Google Mapathon 2013 attracts investigation from Indian Police - Northern Voices Online

The search giant has said that it has responded to queries by agencies following controversy surrounding Google Mapathon 2013 By NVONews.Com Correspondent New Delhi: Ever since Google launched its map services, it has been embroiled in one or the other controversies in the country. Recently, a police investigation has been launched into a complaint filed by the Survey of India against the internet giant for starting a contest Mapathon. In the contest launched in the month of February, Google had invited its users to help "create better maps for India". This was to be done by adding information of their neighbourhoods. To make the project a thumping success, the Internet Giant had promised that top 1,000 mappers would receive prizes in the form of tablets, gift vouchers and Smartphones. Sensing trouble, the Survey of India, the national surveying and map-making body of the country, filed a complaint with the Delhi police accusing Google of violating India's national map policy. However this is not for the first time that the internet giant has ran into trouble with the country's legal system. In 2011, Google's much hyped Street View program was stopped following the government's orders after it raised similar security concerns among authorities. In the past too, the Google maps have been embroiled in one controversy after the other. In the Google India maps, it had shown Arunachal Pradesh to be a part of China. In a statement issued at that time the company had apologized about the grave error and stated: "Earlier this week, as part of routine update to Google Earth, we published new data for the Arunachal Pradesh region that changed the depiction of certain place names in the product. The change was a result of a mistake in our processing of new map data." Apart from the Eastern state being shown part of the Red Dragon, the company had erred again by depicting Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) to be a part of Pakistan. Lodging strong protest against Google for its mapping activities, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Tarun Vijay said that identifying high security installations like Parliament House, defence establishments, nuclear stations and other sensitive places, on their maps, Google is posing a security threat. Apart from its mapping service, Google Earth, too had received a lot of brick bat. Google Earth is a service of Google that lets users to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings. The Indian security agencies had earlier been complaining that Google Earth exposes Indian defense and other sensitive installations, thereby posing a threat to the national security. via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGRbcgsuvjjMInvCgbF2weL5IgFbw&url=http://nvonews.com/2013/04/07/google-mapathon-2013-attracts-investigation-from-indian-police/

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