Fake streets and cities on Google Maps: The reason is awesome
Google Maps knows streets that really don't exist. But the fake streets and fake cities have a good reason: copyright. Other card services also cheer their users on numerous fakes - what is behind it?
"Trap Street": Fake streets on Google Maps, Bing Maps & Co.
- The street "Am Kirschgarten" makes the thousand-soul village Erpolzheim in Rhineland Palatinate a little celebrity. Because if you take a closer look, you will see that the street really doesn't exist. Instead, there is a large field at the location.
- The map service Bing Maps has hidden a so-called "Trap Street" in Erpolzheim. According to experts, there are thousands of wrong streets and even wrong cities in the maps from Bing Maps, Google Maps and other providers. Names and places are always selected that definitely do not exist and therefore can not confuse a navigation system. But the fakes are rarely known. And if they do, the card services will remove them quickly.
- The Trap Streets have a good reason: they are a kind of watermark and serve as evidence if a website uses the map material without permission. Because creating the maps is associated with high costs, they are also protected by copyright. The wrong cities and street names make it easy to identify the maps. A similar procedure is also used for telephone books: The manufacturers maintain fake contacts in the databases, so that data theft can be clearly proven.
4 fake streets and cities on maps
- The oldest example dates from 1925 and is the fictitious city of Agloe near New York. The city name is an anagram of the names of the two cartographers Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers. Less than ten years later, the competition also released a map of New York that Agloe found himself on. So the card could be convicted as a plagiarism.
- The English city of Argleton only existed on Google Maps - but unfortunately it was deleted by Google in 2009. The curious thing about it: where there was really only one field, you could actually see houses on the map. But they are said to have all come from the surrounding areas.
- Two other Google fakes are known from Great Britain: The two streets Moat Lane and Lye Close were listed on Google Maps for several years. In reality, however, both roads never existed.
- Do you know Princess Sina Milena? She is a real celebrity in Germany and there is Princess-Sina-Milena-Strasse in eight cities. Just stupid that there is no princess Sina Milena. The streets are all invented by the HERE map service. In Solingen, Darmstadt and Münster, among others, HERE navigation leads you to Fake Street.
On the next page we show you the 7 most bizarre places on Google Maps. The 1970 anti-missile defense system is still in one place - you must have seen that ...