View Israel on Google Maps. Then look at the embedded version of the same page below.
(Here is a screenshot in case the embedded version doesn’t work).
Something missing? If you don’t see it, try zooming in on the map, and comparing Israel with Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon or even Syria. Looks like Nike and Google have something in common (most probably because Nike uses the Google Maps API to get their maps).
Now, if you go to the Google Maps site, you can see roads in Israel (and get directions, etc – all of the regular Maps functions). So why would they disable it for the embedded/API version? My best guess (though it is hard to understand those who think this way): Google doesn’t want to risk “offending” users in countries that hate Israel by having any details of Israel show up on embedded maps that said users would use on their own websites. So they just removed all details of Israel from the embedded version. Problem solved. The Zionist Entity is now gone. Or something like that. (If you want to find an alternative map site in Israel, try Mapa).
See Jonathan’s comment below and this thread on the Google forums for more info. Looks like it is a content licensing issue.
December 1st, 2009 at 22:00
Interesting: if you zoom in, or drag around, the Israeli roads briefly appear, and then get “painted out”.
I googled a bit, and found this discussion thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-data-api/browse_thread/thread/6a2a8fac9735280e?pli=1
In that thread, it is claimed that the problem is that Google doesn’t have the rights to display the information in an embedded map, only in a direct link map. (And that the “culprit” for this is indeed mapa, who apparently licenses the map data to Google).
December 10th, 2009 at 23:46
Isn’t it better for security reasons for Google not to show Israel?
I would think having Google Maps would help the evil doers.
March 12th, 2010 at 1:46
Well, their satellite images are always out of date, some by YEARS