Zmarties

Google state in their Code of Conduct

Our goal is to build products that organize the world's information and make it accessible to our users.

However I'm noticing that they are more and more making information (that was once accessible) inaccessible. I'm not talking about data that they merely link to, but data that Google themselves control.

As a couple of examples:

• The data displayed in Google Earth and Google Local is being changed as and when Google gets hold of different aerial images. For some people having the newest images would be the best data to have available, but for others having the highest resolution data even if older is better. Google recently updated their view of Heathrow Airport, replacing a composite image taken at a number of different times with one taken all at the same time. However, the replacement image is several years older than the image they used to show - as witnessed by the fact that it shows 3 Concorde aircraft still in service - whereas the previous image showed the single retired museum piece Concorde.
• Google's image organizer Picasa used to have a very useful and well supported user forum, which was full of informative posts built up over the years. This has now been superceeded with a "Google Group", and the forum has been deleted, so all that information is lost.