Last week we reported that there was something fishy going on with Google’s suspicious replacement of post-Hurricane Katrina satellite images with maps of the area prior to the storm.   Well a House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on investigations and oversight has concluded that Google’s actions are a ” great injustice (to the storm’s victims) by airbrushing history.” 

On Friday the subcommittee asked Google Inc. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt what was behind the switch to the outdated imagery.  The switch was believed by many locals to be a conspiracy by Google and perhaps the local civic leadership to portray the recovery to progressing at a faster rate than in reality.  After the storm subsided many residents relied on Google to remotely see whether their homes were damaged. 

 

 

The company has said efforts are being made to update the imagery to reveal a more accurate depiction. It was not clear when the current images replaced the Post-Katrina views.  The committee has asked Google to brief his staff by April 6 on who made the decision to replace the imagery with pre-Katrina images.  They are also required to disclose if the company was contacted by the city, the F.E.M.A  or any other government entity about changing the imagery. 

I don’t trust anything about this story.  Is it possible now that members of the subcommittee might have actually been in part BEHIND the switch of images and began an investigation to throw us off their trail?  Nothing about this whole Katrina situation has ever been on the up and up and it looks like the smoke and mirrors have continued.