he been using Bing Maps, which show the correct borders, as do the official maps used by both Costa Rica (which doesn’t have an army) and Nicaragua (which does).
The justification of the commander who undertook the adventure doesn’t hold any water, but Search Engine Land points out that this isnt’ the first time Google Maps borders have been called into question. Apparently the Cambodian government isn’t happy with what it views as a liberal hand toward its shared border with Thailand.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with Google becoming pretty much an independent global entity, now it’s realized enough power that it is a decider of geopolitical land allotment. Swell.
Hey, you! Said, check out SYSK on Twitter and Facebook.
Filed under: Stuff You Should Know Tagged: Central America, cold war, geopolitics, Google, Latin America
