Well this got real big real fast. It's now on Israel At Level Ground, BtB, Daled Amos, Solomonia, and a whole bunch of others.

There were three action alerts in my inbox this morning, each of increasing vehemence. I deleted the first one after I realized that it was accusing Google of anti-Semitism and the second and third ones based on their subject lines. Because if the hysterical accusations during the "Jew" Googlebombing dustup demonstrated anything - good intentions do not necessarily grant bloggers a robust grasp of new media technology). I figured that this was more of the same - pathologically anti-Israel users create content, a Google technology automatically indexes the content and makes it available, Google as a corporation gets blamed. Close. The article is written by Andre Oboler a social media expert and comp sci professor - so he knows the difference between platform and content. His concern is at the bottom:

Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent "Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the "Palestine Remembered" site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained. Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation... The inclusion of virtual Palestine, superimposed on Israel in the core layer of Google Earth, is an example of replacement geography advanced by technology. Those wishing to explore Israel in Google Earth are immediately taken to a politically motivated narrative unrelated to their quest. Google should remove the narrative and treat Israel as it treats every other country on the globe. The core layer of Google Earth should be ideology free and not serve as a platform for indoctrination or a campaign to wipe Israel off the virtual map... Disturbingly, Google has incorporated the Palestinians' overlays and their accompanying narrative into its core maps of Israel. As Google maintains editorial control over its core layer, it has responsibility for its content, which it clearly has not adequately exercised.

Yes and no. First a little background: Google Earth is a GIS platform. It takes arbitrary data inside a layer - provided it's in the right format and says where it's supposed to go - and then projects it on a map. Any user of sufficient skill can create a layer with anything they want and then make it available to everybody else. The layer in question - this "Virtual Israel" thing - has points representing a bunch of Arab villages that either never existed, were never destroyed, or were destroyed long before Israel existed. Vicious and false - but not Google's fault any more than a webpage saying the same thing is Google's fault. Oboler's claim seems to be that Google incorporated this layer into their default installation of Google Earth - almost as if when you searched for "Israel" on Google itself you got a sponsored anti-Israel page at the very top. The problem is that - as near as I can tell - there is no "Virtual Israel" layer in the Google default. The misleading information that's pissing everybody off is there, but it seems to be in a different layer - and not one that there's an easy solution for.