Little Green Footballs, a major political blog, points out that Google Maps seems to consider Israel of less importance than the Gaza Strip.
Google Maps now has the outlines, although not the maps, of every country on Earth. As you zoom in, the map software takes advantage of the zoom to increase detail. This means that smaller countries, like Louxemburg (Luxembourg?) don’t register until you zoom in enough, and the names of those countries may not appear until a little after. All of this is normal mapping behavior.
What is odd is that when you zoom in on the Middle East, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, two areas that (too put it lightly) are of enormous dispute within Israel, register with Google Maps before Israel itself. You have to go two more zoom levels to see that Israel is indeed the name of the country, and it is printed in a much smaller font that seems to indicate it is Israel that is a territory within others, and not the other way around.
This is despite the fact that both areas are smaller than the rest of Israel, and despite the fact that both areas, despite what future you believe they ought to have, are a part of Israel. This would be tantamount to listing Ohio before the United States. As LGF says:
What does it mean? Maybe nothing. It could just be an artifact of the software that generates the maps. But it’s curious that there’s room for two regions that are not even countries, both of whom have names longer than “Israel.”
Either way, whether intentional or not, it can be considered a bug in the software, one Google should probably correct.
(via Findory)
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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