Updated 12/10/2008 7:00 AM:Last night, Lior of the My Maps Team posted below that the problem has been fixed. Maps Guide Adam noted it as well yesterday mid afternoon. There was a sigh of relief in the groups that was audible even in western New York.

Today in the Google Maps Troubleshooting Group there were numerous complaints about serious problems with lost MyMaps.

Here is a sampling from today’s topics:

* Map missing ?? – 2 messages, 2 authors
* Problem Updating and Editing in My Maps – 2 messages, 2 authors
* My map has disappeared. HELP! – 3 messages, 3 authors
* TO GOOGLE MAPS — PLEASE UPDATE US ON THE VANISHING OF OUR WORK
* PLEASE HELP – MANY MONTHS OF WORK SEEM LOST – 2 messages, 2 authors
* Saved map gone! – 5 messages, 5 authors
* My Maps – Data Missing From My Custom Map – 1 messages, 1 author
* Google maps I created have disappeared – help! – 1 messages, 1 author
* My push pins went missing and I cannot save new ones! – 3 messages, 2 authors
* Sorry, we’re having technical difficulties. (Error code 22) – 1 messages, 1 author
* Any update on lost work?! – 1 messages, 1 author
* My Map data has disappeared – 1 messages, 1 author
* HELP! My custom Map Won’t Load – 1 messages, 1 author

Lots of folks have committed a great deal of work to Google MyMaps and now their work seems to be missing. The lack of communication from Google is leading to a strong sense of despair amongst MyMaps users. For a large, smart company, Google can act awfully dumb sometimes, particularly when confronted with this sort of PR problem. The problem was best summed up in this plaintive post:

===================================
TOPIC: PLEASE HELP – MANY MONTHS OF WORK SEEM LOST
===================================

== 1 of 2 ==

Date: Tues, Dec 9 2008 9:56 am 
From: “DAVE CREATURO CELL # XXX-XXX-XXXX”  

PLEASE HELP—-

There are a lot of people who have lost many months of work can you please update the Google maps Group and let us know what is going on and if we are going to be able to get our maps back

PLEASE HELP

Dave Creaturo
Century 21 Real Estate