Over 150,000 people have criticised Google for removing Palestine from Google Maps. The problem is that it never happened.

Palestine, like other contested territories, has had a difficult time on the world’s most popular mapping tool. But it hasn’t just been removed – it never really existed on there in the first place.

The recent outrage was sparked by a petition and a hashtag – #PalestineIsHere – that said that Google was “making itself complicit in the Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine” by removing it from the map.

But it is just another example of how the site attempts to manage areas that are disputed. The site treats those areas in specific ways, showing dotted lines to indicate problematic borders and displaying different maps to different people.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Youths attend the funeral of Ahmad Sharake who was shot during clashes with Israeli forces in Jelazun refugee camp, near Ramallah, West Bank. Tensions in the area continue to run high following a series of stabbing attacks that have occurred around Israel in clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli security forces Getty Images The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The Israeli–Palestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child

That appears to be what is happening in Palestine, and it has in different ways for a long time. What’s more, it isn’t unique to Palestine and Israel.

A site called Disputed Territories collects all of the various ways that Google shows places where boundaries are fought over.

“Abroad, Google Maps has waded into raw, tender issues of national identity,” that site says in its introduction. “For example, take its depiction of Crimea on maps.google.com, where a dashed line reflects the U.S. view that the area is an occupied territory. But in Russia, on maps.google.ru, the boundary line is solid — Russia has officially annexed Crimea.”

That site hasn’t been updated since June 2014, so it doesn’t include some of the more recent territorial disputes. But it does include many of the most famous contested territories, like Crimea and more long-disputed places like Kashmir.

The company also displays contested countries differently from those whose borders are more widely recognised. For about 30 countries, instead of showing the border to anyone who searches for the country, Google just points the user to the centre of that country rather than showing its outline.

That list of countries includes Israel and Palestine, and has for a long time. But it also includes far bigger countries that have just one part of their border contested, including Russia, India and China.

The new Palestine controversy is far from the first outrage to be provoked by Google Maps’s depictions of international territories. And the petition is not even the most dangerous protest against the tool’s borders – in 2010, it was probably wrongly blamed for nearly causing a war between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Google has in the past been relatively sympathetic to Palestine and its claims of statehood. In 2013, many reported that it had in effect recognised it as a state, changing the text on its Palestinian homepage from “Palestinian territories” to just “Palestine”.

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