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Google Agrees: "Midtown South Central" Does Not Exist

By

Garth Johnston

Published Jul 18, 2012

Modified Jul 18, 2012

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So long, sucka!

 

By

Garth Johnston

Published Jul 18, 2012

Modified Jul 18, 2012

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Our brief local nightmare is over. The fake Google Maps neighborhood of "Midtown South Central" is not long for this world. In fact, it was already heading for the chopping block before we even reported it.

A rep from Google confirmed that the issue "has been flagged and will be fixed," but couldn't give an exact date for when it would go away (which is weird, since it apparently was flagged for deletion on May 15). He assures us, however, that the search giant is "constantly working to make sure our maps are accurately reflecting the world around on both national, local and global levels." And to prove the point he pointed us to the Google Map Maker discussion of the "South Central" issue, which is actually pretty great. Here's the moment when Google realizes it has made an error (also, we love you persistant Map man Matthew!):

Comment on May 14, 2012 3:25am by Matthew
Reason for editing : Feature does not exist
There is no such area as midtown center. There is midtown east and west but this on is made up.

Comment on May 14, 2012 5:56pm by Google Reviewer Rathana
Please revert this edit. As upon performing a Google search i was able to confirm the existence of this area. Thanks
This edit was marked for Auto denial

Comment on May 15, 2012 6:40pm by Matthew
This fake area is overlapping the neighborhoods of Gramercy, Murray Hill, K-town, Kips Bay, and Midtown east. This is not a real place. Will you please provide the results of this search? and please do not provide any third party websites as they are not valid.

Approved on May 15, 2012 7:33pm by Google Reviewer Rathana
On further investigation it looks like this in fact a made up place. Your edit looks good and has been approved. Thanks

The part of all this that we actually found most interesting (and didn't know, though we really should have—unless this was all a ploy to teach us about it) was the existence of Google Map Maker, which "allows you to add and update geographic information for millions of users to see in Google Maps and Google Earth." Here, for instance is a timelapse video of Map Makers working on the map of Kabul, Afghanistan:

Now that we know this is so easy we are so going to start trying to slip Easter Eggs into Google Maps...

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