Battu, who regularly travels from her home in Haifa, Israel, to the West Bank city of Ramallah for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led her astray several times in recent years. “I’ve been told to climb the vertical wall since 2003,” she says.
Others have encountered the same wall near the Qalandiya checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the West Bank, and driving into it has almost become a ritual. “I was once trying to get to an office in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and Google Maps failed me completely,” says Leila, who works for an American company not far from Ramallah. and asked to use only his first name for privacy reasons. . “It wanted me to go down the road that was completely cut off by the wall.”
Google’s Bourdeau told WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will make an update if it can confirm the situation against reliable data.
Even before the war, Google Maps users in the West Bank say they were used to getting potentially unsafe directions. A persistent issue they point to is the fact that Google doesn’t distinguish between unrestricted roads and those that are intended to be used only by Israelis, such as roads leading to and from Israeli settlements where Palestinians are not. should go On the way from Haifa to Ramallah, Google Maps once directed Battu to a closed gate where she says Israeli soldiers approached her car with their guns pointed at her. “I had to explain that I made a mistake,” she says. Google “facilitates going on settler streets, which for me, as a Palestinian, can be very dangerous.”
Bordo says Google doesn’t distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli routes, because that would require knowing personal information about users, such as their citizenship.
When Google Maps leads her to settlements, Battu says she speaks in English, hoping to pass as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users tell WIRED that when they suddenly end up in risky areas, they try to turn around or turn around as quickly as possible.
In other situations, Google Maps refuses to provide directions at all, such as when navigating through West Bank cities, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app tells them it “could not calculate driving directions” (WIRED was able to replicate the same result). One of the current Google employees says this is because Google has not invested in enabling directions between the three administrative regions of the West Bank, two of which are officially controlled by Israeli authorities. Google spokesperson Bordo says the company is working to resolve the issue.
New challenges
Despite its shortcomings, users tell WIRED that they’ve previously found Google Maps helpful in the field, especially when traveling to unfamiliar locations. Since the war began, however, they feel that the app has become unbearable. Soon after the battle began, Google turned off the ability to view live traffic overviews in the area To protect “Protecting Local Communities.” Users will now have to input a specific location to see traffic conditions along their route, potentially adding an extra step for some of them.
Two current Google employees also say that, given the changing conditions on the ground during the war and the increase in spam that followed the conflict, Google acted on many of the suggested edits submitted by employees and drivers in the West Bank. Did not, who warn. Tech giants for problems like missing streets or locations. Due to this, the road data on the app is outdated from last year. Bordo says Google applies updates when suggestions can be verified through trusted sources.
