There’s this website called Mapmyrun.com that allows you draw your running route on google maps to see the distance. It has a few other nifty tricks too, but I noticed a problem when I used it to run on Saturday. Specifically, a road that mapmyrun said existed did not actually exist. So I checked in maps.google.com just now to show somebody, and maps.google.com has it right! I looked back at mapmyrun, and it was still wrong. Moreover, there’s a lot of discrepancies between them, at least in my neighborhood. What’s going on with that?
That’s curious, since it seems to be drawing its maps directly from google…
I thought so too. Very odd. I’d show you guys what I’m talking about, but I’m a little bit paranoid so I’d rather not give everyone a pinpoint on my home address.
Sounds like you’ve found a copyright trap which mapmyrun.com employs in order to differentiate maps obtained from it as opposed to those obtained directly from Google maps. That’d be my guess, anyway.
Yes, my first thought was that it could be a copyright trap, but if they’re using Google maps that hardly makes sense. It’s puzzling.
Simultaneous posting with Q.E.D.. My previous post wasn’t a reply to his; he could well be right, it’s to differentiate their maps.
I thought that those were usually done in a way that they wouldn’t interfere with the actual map. This one changed the name of the road, and then added in several other roads that don’t exist in real life. This threw off my run by quite a bit, since I was looking for a road by a different name, and then looking for a road that doesn’t exist. Plus, why would they put in a trap? It’s taken straight from Google.
There are a few other changes as well. The nearby park has a fairly different border in the two, as well as some roads that exist in Google but not in mapmyrun. If this is an example of a copyright trap, it sucks, because it makes the map function rather unhelpful.
Actually, I might have had it backasswards. It’s more likely, IMO, that it’s Google sticking in these traps so that third-party sites which use their mapping can’t say “oh, this is OUR map.” I don’t know why they would do that, but there it is.
Hmmm. Usually copyright traps aren’t so numerous or obvious. And the fact that some real roads are either incorrectly named or missing entirely is odd, to say the least. Now I have no idea what the deal is.
It’s possible that Google just screwed up an earlier version of the map. I’m guessing the map API (that mapmyrun is using) serves a different version of the data from the Google. It could be that it’s just taking a while for a recent fix to filter down to the version served out to third parties.
Or Google are deliberately breaking their data as others have suggested. I can’t find anything in the T&Cs of the Google Maps API that would support either point, but they all don’t guarantee the data to be accurate.
I’d be tempted to mail mapmyrun and ask/tell them.
SD
That’s a good idea. I’ll email them and see what’s up. It’s a small annoyance, but it did add an extra mile on to my run that I didn’t plan for. I’ll get back with their answer.
Google uses two sets of data for their maps. The google website uses NAVTEQ, and they license TeleAtlas data for APIs. Apparently, TeleAtlas is a lot more agreeable to the free licensing. That’s probably because their data has a lot more errors.
Just look at the text in the lower right of the maps of the third-party apps, compared to the Google Maps website.
Ahh… I saw that they didn’t match in the label, but I had no idea what, if anything, it meant. Thanks!
Just to finish this, I received an email from them, and they said that the data Google provides to other sites isn’t the same as their own, and often isn’t as accurate. So 10 pts to aerodave!