• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 2, 2007

Outdated satellite images of New Orleans now available on Google Earth have attracted the attention of the U.S. Congress, which has asked CEO Eric Schmidt to explain himself.

At some point in the fairly recent past, Google replaced its satellite map of a post-Katrina New Orleans with older, pre-hurricane images. Google's official explanation leaves a lot to be desired. John Hanke, Google's director for maps and satellite imagery, told the Associated Press that "a combination of factors including imagery date, resolution, and clarity" factor into the images shown. "The latest update from one of our information providers substantially improved the imagery detail of the New Orleans area," Hanke said, according to the AP.

In other words, if Hanke is to be believed, Google decided to use the old images because they offer superior visual detail -- never mind the minor matter that they're wrong. In fact, chances are it's all just a mistake. It's hard to imagine why Google would deliberately display false information -- not if it wants people to use Google Earth.

Whether this apparent snafu warrants Congressional investigation is a separate question. In some ways, a Congressional demand for answers is similar to KinderStart's ill-fated decision to sue Google. KinderStart sued the search giant after it dropped the site's Page Rank to zero, so that when people typed the term "KinderStart" into the query box, the Web site KinderStart.com no longer appeared in the organic results.

A federal judge recently tossed the case and, adding insult to injury, said Kinderstart had to pay some of Google's attorney fees.

Google maintains that the First Amendment protects its right to display any results its algorithms deem appropriate. If this reasoning is correct, the First Amendment also protects Google's ability to display images of a pre-Katrina New Orleans. Whether the company will be able to maintain its credibility if it does so for long is another matter entirely.