Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by annzabelle 4 days ago
Google Maps put a town label near my parents' house that is a name that was on some old maps in the 1910s, but fell completely out of use before the current suburb was built in the 70s and 80s. I had never heard it once in my life until I was in my early 20s and met a transplant who had picked up the name from Google Maps. I attempted to report it as inaccurate (USGS has had it as being out of use for decades) multiple times over the years, but no reply.
2 comments

Google puts the "Warsaw-Berlin Urstromtal" (glacial valley?) right in the middle of the river near the Friedrichstraße train station.

You can be browsing the area and suddenly, yep, there's a glacial valley there in the middle of the river. According to Google.

This is a large-scale geographical feature that crosses most of Germany and Poland. But actually it's in the river next to Friedrichstraße station.

Most of the neighbourhood names in my large European city were like this on Google Maps. Either old names or hyperspecific landmark/street names that I had never heard being used as synecdoche for the area.

This was definitely true 4-5 years ago. I looked now and it's mostly better at most levels of zoom.

Google maps uses suggestive names (e.g. a park walkway given a name by the municipality) as official road names, and when it does that it marked it as a cycling path. Both are invalid and cycling on them is illegal. This has been going on for years.
It redirects cars on foot/bikepaths near rivers, with the danger of sliding in.