Spamming Google Maps

An anonymous reader writes "Google organized a flyover of Sydney, Australia last Friday for Australia Day. The images taken on the day will be posted to Google Maps in a few weeks. A number of dotcoms spent hours making huge signs that would be visible from the air. It will be interesting to see whether Google will repeat the event in other cities. If they do, get prepared early. What sign would you make?"

None

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Re:None

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Does it, though? I could see, for instance, fast food chains getting in on the action. Imagine, if you will, if all of the KFCs got together and on the roof of each of the KFC restauraunts is a huge image of Colonel Sanders at the time Google is doing the fly-by photos. You'd know right where get your Original Recipe(tm) Bucket of Chicken without even searching!

Re:None

This is easily solved by putting in place a corporate policy to include roof decoration for all franchises.

You can't actually be against people doing what they want with their own roofs right? In fact, putting readable symbols on your own roof will make the building easily recognizable in a map, so it's a positive thing.

The problem in my opinion is people like those in the article which "spammed" a public park.

Bullseye

If you look at the roof of the Target store in College Point, NY, there's a huge logo. Not such a good idea.

Re:Bullseye

If you look at the roof of the Target store in College Point, NY, there's a huge logo. Not such a good idea.

For those too lazy to look it up: Target store in College Point, NY [google.com]

Re:Bullseye

So if I am flying over this is a hot air balloon, do I have permission to drop things on that roof?

Re:Bullseye

Gives a whole new meaning to "Google bomb"

Re:None

Uhm...if Google maps gets you to the right intersection, and then you can't take over from there and figure out which of the four corners has the Taco Bell, you shouldn't be going out for food on your own in the first place.

Re:None

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Ummm. This is Google we're talking about. The guys who do everything they can to convince people to place ads on every page on the internet? (As an fyi, Google's ads frequently make up 20-30% of the data transfered when you load up a page with their ads.)

Have you ever put something like "Mt. Rainier" into Google maps? Does it seem fucking stupid that Mt. Rainier is not one of the returned results? Maybe Google has already "ruined the entire point of maps."

Of course

"Hi Mom!"

She always loves that.

Re:how could anyone forget....

I can't decide whether you're talking about the parent poster's mom or not, but I like it either way.

Naughty naughty

An arrow pointing to my asshole neighbor's house with the caption "Unsecured wireless network here!!"

"Here's your sign"

There's only one thing to put on such a sign:

"Mostly Harmless"

Re:"Here's your sign"

There's only one thing to put on such a sign: "Mostly Harmless"

C'mon, we're geeks here: "Hello world" is what belongs on the sign

I'm still waiting for this area to be updated

Where I live right now is just a very low-res blur on Google Earth and Maps. We've had a banner on the roof of our garage that reads "Fuck off Google!" in 3' high letters for the past two years just waiting for the day they update their imagery. We're still waiting...

The best part.

The signs were too small. All you'll see in the final resolution is a thin white line. You're talking about possibly four or five pixels wide.

Nah, you can see penis drawing from space

This fine rooftop example for instance:

http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=1211&c=&t=k&hl =en&ll=54.506361,-1.35223&z=19 [googlesightseeing.com]

Or this gem in Arizona:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=85022&ie=U TF8&z=17&ll=33.634542,-112.059485&spn=0.004582,0.0 13475&t=k&om=1 [google.com]

As long as they had a ballpark sized ad, they should be ok.

Ryan-

Does it matter...

Does it really matter when google has spammed first?

For example, look
here [google.com]. It is off the california coast, near LAX.

Grump

this field is...

Intentionally Left Blank

Already done?

Don't know if it's on Google's maps, but GeoEye has done it already.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_5047747 [denverpost.com]

[John]

Many of you are missing the point

Its kind of hard to be calling it spamming when Google actually asked people to do this... If you think its stupid, then call google stupid, not the people that participated. http://www.google.com/intl/en_au/events/australiad ay2007/index.html [google.com]

new spin on old news

Many companies have invested a lot of money/effort into putting signs on the rooftops of warehouses and large buildings. This is just that there's a "new" reason to put a sign on the roof, one that has companies without warehouses wanting to do it (like a .com). Sydney's a great example... take a train from western sydney into the city, and you'll pass a half dozen places with truly enormous signs on their rooftops. Arnotts is one of them.

...these signs have been around for many decades. My father (a signwriter) explained them to me on my very first trip into sydney as a kid. He actually made one for a tractor parts distributor that had a huge shed under a flight path (regaled me with how interesting it was to create such a big layout accurately). So, it's certainly not time now to be getting all bent out of shape because there's just one more reason to make signs for a higher viewpoint.

When the pics finally make it up to google maps, you'll see all the signs that have preempted this article by probably more than my life time. Anyone mad about rooftops becoming big billboards... you'll need to find something actually "new" to whinge about :)

goatse

see subject (if you're exceptionally unlucky ! )

An old nostalgic favourite...

"Here be dragons!"

- RG>

Shocked at the negative comments

People (slashdotters?) left some really vitriolic comments on their blog. It would be a completely different situation of soulless corporations were making the ad. But this is just a geeky couple doing something creative that took alot of their time and energy, and was obviously done out of love, not greed.

Douglas Adams

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

An obvious one...

John 3:16

Rest assured, if and when Google announces a flyby over a United States city, this one will rear its' obnoxious head.

Reactions

Interesting to compare the response generated by this article to another where a group of open-source advocates built a crop circle [slashdot.org] in the shape of the firefox logo. As a community, our response to the giant firefox logo was overwhelmingly positive, while this article has had an overwhelmingly negative response. What makes this one spam, but the firefox advocacy a cool way to spend a weekend?

No-Fly Zone Spolied the Day!!..

Turns out that Google didnt think the plan through, with several portions of Sydney being deemed a no-fly zone on the day - in particular several parks and beaches such as Bondi Beach - where many people congregated to create large signs. One company even spent $10,000 on a sign, only to miss out!!

See article here:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/google-botch-sy dney-flyover/2007/01/29/1169919256978.html/ [smh.com.au]