15 weird Google Maps stories to celebrate its 15th anniversary

Google Maps turns 15 years old on Feb. 8, marking a decade and a half of the service telling us which exit to take, recalculating when we completely miss it, and not yelling at us about it like a human with a street directory would.

It’s definitely made some aspects of travel easier. But it hasn’t been without its issues. 

In celebration of Google Maps’ 15th year, here are 15 times things went, shall we say, just a little bit (or a lot) off the map, for better or worse.

1. Man says he caused fake traffic jams on Google Maps with 99 phones

Google Maps’ live traffic updates are intended to make the commute a bit easier. However, according to Berlin-based artist Simon Weckert, the system by which it gathers its information is highly exploitable. In a 2020 performance piece, Weckert dragged a little red handcart full of smartphones down deserted streets, apparently generating a false traffic jam when Google Maps interpreted them as numerous cars.

2. LAPD warns that navigation apps are steering people to neighborhoods on fire

Even when there are no artists messing with it, Google Maps’ traffic feature can raise some issues. During the California fires in Dec. 2017, police warned drivers to disregard navigation apps that were directing cars to clear roads. The reason the roads were clear? They were surrounded by fire.

3. He went missing 22 years ago. Then someone saw his car in a pond on Google Maps.

One of the more unexpected outcomes of Google photographing the entire world was how it led to some answers in a decades-old missing persons case. Florida man William Moldt disappeared in 1997, but it took 22 years before his body was recovered in August 2019. It might had taken even longer had someone not been perusing Google Maps’ satellite images, where they noticed a car submerged in a lake. The car turned out to be Moldt’s, and his remains were still inside.

4. Google Maps reveals Disney tried to hide the Millennium Falcon with shipping containers

Fortunately, not every satellite find on Google Maps is quite as serious as the last one. While the Star Wars sequel trilogy was under development in 2017, fans who zoomed in on England’s Longcross Studios were delighted to discover an unauthorized peek at the iconic Millennium Falcon. Though Disney tried to keep prying eyes away by encircling it with shipping containers, the House of Mouse was no match for Google’s omnipresent eye.

5. Google Maps error sends tourists looking for Australia’s Blue Mountains to a suburban cul-de-sac

Google Maps is fairly helpful most of the time, but it’s had a few mishaps with wrong tagging. Until 2017, numerous tourists wanting to visit Australia’s Blue Mountains instead found themselves in a quiet suburban cul-de-sac half an hour away. It was such a prevalent issue that residents erected a sign reading, “BLUE MOUNTAINS is not here (Google Maps is wrong).”

6. Google Maps labels dude’s house as a pizzeria, and now everyone wants pizza

Another Australian mislabeling mishap fixed in 2017 previously saw a man’s home become a destination for hungry strangers. After Google Earth wrongly labelled his Darwin house a pop-up pizzeria, Michael McElwee began to receive numerous visitors asking when he opened, or if they could apply for a job.

7. Demolition team tears down wrong house, blames Google Maps

Though unexpected detours are irritating, they’re nowhere near the worst consequence of Google Maps’ labeling mistakes. In March 2016, a demolition company mistakenly tore down the wrong house, having confused it with another one a block away. When confronted by the homeowners, the demolition company shared a Google Maps screenshot labeling their home with the address of the house that was meant to be destroyed.

8. If you think you’re seeing swastikas in Google Maps, don’t panic

In 2018, several people were alarmed to see Google Maps labeling hotels with apparent swastikas. Nazis are never a pleasant surprise, so, of course, users were concerned. However, it turned out that rather than the clockwise symbol associated with Nazism in the West, it was a counterclockwise symbol associated with Buddhism in the East. The symbol was mistakenly applied to hotels instead of temples, though avoiding it altogether in a global service might have been prudent.

9. Someone renamed NYC’s Trump Tower ‘Dump Tower’ on Google Maps

When the world seems awful and everything hurts, small acts of rebellion can sometimes give you the fire needed to pull through. Such was apparently the case for one Google employee in November 2016, when Google Map’s listing for Trump Tower in New York was altered to read “Dump Tower.” 

10. Google apologizes after racist Maps searches send users to the White House

In a better world, this Google Maps story would be more surprising than it is. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, this is pretty much par for the course. In 2015, Google Map users discovered that typing “n****r house” into the search bar directed them to the White House, where America’s first black president Barack Obama was in office at the time. Google apologized, though it wasn’t clear what caused the search result. 

11. Google Maps swaps MLK Day for Confederate holiday in several Southern states

Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2017 was a bizarre one for Google Maps. Most U.S. businesses on Google Maps were marked as celebrating the federal holiday, helping potential customers figure out opening hours. However, listings for businesses in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi were mistakenly missing this note, and were instead marked as celebrating Robert E. Lee’s birthday. You know, the Confederate general.

12. New York City asks Google Maps to discourage left turns

The city of New York had an unusual request of Google in July 2015: minimize the number of left-hand turns suggested by Google Maps’ navigation system. NPR reported that a quarter of all vehicle accidents involving pedestrians happened when the driver was making a left turn. This apparently prompted New York officials to decide it’d be safer if drivers followed Derek Zoolander’s lead and simply didn’t turn left at all.

13. Google Maps Driver Detained, Accused of Being a Government Agent

In 2013, villagers in the Phrae province of Thailand accosted Google Street View driver Deeprom Phongphon, suspicious that he was a government worker in disguise. Locals had been fighting against a proposed dam project, and were worried Phongphon was actually there to survey the area. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and the locals later apologized, though Phongphon did have to swear on a Buddha statue that he wasn’t a government worker. 

14. Google Maps Helps Man Walk 5,000 Miles Across Asia

Google Maps was only six years old when U.S. Marine Sgt. Winston Fiore decided to use it to guide his trek across Asia. Relying so heavily on Google Maps may seem foolhardy now that we’ve seen all the mistakes it has made, but he got through it fine. Fiore spent just over a year walking across several countries for charity, finishing in November 2012 having raised over $65,000 for the International Children’s Surgery Fund. 

15. Guy fools Google and Apple Maps into naming a road after him

If nobody will name something after you, do it yourself. In 2013, Beijing artist Ge Yulu attached a road sign bearing his name to an unmarked road as part of his thesis project. He left it up for over four years, and the new road name crept its way into official documents. Eventually, the false road name even found its way into Google Maps, where it remains to this day.