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Google's Simplified (and Miniaturized) World

Google is without a doubt one of the most innovative companies in the world. Since Google went public, the tech-masterminds in Mountain View, California, have presented a host of new services that are well and truly changing the face of the world. This time, though, they have erased most of it.

Had a look at Google Maps yet? It's great if you're short a map, but have a fast Internet connection: Just a few clicks and you'll quickly be on your way to Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri or to a Chinese restaurant in New York. The maps generated are even printable -- as detailed or as wide-angled as you like.

The largest view available includes a large chunk of the Western hemisphere. And sure enough, just 500 pixels off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador lie the charming little islands belonging to America's good friends from Great Britain and Ireland, famed for their hospitality, cute landscape and bad cooking. There too you might be tempted to zoom deep into the map to find exotic places like Dun Laoghaire, for unknown reasons pronounced "Don Leery" by its inhabitants. You can't, of course, look too deep. That great path you once took from Rathnew into the stunning Wicklow Mountains won't be there. There are, after all, limits to this wonderful new Google service.

That is especially true for those heading out on the high seas east of England guided by their trusty, new Google maps. Here, what you see is definitely not what you get. Google shows you a beautiful 600-pixel stretch of open sea off of Margate. In reality, though, you'd run smack into the harbor wall of Oostende. Same thing would happen if you headed south looking for the beaches of Normandy. There not there in the Google world.

For in the world according to Google whole continents went were Atlantis went so many years ago: sunk, vanished, forgotten. When, oh mighty Google, are you going to put us Europeans back on the map?

Frank Patalong