Mike Blumenthal

It is Sunday and the “We Buy Houses Mapsspam are no longer visible in the Google Maps index. This particular case was reported to Google on August 1 in the Google Maps for Business Blog. This particular abuse was much more limited in scope than the Computer Repair abuse in that it only targeted large …

The Google Maps for Business blog: == 1 of 1 == Date: Thurs, Aug 2 2007 5:51 pm From: “Maps Guide Jen” Hi Bonehead, Mike, Joe, fowen, and other business owners, Thanks so much for asking about and flagging the unverified listings of TechPros and RentaGeek. We take the rights of those business owners with …

This morning I had a long and interesting conversation with the President & CEO Gabriel Howard of TechPros, one of the companies that was involved in the Bulk Upload issues reported last week. The interview is lengthy and is included at the end of this post in its entirety. The upshot (as reported by the …

Today at the Google Maps-For-Business Group another report of bul upload abuse surfaced. This time the culprit is in the “We Buy Houses” refinance industry. Like the previous case, all of the entires use a common street address (500 Main) and 800 number. Unlike the previous reports, these appear to only be listed in major …

Update 11:30 8/2- I just completed a phone conversation with the CEO of TechPros who noted that they had the listings removed. The interview will be posted later today. An alert reader, earlpearl, has noted that as of today at 6:30, Google had removed the offending listings from Google MapsThe event brought several issues with …

In the past there have been tales of skullduggery (see: Beware: Competitor Hijacks Google Local Business Listing? Maybe, Maybe Not!) at Google Maps which have proven to be false. It appeared that Google Map’s verification system was robust and while there may have been algorhytmic problems, there had been no reports of abuse….until recently. It …

The new Street View has once again raised the spectre of privacy concerns. I have trouble worrying about photos invading my privacy. I try not to walk around in public naked. On the other hand there has been an informative and provocative discussion at the Goog-411 Google Group about the privacy implications of Goog-411 and …

Google Maps launches Street View, Greg Sadetsky has some interesting technical background on the new street view feature. it appears that 5 cities are available: Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco with more likely to appear shortly. The underlying images are supplied by Immersive Media. Th

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