Mercator Projection Hating Continues

Jeff Thurston asks a simple question:

Why take perfectly projected GIS data and stick it into Bing Maps or Google Maps? Isn’t it time that the 49th parallel was not a straight line?

I hate to break it to Jeff but 90% of the world has no idea that Bing or Google maps have a projection. People expect their web maps to look a certain way (you know where Greenland is bigger than Brazil) and because of that we’ll continue sticking” our data in Bing or Google Maps. Anyway when projections matter, use something other than Mercator. I talked a little bit about my problems trying to work with the poles before here and here.

Much like the flat earth society, these Mercator haters want to make lives harder for average users to navigate maps. If projecting your data to Mercator is causing it to be incorrect, then you are obviously doing it wrong.

The GeoMonkey has always enjoyed the Mercator projection because he doesn’t like going to the poles

The GeoMonkey has always enjoyed the Mercator projection because he doesnt like going to the polesThe GeoMonkey has always enjoyed the Mercator projection because he doesnt like going to the poles


Tags
Thoughts

Date
August 13, 2009