After the recent conflict in Georgia it has been noticed that the detailed maps of Georgia are missing from Google Earth. This led to some rumors that Google has perhaps removed Georgia from Google Earth after the Russian retaliatory invasion on Georgia. This conspiracy may be provoked due to the fact that the Google’s CEO Sergei Brin is Russian born. What many people failed to notice is that Georgia’s neighboring countries Armenia and Azerbaijan also lack mapping data.

Google posted notice on Lat Long Blog that the conspiracy is not true and Google never launched the coverage in those countries because mapping data was unsatisfactory for Google. The product manager Dave Barth who addressed the issue at Lat Long Blog also said “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.”

Apart from all this controversy Russia seems to know where they are going.