After immense scrutiny from Indian Government officials around the Google mapping contest, Google India has finally announced the winners of its first and may be the last Mapathon 2013 competition. The top position goes to Vishal Saini from Pathankot city in Punjab scoring an impressive 32077 points, where each point means each addition or edits on Google Map maker.
The Google India Mapathon 2013 mapping competition which started on February 12, 2013 and ended on March 25, 2013 has participants from all over India, who created better maps for India, by adding knowledge of their neighborhoods through Google Map Maker. Winners will get lot’s of prizes including Android tablets, smartphones, gift vouchers and Google merchandise to be won by top 1000 mappers.
The mapping competition got over 26,000 participants from India who collectively made a staggering 2 million contributions to the Google India Map through Google Map Maker tool. Under this contributions a total of over 800,000 new point of interests (POIs) were added which include 22,000 Health/Emergency POIs, 30,000 shopping stores and 52,000 Restaurants/eateries.
Google has published the names of top ten winners on their official Mapathon 2013 website (Mapathon 2013) and all other winners have been notified through email. Winners can get hands on 10 Samsung Galaxy Note 800 tablets, 40 Samsung Galaxy S II GT I9100 Android Phones, 50 Flipkart gift coupons worth Rs 5000 and 1000 Google Mapathon 2013 t-shirts and certificates.
“We want to sincerely thank everyone for your patience and understanding in the delays we experienced in announcing the results. We’re thrilled to finally be able to applaud your impressive contributions. The enthusiasm and effort you have demonstrated throughout the Mapathon was both incredible and inspiring. Thank you for making the Maps of India even better!” says mail sent by Google to all participants.
Earlier the competition got into trouble when Google faced critical scrutiny from India’s biggest opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on violating Indian defence regulations on mapping. In wake of this Survey Of India (SOI) a government body responsible for carrying out surveying and mapping in the country expressed security concerns over the data being added during the Mapathon contest and demanded to review the data to make sure that it is safe to publish without revealing information that it considers sensitive. Google obliged to the demand and provided all the data to SOI, but just like every government department they took their own time which forced Google to hold the results for Mapathon 2013.