.. And a lot of resources. An interesting article on CNN about what is behind Tele Atlas’s constantly updating base road data.

Tele Atlas gets this information by combining satellite imagery, local, state and federal maps and most importantly, putting the rubber to the road in its Mobile Mapping Vans.

Now what is interesting are their vans, like the Google street view vehicles, they are also taking high resolution images as they drive around.  But this is not for street view (thought it probably could be), it is for getting road information such as number lanes, speed limits, ramp layouts and road types.

Yes, we all know by now I am not a Google Fan.  But this is just something I don’t think anyone should ignore.  Google Maps / Google Earth is using BAD DATA.  There is just no if’s, and’s or but’s about it.  And I had to explain it to management today after a couple of customer calls complaining that can’t find a vending machine location that we have listed.

What they had done is copied the address and pasted it into Google Maps.  They got a location, went there.. nothing there but a house.  They were lead to not only the wrong location, but a wrong location a few miles away from the correct location.  So, thanks to that.. customers do not know where to find “x” and now they are also using up gas because they were given bad directions from a “trusted” source.

Here is the location in Google Maps. (How can W Front St go down a side street and go straight anyway?)  Now, here it is every where else, being marked in the right location.  Everyone that was right was using Navteq maps where google is using Tele Atlas.

In digging deeper, a lot of address we have listed.. if you look in Google Maps for them.. will put you in the wrong location.  So, we have started telling people to use Virtual Earth maps or Yahoo Maps instead as they will give you the correct location of an address.