Wired on :

Beneath its slick interface and crystal clear GPS-enabled vision of the world, Google Maps roils with local rivalries, score-settling, and deception. Maps are dotted with thousands of spam business listings for nonexistent locksmiths and plumbers. Legitimate businesses sometimes see their listings hijacked by competitors or cloned into a duplicate with a different phone number or website. In January, someone bulk-modified the Google Maps presence of thousands of hotels around the country, changing the website URLs to a commercial third-party booking site (which siphons off the commissions).

This article is worth a read. It’s unlikely that hacking Google Maps leads to a business bankruptcy but after reading the article you wonder whether all this open approach to IT solutions is always good. 

Geeks for the most part are good natured and positive about humans. We really believe that giving something out for free is going to help everyone. What we tend to forget is that there’s always someone out there taking advantage of what is part of the community. Call him a vandal, or a hacker, or more appropriately a criminal but the truth is you cannot let something like Google Maps unguarded and packed with security holes. 

I much prefer — and the readers of this blog already know it — a more closed approach, in which an entity has control over what data is being changed. Of course, this entity should be scrutinized, and have clear processes to deal with errors.