
Google shows parts of Arunachal Pradesh (India) in Chinese Language - aj
http://www.pluggd.in/google-india-controversy-arunachal-pradesh-in-chinese-language-297/
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davidw
Maps are tricky. Currently, Google Maps seems to be showing town names in
Sudtirol (the German-speaking bit of Italy that was part of Austria until
after the 1st world war) exclusively in Italian, and the street names in both
languages. Everything there is officially bilingual, and pretty much
everything has to be in both languages.

Wait... even weirder, I switched to the terrain view, and it added the German
town names (map view doesn't have them). Beautiful area, in any case:

[http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=46.919552,11.492043&#...</a>

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dirtyaura
Google Maps' name data is a strange beast. A while ago Google Maps showed
Spanish names for many Finnish cities for several months.

If I've understood correctly, names do not actually come from Google, but from
map data providers, so the culprit in this is case is a map data provider.

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three14
It appears from Wikipedia that the border is disputed. If so, it looks like
the Indian position is that Google is taking sides, but Google might just have
been attempting to stay neutral.

~~~
plinkplonk
"It appears from Wikipedia that the border is disputed."

It is. Map makers are in a hard place. There are parts of Kashmir that are in
Pakistan but Indian maps show them as part of India. Which never made sense to
me. The indian government goes after anyone whose maps show it differently.
(fwiw I am Indian)

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nasrkhan
It is an interesting development in the Web 2.0 era. Now the tech companies
are the source for brewing up social and political debates and controversies:
([http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Google-
shows-p...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Google-shows-parts-
of-Arunachal-in-Chinese/articleshow/4869777.cms))

Recently Google Earth stepped up the coverage of darfur genocide.
[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/google-steps-up-its-
dar...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/google-steps-up-its-darfur-
genocide-coverage-in-google-earth/)

Now with these two diagonally opposite cases, it is to be seen how an
increasingly popular and influential tech giant treads the fine line between
fact and diplomacy, setting examples for others in the process.

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sketerpot
In related news, YouTube thinks that I speak Mandarin. With the traditional
character set. I've tried to get this changed, but to no avail. I uploaded a
video today, and I got an automatic email with this subject:

恭喜您上傳了第一部 YouTube 影片！

Babelfish tells me that it means "Congratulated you to upload the first
YouTube movie!" which I suppose is straightforward enough, but I would have
preferred to hear it in a language that doesn't baffle me quite as much.

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bmunro
One of the comments in the article notes that:

The global version of Google Maps shows the border as a dashed line, according
to actual territorial possession.

The Chinese version, Google Ditu, shows the border as an unbroken line
according to the Chinese claim. Taiwan is also shown as part of mainland
China.

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est
Arunachal Pradesh? I thought it's called 藏南 (CHINA)

