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Well since the author did not talk to Google we will not find out by reading this article.
In their defense, the tectonic plates will have moved a __lot__ before you can expect to get any response from Google support.
"we removed most of the gulf islands, part of BC, Washington, Oregon, and California" ...
FWIW, global drift vectors by NASA: https://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/post/series.html
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1. When I think back to that car, it’s amazing what a piece of junk it was. On the other hand, it was a convertible, so a lot of fun although my wife considered it a deathtrap.
I remember having a hand-held Garmin GPS unit back in the '00s that I used on a trip to Berkeley from Los Angeles (one bonus was that the speedometer in my car didn’t work¹ so I was able to use it as a speedometer for the trip). The location that it showed on the map was consistently off by about 50 feet. I wonder now if this was a tectonic drift or just an inherent inaccuracy of the unit. ⸻ 1. When I think back to t…
I remember having a hand-held Garmin GPS unit back in the '00s that I used on a trip to Berkeley from Los Angeles (one bonus was that the speedometer in my car didn’t work¹ so I was able to use it as a speedometer for the trip). The location that it showed on the map was consistently off by about 50 feet. I wonder now if this was a tectonic drift or just an inherent inaccuracy of the unit. ⸻ 1. When I think back to t…
FWIW, global drift vectors by NASA: https://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/post/series.html
... what's the origin, when the entire surface of the Earth is sliding around?
> WGS 84 is a global standard tied to no one plate. In essence, it is fixed to Earth’s deep interior.
Those drift vectors are based on GPS, which the article also says relies on WGS 84z
I remember having a hand-held Garmin GPS unit back in the '00s that I used on a trip to Berkeley from Los Angeles (one bonus was that the speedometer in my car didn’t work¹ so I was able to use it as a speedometer for the trip). The location that it showed on the map was consistently off by about 50 feet. I wonder now if this was a tectonic drift or just an inherent inaccuracy of the unit. ⸻ 1. When I think back to t…
About 10 years ago, I did a lot of canyoning/bushwalking in the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney Australia. I’d have my Garmin GPSMAP switched on for the entire journey including the car trip. For the 20+ journeys, there would be overlapping paths where I was driving the highway through the mountains. Except none of the paths overlap. They were all smooth paths which matched the curvature of the road, but each one had a different offset, typically around 2–5 metres away from the map data. (The median of these 20+ paths was highly consistent with the map data.)
In my relatively tectonically stable country there is a single coordinate system for the whole country.
I'd imagine you need to record distance to a local landmark or similar? And what happens when there are shifts that end up in roads split in two like in Turkey last year?
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/turkey-syria-earthquake-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... what's the origin, when the entire surface of the Earth is sliding around?
From the article: > WGS 84 is a global standard tied to no one plate. In essence, it is fixed to Earth’s deep interior. Those drift vectors are based on GPS, which the article also says relies on WGS 84z
You'll see them hither and yon, but my favorite is the miniature Washington Monument buried next to the real one.
I remember having a hand-held Garmin GPS unit back in the '00s that I used on a trip to Berkeley from Los Angeles (one bonus was that the speedometer in my car didn’t work¹ so I was able to use it as a speedometer for the trip). The location that it showed on the map was consistently off by about 50 feet. I wonder now if this was a tectonic drift or just an inherent inaccuracy of the unit. ⸻ 1. When I think back to t…
50 ft seems a little large for plate tectonics , plates move on the order of a centimeter per year [1]. (similar to fingernail growth!) [1] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/tectonics.html