Why Google Maps doesn't map Iceland

Peter Rukavina

Lost in Iceland? suggests that it’s because the government’s price for the GIS data is too high:

Karl Arnar Arnarsson, a staff member from Ísgraf, an Icelandic company specializing in selling mapping software, said that he had a few theories about Iceland’s long absence from Google Maps. “Now that Google has mapped [everything else], they’ve moved on to Iceland and because the maps are owned by the government, they’re not willing to pay a lot for them,” Amarsson said. “They’re not looking at Iceland as an isolated problem; they’re looking at the overall picture.”

Nokia Maps and ViaMichelin are missing Iceland as well. OpenStreetMap, however, seems to have pretty good coverage, especially of Reykjavik. Here’s the Iceland project page at OpenStreetMap.

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