Google admits to wrong depiction of AP in its maps

Search engine Google today admitted its “mistake” of wrong depiction of certain areas of Arunachal Pradesh as parts of China and said its maps would be rectified shortly.

“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,” a spokesperson for the search giant said in a statement.

The spokesperson was reacting after a media report which highlighted that Google map showed certain areas of Arunachal Pradesh as parts of China. The media report had raised suspicion about the search engine being hacked by the Chinese considering that Beijing has been laying claim over Arunachal Pradesh, which India rejects.

“We are in the process of reverting the data to its previous state and expect the change to be visible in the product shortly,” the spokesperson said. “We would like to clarify that this issue did not impact our depiction of international borders,” the statement said.

Google Earth is a service of Google that lets users view satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings. This is not the first time that Google Earth has come in for criticism in India. Indian security agencies had earlier been complaining that Google Earth exposes Indian defense and other sensitive installations.