When was the picture taken? Who knows

Technology and Software

This post is a translation from Hebrew from a popular Israeli blog 

Is might seem as a technical problem, but I feel it may teach us something about the way Google behaves. 

Introduction: it started with a story in Israel’s channel 2 news, describing a Star of David that has been engraved into the Dahniye airport runway, now visible from space via Google Earth. The report stated that the Star of David was engraved “lately” by IDF tractors during Israeli operation in the area. I decided to check the issue and contacted Israeli Google PR, who directed me to the Digital-Globe layer in Google Earth that shows the date during which the picture was taken. But is it indeed so?

One of my editors in “Yedioth Ahronoth” newspaper was the first to notice something was wrong: he couldn’t recognize certain details in certain images. According to the date shown by the layer, those details should have already been visible. How could this be? He first asked himself and then me. His speculation was seemingly impossible: perhaps Digital-Globe, that takes the pictures for Google, uses this layer in order to offer their service. They sort of say: “we took a picture of this area in the date shown right here. You can’t see the newest picture, but we’ve got it. If you want to buy it, call us and we’ll be more than glad to sell you the picture for a thousand dollars or so.”

I told the editor it doesn’t sound right to me. I told him it can’t be that Google lets Digital-Globe use their platform in order to sell their service, and that there isn’t any other way to see a picture’s date using the program. I also told him this was the explanation given to me by Google representatives. Nevertheless, I contacted Israeli Google PR once more. They agreed that the editor’s idea wasn’t likely, but moved the question on to Google’s European PR. The Europeans agreed with Israeli PR that agreed with me that the idea wasn’t too likely, but they turned the question to Google Earth guys.

Google Earth guys said my editor was right.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there seems to be no way to know when was a Google Earth picture taken. Google doesn’t offer this information in the program itself. You might be seeing a picture taken during 2007, or perhaps during 1997. There is no way to know. The Digital-Globe date layer is a commercial having nothing to do with the visible picture you see – and if there is such a connection it is purely random and unverifiable (hence the Dahniye airport Star of David might have been engraved 5 years ago).

I believe this story is important for two reasons. The first is Google Earth: I can’t recall reading that there actually isn’t any way to know when was a picture taken. The second is Google itself: it’s obvious that the company knows exactly when was every picture taken, but it decides not to give it away, not to expose it. You’d better bear this in mind whenever dealing with a company whose ethos is “visibility and organization of information”.

Ethos my @#!*.

No tag for this post.

Related posts

Rogel @ October 28, 2007