Buttu, who frequently travels to the West Bank city of Ramallah from her home in Haifa, Israel, for work and to visit friends, said Google Maps has led her astray many times in recent years. “I was asked to drive straight into a wall that had been under construction since 2003,” she said.
Others have encountered a similar wall near the Qalandia checkpoint that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank, and almost driving into it has become a rite of passage. “I once tried to go to an office in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem and Google Maps is completely unsuccessful.” . “It wanted me to walk on the path completely cut off by the wall.”
Google's Bourdeau told WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will update if it can verify the situation based on reliable data.
Even before the war, Google Maps users on the West Coast said they were used to receiving directions that might not be safe. One persistent problem they point out is the fact that Google does not distinguish between unrestricted roads and roads that are only allowed to be used by Israelis, such as those leading to and from Israeli settlements where Palestinians are not allowed to go. On the route from Haifa to Ramallah, Google Maps once directed Buttu to a closed gate, where she said Israeli soldiers approached her car with guns pointed at her. “I had to explain that I made a mistake,” she said. Google “optimizes traveling on settler roads, which for me as a Palestinian, can be very dangerous.”
Bourdeau said Google does not distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli routes, because that requires knowing personal information about users, such as their citizenship.
As Google Maps led her to settlements, Buttu said she spoke in English hoping to be seen as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users told WIRED that when they unexpectedly reach dangerous areas, they try to turn around or return as quickly as possible.
In other cases, Google Maps refuses to provide directions altogether, such as when navigating between cities in the West Bank, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app told them it “couldn't calculate driving directions” (WIRED was able to replicate the same result). One of Google's current employees says it's because Google hasn't invested in enabling directions between the three administrative regions of the West Bank, two of which are officially more controlled by Israeli authorities. Bourdeau, the Google spokesman, said the company is working to resolve the issue.
New challenges
Despite its limitations, users told WIRED that they have previously found Google Maps useful in the area, especially when they travel to unfamiliar locations. However, since the war began, they felt the application had become unbearable. Shortly after the fighting began, Google disabled the ability to see a live traffic overview in the area to protect “the safety of the local community.” Users now have to enter a specific location to see traffic conditions along their route, adding a potential extra step for some of those locations.
Two current Google employees also said that, due to changing conditions on the ground during war and the increase in spam that tends to follow conflict, Google has not implemented many of the edits suggested by employees and West Coast drivers, which alerts the tech giant to problems like lack of streets or locations. That caused the route data on the app to become outdated over the past year. Bourdeau said Google applies updates when recommendations can be verified through trusted sources.