In another incident of map spam, search engine company Google Inc. had to meet with an embarrassment again when its one of the most popular services, Google Maps, showed an inappropriate third-party generated image of the Android robot urinating on the official logo of the rival company Apple Inc.
According to the reports, a small region in Pakistan was edited to make the disgraceful changes in the maps.
Currently, Google allows users to add and edit maps, just like Wikipedia, through a crowd-sourced program called Google Map Maker.
The user-generated image appeared as a green land region just south of Rawalpindi in Pakistan.
The image appeared on both Android and desktop versions of Google for a few hours on Friday till it was finally removed by the company.
The image was also accompanied by a digital mischief art creation that featured a sad face along with a message “Google review policy is crap”.
Extending apology for the inapt content, Google spokesperson Caroline Matthews said, “We’re sorry for this inappropriate user-created content; we’re working to remove it quickly. We also learn from these issues, and we’re constantly improving how we detect, prevent and handle bad edits.”
“The vast majority of users who edit our maps provide great contributions, such as mapping places that have never been mapped before,” Matthews added.
This is not for the first time when any user-generated inappropriate content on the Google Maps has brought embarrassment for the search engine giant. Recently, Edward Snowden appeared on the Google Maps sitting in the White House. The Google Map also showed a snowboard shop, called “Edward’s Snow Den”, inside the American President’s residence. It was accompanied by reviews such as it was a “great source of classified information”.