Saturday, February 26, 2011

I officially hate Google now

Google Inc. has been hated for many for various reasons now for several years, but I never really thought of it that way. I loved Google Earth, it was fun, Google News Archive was awesome, too, and despite how I didn't like their redesign, or how back in October Google Maps redesigned the look of the railroads (removing older ones and creates hundreds of new errors, many of which still exist). But I noticed that they forced gmap catcher (which, admittedly, I've never been able to get to work) to no longer allow you to download map tiles from Google Maps, citing something from their terms of service.

Of course, why do that? No one is going to make some illicit profit off of it, and no one is going to mass download the entire contiguous United States (OK, I take that back...there's always someone). And besides, they probably ripped the maps off from somebody anyway somehow, plus I feel (and this is may sound demanding, I know) entitled to a map of my town, at least, given the various corrections I submitted.

But I'll have my revenge, perhaps.

Sure, this may sound a little strange with Google's Blogspot hosting Carbonizer, but how many times has The Simpsons mocked FOX? See, it's okay, right?

1 comment:

  1. I hate to burst your bubble, but you're not entitled to anything. Google has paid money to use satellite imagery (licensed it) from organizations. If you want to feel entitled, pay a company to launch a satellite of your own, or hire aerial photographers to take a map of your town. It's totally unreasonable to have this point of view, complaining about Google shutting down a program that violates its terms of service.

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