Since early Jan. if you typed NYC’s East Village zip code of 10009 into Google Maps, it said you were halfway up the Hudson – in no man’s land.

There’s a brief moment in The Social Network, where fake-Michael Cera confronts Facebook’s start-up CFO on the phone. His valid complaint is that a glitch like servers going down, even for a few minutes, can have wide sweeping ramifications for a portal that’s meant to keep everyone dependent on it.

Basically, the servers were down for part of a day… Google Maps hasn’t had a clue where the East Village is for two months!

Which means that if you want to look up movie times for Angelika, Film Forum or IFC using Google Movies, you  get info on what’s screening at Magic Johnson Theaters.

Which really blossoms out of control when you consider the number of apps and sites that use Google Maps at the core of their architecture. Wanna find a restaurant in one of the most media-centric zip codes in the entire world? Or a bar, store or service in an area where owners fight to be located? Entering 10009 won’t help. And with most tools like MenuPages, Yelp and “Googling” – it is ALL based on the zip that’s tied into Google.

Which is fucked. Oh yeah… Did we mention this problem has been going on since early Jan and still there’s no fix is in sight?

Now, on Google Maps there’ a button in the lower-right saying REPORT A PROBLEM. Well, if you input the zip code for the epicenter of downtown activity in NYC – The East Village – into Google Maps, it tells you that you’re located by the George Washington Bridge… The time now is 12:18p EST on 2/10/2011. We are starting the clock on how long it takes before this core element of thousands of apps actually gets fixed… BUT the real question is, if it’s so core, how come no one has mentioned what’s happening NYC’s app centric backyard?

Tags: Apps, Google, The Social Network, Yelp
Posted in: General