Buttu, who regularly travels to the West Bank city of Ramallah from her home in Haifa, Israel, for work and to visit friends, says she has been diverted many times by Google Maps in recent years. “They told me to drive straight toward a wall that’s been up since 2003,” he says.
Others have encountered the same wall near the Qalandia checkpoint that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank, and almost driving up to it has become something of a rite of passage. “One time I was trying to get to an office that was in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and Google Maps completely failed me,” says Leila, who works for an American company remotely from Ramallah and asked to use only her first name for privacy reasons. . . “I wanted it to go along a road that was completely blocked by the wall.”
Google’s Bourdeau tells WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will make an update if it can verify the situation with reliable data.
Even before the war, Google Maps users in the West Bank say they were accustomed to receiving potentially dangerous directions. One persistent problem they point out is the fact that Google does not distinguish between unrestricted roads and those that can only be used by Israelis, such as those leading to and from Israeli settlements that Palestinians are not supposed to go to. On the route from Haifa to Ramallah, Google Maps once directed Buttu 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,” he says. Google “optimizes the path for settlers, which for me as a Palestinian can be very dangerous.”
Bourdeau says Google does not distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli routes, as that would require knowing personal information about users, such as their citizenship.
When Google Maps takes her to settlements, Buttu says she speaks in English in hopes of passing herself off as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users tell WIRED that when they unexpectedly end up in risky areas, they try to turn around or back away as quickly as possible.
In other cases, Google Maps refuses to provide directions, such as when navigating between West Bank cities, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app tells them that “driving directions could not be calculated” (WIRED was able to replicate the same result). One of Google’s current employees says this is because Google has not invested in allowing addresses between the three administrative areas of the West Bank, two of which are officially more controlled by Israeli authorities. Bourdeau, the Google spokesperson, says the company is working to fix the problem.
New challenges
Despite its drawbacks, users tell WIRED that they previously still found Google Maps useful in the region, especially when traveling to unknown places. However, since the war began, they feel that the application has become unbearable. Shortly after the fighting began, Google removed the ability to see an overview of live traffic in the region. protect “the safety of local communities.” Users now have to enter a specific location to see traffic conditions along their route, adding a potentially extra step for some of them.
Two current Google employees also say that, due to changing conditions on the ground during the war and the increase in spam that tends to follow conflicts, Google has not acted on many of the suggested edits submitted by West Bank employees and drivers. , which alert the technology giant to problems such as missing streets or places. This has caused the app’s road data to become outdated over the past year. Bourdeau says Google applies updates when suggestions can be verified through trusted sources.