Google dodges bullet in Sino-Indian 'map war'

Google, which has in recent years been caught in the crossfire of a ‘map war’ between India and China , appears to have found a nifty way to dodge the bullet. [caption id=“attachment_2212” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Courtesy Google Maps[/caption] The armour that could protect the tech giant when it faces governments sensitive about how their disputed borders are depicted on maps comes in the form of Google Earth Builder , a mapping platform that hosts three-dimensional geospatial information online, which Google unveiled recently. The new service will effectively open up Google’s digital maps infrastructure to third parties, including governments and organisations, who can use it to serve up maps, satellite imagery and other geospatial data. Analysts reckon that Google Earth Builder could help Google skirt the contentious issues it has faced, most often with China and India, the potentially big markets that it particularly covets. In recent years, the cartographic war between the two trans-Himalayan neighbours with a troubled history of border dispute has escalated, increasing pressure on Google to tailor its Google Map service to reflect each country’s sensitivity – or risk loss of business. Illustratively, Google’s Chinese map service ( http://ditu.google.com/ ) depicts Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin as being wholly Chinese territory. That is in line with China’s territorial claims over the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it refers to as “southern Tibet”, although it is under Indian administration. Even otherwise, the Chinese-language map’s depiction of Jammu and Kashmir and, more generally, India’s political borders don’t square with Indian sensibilities. On the other hand, Google India’s map service ( http://maps.google.co.in/ ) depicts Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, and even Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as falling within Indian territorial limits. A third version, on Google Maps’ international mapping platform ( http://maps.google.com/ ) is a bit of a mish-mash that will please no one, depicting Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir as disputed areas (with dotted lines). Jumping through these cartographic hoops was proving to be risky business, and any compromise that Google made with either or both countries was an invitation for bad press, as the company realised over the years. But Sweden-based cartographer and technologist Stefan Geens reckons that with Earth Builder, Google may have found a way out. Geens, who is interested in the manner in which “neo-geographical tools” like Google Earth influence geopolitics, points out that Earth Builder would, among other things, let government agencies “publish their own maps and satellite imagery to the public, scalably, using the same cloud-y infrastructure that underpins Google Earth and Maps.” This, he adds, has the potential to free Google from the Sino-Indian tug-of-war. With Earth Builder, Google can now “play host to virtual globes without also being the publisher, thus relinquishing responsibility for the content.” Governments can now publish their own branded geoportal via Google’s infrastructure, using as much (or as little) of Google’s content as it approves of and adding the rest, reasons Geens. “Google makes its money as a contracted service provider instead of through advertising, while the end user of the resulting product gets free maps that are inoffensive to the country footing the bill.” In other words, everyone is happy, and Google doesn’t have to bear the cross of making compromises with touchy governments.

Google dodges bullet in Sino-Indian 'map war'

New service could give it a break from governments touchy about depiction of their borders.

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