Major Victory for Battersea & for Clapham - Googlemaps corrected - TomTom comes up trumps and gives an early Christmas present to Battersea...and to Clapham! In January 2010, we started our campaign to get Googlemaps to correct its data and put Clapham back home where it is, and not in the middle of Battersea on top of our town centre Clapham Junction, which takes its name from the famous railway station. See the story here: Since then we have been in touch with Google and the company that provides their map data, TeleAtlas and its parent company TomTom. We wrote to the Chief Executive of TomTom, Mr Harold Goddijn and continued to speak with people at Google. We got a reply back from TomTom that was very encouraging: See story: Here is a reminder of what TomTom told us:
In October we got an encouraging update from one of TomTom's experts:
Mr Coppens has (to borrow a favourite phrase of Boris Johnson, Mayor of London) 'Played a blinder' and delivered a change to Googlemaps almost 6 months earlier than we expected! So here is the evidence for lovers of Battersea and of Clapham to feast their eyes on - remember that Clapham hadn't even been on the map in the place it is located: Googlemaps corrected: Monday 12th December 2011 Closer shot: ...and to remind us what existed before: Thanks to many people: There are thanks to offer many people and we'd run out of space of we tried to mention all. So firstly, a big thank you to all those people from Battersea that helped us campaign for this change and made frequent contact with Google and TeleAtlas. Thanks most of all to Mr Harold Goddijn, CEO of TomTom for having ensured that we finally got action, and to his colleagues, particularly Mr Wilfried Coppens. We also should acknowledge the help of one of our London MEPs, Syed Kamal, who responded to our early campaign news by contacting people he knew at Google and making sure the problem was on their radar screens. Our London Assembly Member, Richard Tracey has been actively supportive throughout, helping to ensure that the Mayor of London Boris Johnson was kept abreast of news and gave us his support. Also, our local MP Jane Ellison. But most of all it was the many people who love Battersea who provided us with the encouragement to keep plugging away at the giant Google corporation and its map providers, TomTom/TeleAtlas. Happy Christmas - we're back on the map! |