A Google Earth Canary Islands Conspiracy?

"In late July Google updated the satellite imagery of the Canary Islands in both Google Earth and Google Maps. The former satellite images from 2005 and 2006 were replaced by images belonging to the Canary public company Grafcan. While some applauded the partnership of Google with a local mapping company, others became immediately suspicious that the replacement images were at least six years old, leaving them to conclude that a government conspiracy was at hand in order to attract more tourists by removing unsightly, recent developments."

While there do not seem to be any new developments since our last post about Ancient Canary Islands in Google Earth, there are links and translations of more comments and, above all, the post at GlobalVoices shows that world is talking about it. The question is, are those who can clear the situation up listening?

A Google Earth Canary Islands Conspiracy?

Permalink | (2) Comments | Post a Comment

 quintessentquirk wrote (on May 24, 2008 12:42 PM)  

I'm pretty sure that you'd know already, but Google updated their images of Tenerife some time in 2007. At least for La Orotava. What I find interesting is the addition of road networks...

There's a suspicious absense of offroad trails around the following coordinates: 28.336, -16.540. Every mountainbiker from this region knows that there are at least 5 major trails that traverse the La Orotava valley. They're clearly visible in the satellite picture.

For some reason the seem to stop EXACTLY at the border between Los Realejos & La Orotava provinces...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=28.336,+-16.540&ie=UTF8&z=17&iwloc=addr

 Pamela Heywood wrote (on May 24, 2008 1:26 PM)  

Yes, I was aware that there was another update recently, but this is indeed strange. My mind always immediately tries to imagine a motivation for these anomalies and, I can only conclude that perhaps Grafcan / the Government want to charge for the use of those trails or for the maps that show them. Or they just don't want people going offroad, because of dangers, fire risks, etc.