WTF Google?
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How do you contact Google? It sounds like a dumb question in this day and age, but the truth is, it's almost impossible to ask a question or make a complaint and get a reply.
The area where I live in Southern Ontario is very poorly depicted on Google Earth. It looks like something that has grown in a petrie dish for a month - all green and white splotches. Now this might be understandable in a part of the Third World, but I am 100 km. from Toronto and just across Lake Ontario from Rochester, New York.
I raised this as an issue with the local municipality over eighteen months ago. They were very receptive and the economic development department recognised the fact that we were being shortchanged, especially in comparison to areas to both the east and west of us.
We have aerial photography of very high quality and I have used that to create a SU model of our downtown for the local architectural conservation body who have used it for their advocacy purposes. The municipal government uses the model to help assess development proposals in the heritage district. If you want to see some examples search for 'Jeremy Nicholls' on Youtube. This model was originally created about the same time that SU and GE started integrating their development.
I therefore have lots of buildings modelled in SU that may be acceptable for putting in GE, but without good quality imagery, there's no point in trying.
The municipality used the mechanism within GE to provide GE the high res imagery. No update has happened and the GIS staff member, who also could not find any way of following up with Google, was reduced to noting and advising Google of every error in their mapping that she could find. To try and get Google's attention, she made every error its own individual report so that Google received dozens of error reports from a qualified government GIS professional. Obviously, she wasn't successful in opening a line of communication with them.
Nowhere on Google's numerous websites is there a way of sending a message to something like a customer representative. Lots of FAQ stuff and group discussions. I tried phoning Google Canada. I got two telephone numbers using Canada 411. There is no reply from either one. I found another number on Google's website. When I tried that one, I got a recorded message saying 'If you know the extension of the person ....., or dial 0 to speak to an operator'. Pressing 0, again, I got the continuous ringing tone. Same as before, but this time, I've paid for the telephone call.
Now, maybe I am being too picky, but this area is not doing well economically and could do with all the help it can get. Just to check things out I zoomed around GE for comparisons. Well, what did I find? I could see pretty good detail (recognisable buildings and cars) in such out-of-the-way places as a village in Kazakhstan, a place called Al Hooker (couldn't resist) up the Nile in Egypt and a 'closed city' in Russia (that's one that doesn't officially exist!).
I know this forum does get good response from the SU team and so, if one of them reads this and can help in any way, I would greatly appreciate it. At the moment I think the Google conglomerate could add an eleventh principle to their famous ten:
'Disregard principle one and ignore the customer.'
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I'd imagine you'd get better success if you posted this in our GE Forum and changed the title of the thread to something a bit more descriptive than what the fuck google.
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Thanks Rich, but I did post a less heated version on a GE forum. It just sits there without any response. And I used WTF to mean 'Where's The Feedback?'. At least here I am sure to get some kind of response as you have just proved.
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@jeremy nicholls said:
Thanks Rich, but I did post a less heated version on a GE forum. It just sits there without any response. And I used WTF to mean 'Where's The Feedback?'. At least here I am sure to get some kind of response as you have just proved.
I would suggest going here.
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'Where's the Feedback?' is not an acronym that i've seen/heard before but your post did make me read it.
I suppose if it had said Ontario Satellite Imagery I wouldn't have even looked.
I'll STFU now, [Satellites That Float Uselessly]
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Jeremy, you think that your neck of the woods is badly represented on GE! Have a look at Ireland! Its very blotchy over most of the country. And Google have their EU base in Dublin
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Ennis is the centre of the universe!! Ireland is weirdly represented. They do have all the imagery but they wont release it for some god forsaken reason.
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Hi Mike, Long time since I was here. If I get anywhere with this, I'll let you know.
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Jaxcoffee
I posted here, which seemed appropriate
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?fid=11995d4c6b07c4070004a0d34a1f29e4&hl=en
Oh, and by the way Mike and Dermott, I do appreciate your economic woes are worse than ours, but let's not get off track.
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@jeremy nicholls said:
Jaxcoffee
I posted here, which seemed appropriate
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?fid=11995d4c6b07c4070004a0d34a1f29e4&hl=en
Oh, and by the way Mike and Dermott, I do appreciate your economic woes are worse than ours, but let's not get off track.
The link I posted is where a lot of Google program directors and people that can actually get something done hang out. At least when it comes to maps and GIS data are concerned.
I think you would have a better chance on getting the right persons attention there.
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Hi Jeremy,
Here is a page to report imagery:
http://earth.google.com/support/bin/request.py?&problem=billing&extra.customer=GEFree&contact_type=data
and here is one to submit data if your municipality can provide imagery:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/imagery/
and for genera data submission, start here:
http://www.google.com/earth/dataproviders/ -
Thanks Gaieus, but I understand that we have been there and done that as the saying goes. What does one do when a municipality has submitted imagery through those links, but still nothing gets done? There is no way to contact a human being to check and see whether GE is happy with what has been submitted, or if there is a problem. Although I appreciate you are all trying to help, bombarding me with more and more links to different websites doesn't get me any further ahead. I need someone at GE who can look into the issue and communicate with me or the Town of Cobourg GIS technician.
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@jeremy nicholls said:
Thanks Gaieus, but I understand that we have been there and done that as the saying goes. What does one do when a municipality has submitted imagery through those links, but still nothing gets done? There is no way to contact a human being to check and see whether GE is happy with what has been submitted, or if there is a problem. Although I appreciate you are all trying to help, bombarding me with more and more links to different websites doesn't get me any further ahead. I need someone at GE who can look into the issue and communicate with me or the Town of Cobourg GIS technician.
Don't hold your breath waiting.
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Thanks Jaxcoffee, that says it all.
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