Spamming Google Maps

An anonymous reader writes "Google organized a flyover of Sydney, Australia last Friday for Australia Day. The images taken on the day will be posted to Google Maps in a few weeks. A number of dotcoms spent hours making huge signs that would be visible from the air. It will be interesting to see whether Google will repeat the event in other cities. If they do, get prepared early. What sign would you make?"

None

[Turn-X Alphonse]

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

Re:None

[suv4x4]

None, because it ruins the entire point of maps if you turn them into nothing but billboards.

This is easily solved by the online maps simply not announcing where they'll shoot next week. Unless you have the money to spam the entire world, for an year...

Re:Does it matter...

[pla]

For example, look here. It is off the california coast, near LAX.

Sorry, I don't get it - I see you got modded funny, but unless the joke comes from getting people to follow the link for no reason, I just don't know what you meant to link to.

Do you mean the Google watermark on all their images, which shows up better on smooth water than on varied terrain?

I tried zooming both in and out, but see nothing.

Many of you are missing the point

[Syde]

Its kind of hard to be calling it spamming when Google actually asked people to do this... If you think its stupid, then call google stupid, not the people that participated. http://www.google.com/intl/en_au/events/australiad ay2007/index.html [google.com]

Shocked at the negative comments

[gary gunrack]

People (slashdotters?) left some really vitriolic comments on their blog. It would be a completely different situation of soulless corporations were making the ad. But this is just a geeky couple doing something creative that took alot of their time and energy, and was obviously done out of love, not greed.

Re:None

[suv4x4]

This is easily solved by putting in place a corporate policy to include roof decoration for all franchises.

You can't actually be against people doing what they want with their own roofs right? In fact, putting readable symbols on your own roof will make the building easily recognizable in a map, so it's a positive thing.

The problem in my opinion is people like those in the article which "spammed" a public park.

Re:None

[Spacezilla]

As an fyi, Google's ads frequently make up 20-30% of the data transfered when you load up a page with their ads.

I think you just made up that number in your head, but I guess if you found some REALLY small web pages with no images at all, you might be right.

An obvious one...

[niktemadur]

John 3:16

Rest assured, if and when Google announces a flyby over a United States city, this one will rear its' obnoxious head.

Re:None

[General Wesc]

I thought maps were for finding your way around. Seems like if my house had 'Wesc's House' painted on the roof, it would be beneficial.

I think putting something up just for the mapping and then removing it could be problematic, as you're intentionally making the map quickly become out-of-date, but unless your banner obscures something, still no real harm. Though, I suppose it could get annoying if everyone did it.

Reactions

[NoahKing]

Interesting to compare the response generated by this article to another where a group of open-source advocates built a crop circle [slashdot.org] in the shape of the firefox logo. As a community, our response to the giant firefox logo was overwhelmingly positive, while this article has had an overwhelmingly negative response. What makes this one spam, but the firefox advocacy a cool way to spend a weekend?

Re:None

[noidentity]

Sorry dude, if Google were really spamming, their ads would appear on pages without the author's consent.