Posted on 7/8/2022 7:00 am Updated on 7/8/2022 8:56 am
On February 23, Jeffrey Lewis, a California researcher specializing in arms control, observed an unusual situation while consulting Google Maps: a traffic jam at 3:15 a.m. in the Russian city of Belgorod, 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. By combining this information with radar images picked up by a satellite, the teacher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey and his students, who were participating in a research project on aerial observation, understand that Russian troops were on their way to invade Ukraine. Therefore, a few hours before Vladimir Putin announced the launch of the “military special operation” she was already visible on the other side of the planet on the most visited map system in the world.
In less than two decades, Google has become a major player in geospatial data. Its mapping service, Google Maps, is used by over a billion people worldwide and is way ahead of any other competing GPS device, app or website. The actual number of users is even greater, because Google’s base maps, route calculations, aerial photographs or images of buildings are adopted by thousands of other sites or applications, including Airbnb, Carrefour or Uber.