Satellite technology allows to get images of every single angle of the world, and Google Maps lets users see them. However, on this platform, some locations appear digitally obscured intentionally, most of the time for reasons of national security, other times for unclear reasons. This is the reason why a map of the most mentioned places around the world censored on Google Maps was created.
Main Findings
The most mentioned places in the results of the research on Google Search are Area 51 in the United States, Volkel Air Base and Koninklijk Palace in the Netherlands, Babylon-Razzaza lake in Iraq, Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia and North Korea.
The most censored countries are the US, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Greece, but some of the places marked as censored on Google Search are no longer censored on Google Maps. For this reason, France and Greece are the first two countries with more censored places.
The type of censored place that is most mentioned on Google Search results is “Military Area”.
It is possible to identify some patterns of types of censorship according to the countries in which the places are: pixels in France and Greece, blur in Spain and cover in the US.
Protocol
