Google Maps Says: “Swim Across the Atlantic Ocean”

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A friend of mine from Oregon recently sent me a short directive.? She said that I should go to maps.google.com.? “Why?” I said, “I already have a?GPS device.”?

“Just do it.” She said.?

Well, one must never deny?an appeal to “just do it,” so I made my way to Google Maps post-haste.

“Ok, now click on?’Get Driving Directions.’ Then?type in New York as your point of origin and Paris, France as your?destination.”?She said.

I was still confused, and most definitely not quite amused.

Then she said to scroll down to?prompt #23.

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“But I don’t have my fins!” I exclaimed.

Sure enough, it’s another case of Google Maps wigging out, quite literally.? In another case, a bug (an earWIG, ironically) got caught in the scanning process.? When one typed in the coordinates of: 48.857635,10.20529 a giant killer alien (or an ultra-large scanned bug) showed up on the satellite.? Google has since fixed the problem now all that remains as evidence is an off-color square in a giant swathe of German farmland.

This case?of purportedly “swimming?across the atlantic” seems to me to?be the first of many of Google’s intentional bugs to delight its users.??And, if so, I applaud Google.? It’s an ingenuous marketing effort on their part. Word is already flying among the ears and wigs of MySpace. A truly viral campaign that really started with a bug — maybe even an intentional one at that.?

Then again, it could be another bored Google worker with too much time on his hands…. those lucky bums and their $400-share stock options…