Google Fires OpenStreetMap Vandals

Google has responded to the accusations that one or more people, coming from IPs belonging to Google, have been vandalizing OpenStreetMap the wiki-style map project. It said that the two contractors that were responsible were acting on their own and that they are no longer working with Google.

"The two people who made these changes were contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network. They are no longer working on Google projects," Google said in a statement.

Several people representing OpenStreetMap revealed in a blog post that someone from a Google IP was vandalizing the site.

This came after a much more serious incident last week involving a Kenyan company, in which the local branch of Google and possibly some Google contractors were involved in a scheme to scrape data from the Kenyan website and lie about a partnership with it.