Death Inc

A border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica was off by 3,000 meters on Google Maps. This sparked Nicaraguan military commander Eden Pastora to invade Costa Rica and order troops to take down Costa Rican flags in a disputed territory. A Google spokesperson said the source of the error was unknown, but two entire countries have felt its effects. (See pictures of Google doodles.)

We can't really blame Google for this snafu; we can only blame Pastora for using Google Maps for military business. Official maps for both countries say the land in question belongs to Costa Rica. And, Fast Company reports, Bing had the border correct. Score one for Microsoft, the true victors in this battle. (Search Engine Land, via Fast Company)

In the original release of Windows 95, you could change your time zone by clicking on the map, and the time zone you selected would highlight. Similarly, you could change your Region Settings by clicking on the world map. This was one of those little touches that made Windows 95 that much more fun to use.

But we had to remove those features within months of release, even though we based both of the maps on the borders officially recognized by the United Nations.

In early 1995, a border war broke out between Peru and Ecuador and the Peruvian government complained to Microsoft that the border was incorrectly placed. Of course, if we complied and moved the border northward, we'd get an equally angry letter from the Ecuadorian government demanding that we move it back. So we removed the feature altogether.

The time zone map met a similar fate. The Indian government threatened to ban all Microsoft software from the country because we assigned a disputed region to Pakistan in the time zone map. (Any map that depicts an unfavorable border must bear a government stamp warning the end-user that the borders are incorrect. You can't stamp software.) We had to make a special version of Windows 95 for them.

Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.