For last few days I saw this viral Google maps news of our country in various sites. The news clamming that a bean shaped ‘island’ like structure off the coast of Kerala in the Arabian Sea is showing on maps. However the place is nearer to land but that island is not exist in reality as nearby people did not notice this.
If I change the maps layer (from Satellite to Terrian) the island goes missing as everything in this part is showing blue water body. However the island like structure is showing on Satellite imagery of both Google maps and Google earth.
I think this might be due to glitch in satellite imagery but like many others I wish to confirm this from a Googler. If this is due to an error they can report this to appropriate team also for a correction. So I am tagging someone @DeniGu in this platform.
Few days before a grain shaped island formed across indian costal line near kerala kochi, in the satellite layer of google map shows a grain shaped land surrounded by sea but when we zoomed in we can clearly see ships and boats in it. Why this happen in google maps @googlemap#googlemapexpert@Adheesh
I didn’t responded previously because @InaS already explained that the issue is known and has been already escalated to the team.
I checked the area too, and we know that there are no islands, but this is probably a partly update of the satellite view with images with a darker colour
I am not sure why people call this an island. It’s just satellite imagery of ocean water with a few boats in it. Sure, there isn’t specific reason for Google to display this as oceans are not imaged (no point to spend money into buying pictures of water) but that’s it. Nothing incredible or surreal.
Usually this kind of viral effect is made by clickbait websites that rely on this to get more clicks and advertising revenues. It’s like all those bad news sites that keep copy pasting themselves with useless news about “6-wheeled pickups” on Street View because image stitching duplicated a wheel on the vehicle, or about a “man being cut in two” because a user-made photosphere was poorly stitched by the Street View app and only kept the legs of the man. Those websites should be avoided.
Our teams are aware and are looking into this. Since there is already a topic reporting this I am going to merge your post there.
As this is not an idea I would reccomend you to check this article How do I use the Idea Exchange and to always check the community for similar threads.
