Serendipity35

The recent conflict between Russia and Georgia has had people going to their Google Maps to see exactly where the fighting is occurring. This would probably be a natural geography lesson if K-12 classes were in session.

But there was a little problem - Google Maps didn't show any cities or roads for Georgia. Why?

According to Google:

Google Maps doesn't show any cities or roads for Georgia, or its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan... because we simply weren't satisfied with the map data we had available. We're constantly searching for the best map data we can find, and sometimes will delay launching coverage in a country if we think we can get more comprehensive data. Some of our customers have asked if we removed map data from any of these countries in response to the recent hostilities in that region and I can assure you that is not the case. Data for these countries were never on Google Maps in the first place.

But this has generated a lot of feedback that we are listening to and learning from. We're hearing from our users that they would rather see even very basic coverage of a country than see nothing at all. That certainly makes sense, and so we have started preparing data for the handful of countries that are still blank on Google Maps. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as other significant regions of the world will benefit from this effort.

By the way, you can access more data including cities in Georgia and other surrounding countries by installing and using Google Earth.