Tech & Biz

Google Earth: Making Katrina amends with Darfur?

by Kaitlin | April 10, 2007 at 03:43 pm

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Google Earth is partnering with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to show Google users the atrocities occurring in Darfur. Satellite images will be used in conjunction with icons showing "destroyed villages, displaced people, and refugee camps."

This is an interesting move by Google, who not too long ago faced a backlash from New Orleans residents for showing pre-storm photos of the city instead of current, post-Katrina images. Is it too obvious to point out that this seems like a clear sleight-of-hand to make up for the Katrina gaffe? Most likely they were working on the Darfur project before, but maybe some Google higher-ups pushed it to be finished a little faster after the slip.

I just visited Google Maps' satellite image of New Orleans; as of 4:39pm on April 10, 2007, it shows the city intact, pre-Katrina. Hmm. Well, at least they've got Darfur (you have to download Google Earth to see it). After all, icons showing atrocities in faraway lands are sure to mobilize the masses--seeing their images on TV sure does.

When users scan over the Darfur region, where the United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in four years of carnage, Google Inc. hopes to attract their gaze with icons.

The icons represent destroyed villages with flames and refugee camps with tents. When users zoom in to a level of magnification that keeps most of Darfur on a computer screen, the icons seem to indicate that much of the region is on fire. Clicking on flame icons will open windows with the village's name and statistics on the extent of destruction.

Google enhanced the resolution for certain areas of the region so that users can zoom in to see the burnt remnants of houses. Google says it will periodically update the images.