Nixta Sinks

Google switches to the Euro

Another Google Maps posting - I wonder what I spend my days doing...

For a couple of weeks now I've noticed that Google Maps (not to be confused with Google Earth) has had a single tile of north-west Italian roads mapped out. It seems that Google were perhaps testing loading data sectioned not only by tile but also by existing geographic boundary because on the east and south it was orthographically tiled but on the north and west it was cut off at the Italian borders.

This seemed a little odd and arbitrary to me, but today I see why. They have loaded up all the road data of Europe (barring a couple of countries - pah!).

Of interest so far is that:

• Slovenia is not mapped (oh, and some other places).


• Greece *is* mapped. I'm guessing this is some slightly out-of-date EU membership thing.


• There is no road data for the Greek islands although there is for the Sicilian ones


• Some Greek labels are in Greek alphabet, some in Roman. That appears to be a breakdown of the data between mainland/main-islands and minor-islands, though some of the minorness seems arbitrary.


• Satellite imagery is of varying quality.

All in all, rather interesting.