Taking a close look at results in Google Maps, the Nicaraguan army has decided to lay claim to an island that has been a long-time holding of Costa Rica. I am not going to go into details here because the story broke on Friday and is well-documented by others (including Google). I do want to reiterate a quote from an excellent post by The Basement Geographer on why it is folly to use a web map service like Google Maps or Bing to settle border disputes.
"They are simply organisations that produce mapping products. It is up to the user to be aware of this. To be clear, both countries’ official maps claim the island falls on their side of the river; it’s just awfully silly to use a map from the Internet to justify a particular claim."
I will add that Google has never claimed accuracy in their mapping. How can they? Google sometimes uses content built with other map datums and road map geodata can be off by 1/2 kilometer. We find greatest accuracy in Google products in the U.S. and Europe but everywhere else, hold your nose and hope for the best. They have loads and loads of geodata for the entire world that they are displaying in Google Earth and Maps. How can these data align in any way that will allow for scientific (or military) accuracy? Google Maps, Bing and Google Earth can be used for display purposes, a generalized resource (think Wikipedia) and as a way to verify that some place exists relative to another place. Don't use Google Maps to 1) measure (with precision) the distance between two places, 2) quantify (with precision) an area of a region, or 3) claim a border. The internet is filled with lots of information, some true some not true. These web maps are the internet and they're to be used with a grain of salt.
Added 11/8/10: For a definitive discussion of this issue, please see Stefan Geens' post at Ogle Earth.
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