It’s been several months since Google’s Map Maker was taken down due to hacking, racist map references, and other things. Recently, It was announced by Google that Map Maker would be coming back in August. Now, it looks like as of August 10th, editing has finally made its return in six countries, including:
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Canada
- India
- the Philippines
- Ukraine
As explained before, there will be a substantial reliance on selected regional lead moderators to review edits. Of course, there will be continued automated and human moderation in-house. Google said,
“We have come to the conclusion that of all the defenses available to keeping our maps clean, the interest of a community of well-intentioned users is among the most reliable and fast.”
Right now, the re-release of Map Maker is part of a planned phased reopening that will cover the course of the rest of the month and possibly even after. We don’t know how long it’ll take to get the Map Maker back online worldwide.