Google has validated the existence of Wellesley’s Oakland Street, home to MassBay Community College, the Elizabeth Seton Residence and a slew of homeowners. As we reported over the weekend, the street had been replaced on Google Maps for at least the past week by Wellesley Avenue, much to the chagrin of residents, whose pizza deliveries and carpools were messed up. In MassBay’s case, receptionists fielded calls from confused would-be visitors.
Google does provide a feedback mechanism, and in this case, got plenty of feedback from the town’s GIS department, MassBay and residents. Whether or not that’s what triggered the fix we’ll probably never know, but at least for now Oakland Street is back on the map.
The town has had success in the past getting Google attention. Wellesley GIS manager Christine Narayan wrote to us that “We were able to get Morses Pond Beach added as a Point of Interest in Google Maps last summer. Previously they only had a point for Morses Pond (in the middle of the pond) so folks were getting routed to Lake Rd. for access and it was a tight turn around when they found no beach access there (with a resident’s truck getting hit). Now that Morses Pond Beach is a POI, Google Maps routes people onto the preferable Morses Pond Access Road instead.”
Separately, over the weekend I actually got Facebook’s ear and they validated our Swellesley Facebook page. Maybe this huge tech companies aren’t so unresponsive after all.
