The Politics of Google's Mapping

The Washington Monthly has an interesting piece on the political cartographic controversies that Google has become enmeshed in.  Robert Boorstin, the director of Google’s public policy team states, “We work to provide as much discoverable information as possible so that users can make their own judgments about geopolitical disputes.”   Yet, despite this approach, Google has been the target of ire by various nations over the designation of  disputed geographic areas.  The article highlights several cases such as the government of Cambodia over the depiction of a disputed border with Thailand near an eleventh-century Khmer temple complex in Preah Vihear Province.  A formal letter of complaint was written to Google and ‘a senior Cambodian official very publicly declared Google’s representation of the border “devoid of truth and reality, and professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious,” not to mention “very wrong and not internationally recognized.”’ Google was also sued by the Israeli city of Kiryat Yam for libel “after a Palestinian civilian named Thameen Darby went on Google Earth and tagged the town as the site of an Arab village destroyed by Israelis in 1948.”

Read more: The Agnostic Cartographer: How Google’s open-ended maps are embroiling the company in some of the world’s touchiest geopolitical disputes

For Chinese users Google Maps show Arunachal Pradesh as part of China

For Indian Users, Google maps shows Arunachal Pradesh as part of India.

For users outside of India and China, Arunachal Pradesh is showed using dotted lines as a disputed region.