A few months ago I noticed something. I could no longer find my apartment address in Google Maps. I was attempting to get directions from my apartment to another location and Google Maps just could not find it. For 3 years I lived at that apartment and never has Google Maps not been able to find it. I thought I was just going insane or something or that I was mistyping it. Live Maps was still able to find the address. It didn't matter if I put in the address on file with USPS or the way I was used to writing it out. Nothing.
Now this morning I found something else out. I was skimming the Google Blog and came across this post about Street View. The areas listed blanketed my home town so I decided to see if they had street views available. So I typed in my parents' address and something even stranger popped up. First, the address it corrected to was for a different city. Now, my parents' address does not actually exist in the USPS database. In fact, the whole town, population of about 800, has PO Box addresses only in the USPS database. Also the mail happens to come through this other town that Google Maps decided to change the address to. However, this would never fly as an address to get mail delivered. Never has Google Maps had a problem finding my parents' house. And it never decided to change it to something else.
The second thing I noticed was that the roads in my home town were very off the mark. The street that my folks live on shows a hook at the end of the street. I've traveled that street by foot, bike and car tens of thousands of times. Never once have I noticed a hook in the street. We're talking a 45 degree change in direction. Kind of hard to miss. The street in reality is completely straight. It also shows the south end of the street extending further than it actually does and connecting to another court. This is not possible as it would cut through houses. Our street is not the only one messed up. My home town is nearly grid-like and Google Maps shows the streets angling in ways that it just does not. Many of these streets have existed this way for 80+ years. How can a mapping system be so completely wrong?
So I hopped over to Live Maps and sure enough, I found both my apartment address and my parents' address and my home town's street layout is correct.
I took a look at the caption on the bottom of the screen and noticed that the provider for Google Maps is Tele Atlas. I don't recall for certain, but this may not be who has been the provider for Google Maps over the past couple years. If this is the case, Google, I implore you, drop Tele Atlas because their data is just blatantly wrong!
I don't feel as though I can trust Google Maps at this point so, for the time being at least, I will be switching to Live Maps until Google can win my trust again. And I will be encouraging others I know to do the same. I do not want them getting lost because of Google's directions or ending up in a bad neighborhood because of it. Kind of dramatic, yes. But when your mapping system suddenly loses your home address or starts making your home town look like a Picasso painting, are you really going to stick around?
