Don’t trust Google Maps

Not in Australia, anyway. On Easter Sunday my wife’s cousin in NSW wanted an easy route for the 40 km cycle from Orange to Millthorpe to get there by 9 a.m. She consulted Google Maps, which gave her a route that covered 52,795 kilometres, three different countries and would have had her arriving sometime in August. Direction #41 says “Kayak the Pacific Ocean”. Then, entering Japan, direction #42 says, “Continue straight”.

Laughy Kate has full details with some very amusing screenshots as evidence. The Daily Telegraph picked up the story and asked Google what was going on:

a spokeswoman said the claims could be a hoax or the result of a “tongue-in-cheek” prank by Google engineers.

“You’ll also find our engineers had a bit of a laugh when they were putting (the service) together,” she said.

“It’s possibly part of a tongue-in-cheek thing (the cyclist) has experienced.”