Google: it did not delete ‘Palestine’ from its maps

Supporters of the Palestinian cause denounced Google online this week for removing the word “Palestine” from Google Maps, but there was just one problem: The company said the word had never been there in the first place, The New York Times reported.

Even by the boom-and-bust standards of anger on social media, this tale spread quickly, spurred by statements of outrage from Palestinian advocacy groups, news stories and viral videos that included no comment from Google.

An online petition from March condemning Google (and insinuating its “two Jewish founders” removed the word “Palestine” because of their alleged ties to Israel) had collected more than 280,000 signatures by Wednesday, more than 180,000 of those since the day before. Angry tweets were sent and there were calls to boycott the company.

A hashtag, #PalestineIsHere, was born. But as far as Google Maps is concerned, it actually had not been.

“There has never been a ‘Palestine’ label on Google Maps, however we discovered a bug that removed the labels for ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza Strip,’ ” the company said in a statement. “We’re working quickly to bring these labels back to the area.” It is unclear if that bug played a role in spurring the online outrage.

Elizabeth Davidoff, a spokeswoman, said in an email that the company had also never used the label “Palestinian territories” on its maps. The bug affecting the words “Gaza Strip” and “West Bank” persisted on Wednesday, but when Google Maps functions properly both areas are labeled and separated from Israel by a dotted line to signify that their borders are not internationally recognized.

The word “Palestine” was recently removed from the local home page of the company’s search engine, but the reason was aesthetic, not political, Ms. Davidoff said. It was taken down to make space for an Olympics-themed Google doodle, a design that sometimes greets users, as were country-specific tag lines for every country in the world.

“There’s no Google-wide effort to remove Palestine or anything like that,” Ms. Davidoff said in an email. She said a GIF circulating online (and shared by the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace) that claimed to show a before-and-after image that proved the alleged deletion, was fake.

Source: MENA