Google Misplaces Luna, N.M.

In researching a story I wrote today on the massive Wallow Fire in Arizona, I wanted to find out the distance between Luna, N.M., a small town potentially threatened by that fire, and Springerville, Ariz., a town just across the state border where multi-agency teams have set up their fire management headquarters.

My handy-dandy paper New Mexico atlas showed that Luna was not too far from Springerville. But I wanted the exact distance, so I decided to try Google Maps. Alas, Google decided Luna belonged just north of Deming, N.M., or about 150 miles south of its actual location, accurately pinpointed by Mapquest about 48 miles southeast of Springerville.

Now I realize that Luna, population 242, does not have the importance of Mountain View, Calif., home of the world-famed Googleplex. But I bet all the Google-eers would be mighty unhappy to wake up tomorrow to learn that their map software had arbitrarily moved Mountain View somewhere south of Fresno.