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Google shutters Map Maker after peeing Android prank

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

May 12, 2015 | 2 min read

Google has shuttered its map maker feature after Google Map Maker was abused due to the company's inability to moderate the sheer volume of edits.

Following a slew of copycat cases sparked by a web user adding an image of the Android peeing on an Apple in March, the company closed the service.

Pavithra Kanakarajan of the Google Map Maker team, said: “As some of you know already, we have been experiencing escalated attacks to spam Google Maps over the past few months.

“The most recent incident was particularly troubling and unfortunate – a strong user in our community chose to go and create a large scale prank on the Map. As a consequence, we suspended auto-approval and user moderation across the globe, till we figured out ways to add more intelligent mechanisms to prevent such incidents.”

As a result of the move, the systems auto-approval system has been suspended and entries are to be manually edited – which will cause a sizable backlog.

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