Buttu, who often travels to the West Bank city of Ramallah from his home in Haifa, Israel for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led him astray several times recently. years. “I was told to drive to a wall that has been built since 2003,” he said.

Others encounter the same wall near the Qalandia checkpoint that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank, and almost driving through it becomes a rite of passage. “I was trying to get to an office that was in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and Google Maps completely failed me,” said Leila, who works for a US company far from Ramallah and asked to use only his name is for privacy reasons. . “It wants me to go down a path that is completely cut off by the wall.”

Google’s Bourdeau told WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will make an update if it can verify the situation against reliable data.

Even before the war, Google Maps users in the West Bank said they were used to receiving potentially unsafe directions. A persistent issue they point to is the fact that Google does not distinguish between unrestricted roads and those 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 he said Israeli soldiers approached his car with their guns pointed at him. “I have to explain that I was wrong,” he said. Google “optimizes for going on settler roads, which for me as a Palestinian, can be very dangerous.”

Bourdeau says that Google does not distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli routes, because that requires knowing personal information about users, such as their citizenship.

When Google Maps took him to settlements, Buttu said he spoke English in hopes of passing as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users told WIRED that if they unexpectedly end up in dangerous areas, they try to turn around or retreat as quickly as possible.

In other instances, Google Maps refuses to provide directions in general, such as navigating between West Bank cities, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app told them it “couldn’t calculate driving directions” (WIRED was able to reproduce the same result). One of the current employees of Google said that because Google did not invest in enabling directions between the three administrative areas of the West Bank, two of them are officially more controlled by the Israeli authorities. Bourdeau, the Google spokesperson, said the company is working to address the issue.

New Challenges

Despite its shortcomings, users told WIRED that they still found Google Maps helpful in the past, especially when traveling in unfamiliar areas. Since the start of the war, however, they feel that the app has become unbearable. Shortly after the fight began, Google shut down the ability to see an overview of live traffic in the region to protect “the safety of local communities.” Users now have to input a specific location to see the traffic situation on their route, adding a possible extra step for some of them.

Two current Google employees also said that, due to changes in conditions on the ground during the war and an increase in spam that tends to follow conflicts, Google did not act on many suggested edits submitted by West Bank employees and drivers, alerting. the tech giant in problems such as missing streets or places. That’s why the road data in the app became outdated last year. Bourdeau said that Google applies updates when suggestions are verified by reliable sources.