The real problem is that Google Maps isn't regulated like a utility. I know, I know, we all hate regulation, we love free markets, and all. But bear with me for a moment.
I had a problem where Google Maps showed the wrong location for my address. I reported the issue. I was told the correction was accepted. But it wasn't — Google Maps would still show the wrong location. After doing this dance several times over a course of weeks going into months, it would sometimes show the correct location, and sometimes the wrong one. I once had two people arrive in the same car, and each of their phones showed a different location in Google Maps.
The problem is that at this point Google Maps is so ubiquitous that people accept it as "truth". And that is a problem when it shows an incorrect location: people can't get to your place, package deliveries are delayed, etc.
Unfortunately, things that are so ubiquitous in our lives require regulation — at the very least, Google should be required to process (and verify) requests for corrections in a timely manner.
I used to work mapping in EMS. It is absolutely not that simple, nor will it ever be. Yes, Google was often wrong. Sometimes I would drive out to a street to make sure I had not lost my mind.
Sometimes, the local addressing authority was wrong, and I would have to prove it to them. "But it was checked!" It was checked wrong. Street numbers would be off by thousands. It would take some pointing out of obvious problems in the progression of numbers, plus a plat, plus an email from the building manager to prove to them that I knew what I was talking about.
I was contacted by a woman who kept having drivers for all kinds of services attempt to use her driveway as a street, even if she had a sign up, which she did. Her local municipality was no help. Nobody was. She was irked and frantic, as these trucks would destroy her driveway, lawn, even garden.
Much digging ensued. It turned out that the proximal source of the error was a statewide system, one of many which Google simply hoovers up and digests like a baleen whale siphoning up plankton, then digests and tries to "make work." I got the proximal source to make a correction, which they might publish in another three months. The original source of the error was a long-missing minor street from many decades ago, which I had to find in caches of searches and the like.
It was idle curiosity, but it took me about twenty hours of digging on evenings and weekends.
Address points are easy. Parcels, aka the polygons upon which zero to many address points might rest, are harder. Road networks are terrifically hard. I managed to catalog ten different cases of road discontinuity in the process of trying to find such things in an automatic fashion. And I might not be bright enough to have enumerated them all!
And then we have cases of people who deliberately insist that their address number is "00." As in the first two-thirds of a certain not-so-secret agent's code number. Or imagine the fools who decide to put up a sign at the end of their long driveway and simply declare that it was a road.
Each county has its own addressing standards, and included in each are addresses from the Olden Days, real wild west stuff, which the authorities are just itching to scrape out of their systems once and for all.
None of that applies in my particular case: my country does have a database of addresses and the lookup of the address in question (my address) did produce the correct geographic location.
It was Google that did not bother to update their data for years.
>I had a problem where Google Maps showed the wrong location for my address. I reported the issue. I was told the correction was accepted. But it wasn't — Google Maps would still show the wrong location. After doing this dance several times over a course of weeks going into months, it would sometimes show the correct location, and sometimes the wrong one. I once had two people arrive in the same car, and each of their phones showed a different location in Google Maps.
I've had this problem for the 10 years I've lived at my address. Google has even changed where they usually send people, which is just a different kind of wrong. Non-existent locations on the other side of town.
It's very frustrating. I usually give people the address of a nearby business. I dare not order food delivery.
Once I ordered a consumer product "next day delivery" which I had no idea would summon an Uber Eats driver. I texted him the correct location once he showed up to the incorrect one. When he got to my house Uber wouldn't even let him complete the delivery because his GPS was so far from what it thought the delivery location was. He had to call them to resolve it.
I've tried to correct it myself about 10 times. I have had all my friends try to correct it from their accounts.
I still don't think that Google Maps should be regulated though. I think it's a ridiculous thing to suggest. I just don't think regulation is the answer to every inconvenience.
I had a problem where Google Maps showed the wrong location for my address. I reported the issue. I was told the correction was accepted. But it wasn't — Google Maps would still show the wrong location. After doing this dance several times over a course of weeks going into months, it would sometimes show the correct location, and sometimes the wrong one. I once had two people arrive in the same car, and each of their phones showed a different location in Google Maps.
The problem is that at this point Google Maps is so ubiquitous that people accept it as "truth". And that is a problem when it shows an incorrect location: people can't get to your place, package deliveries are delayed, etc.
Unfortunately, things that are so ubiquitous in our lives require regulation — at the very least, Google should be required to process (and verify) requests for corrections in a timely manner.