This is the very lovely, but otherwise totally normal-looking Place de Terreaux in Lyon, France. Nothing strange about it at all, right?

However if you turn on the “show labels” option on Google Maps, it looks a lot like Google have been trying to draw a gigantic GPS penis.

Is it possible that the map provider did this on purpose, as a way of identifying their map data (a Trap Street), or is this just a very happy-looking coincidence?

Thanks to Keir at Google Maps Mania.

If you didn’t already know, Valentine’s Day is imminent, so if you’ve not got that special someone a gift yet you better get on with it!

Perhaps we can help with some Google Earth sights around the globe?

In LA, where just a standard rectangular swimming pool isn’t enough, you need to show love for your other half by building them a heart-shaped swimming pool.

Or take a walk down the aptly-named Cupid Row in San Bruno to these two streets, which together form a perfect heart shape. I wonder if the any of the houses are for sale?

But if you can’t afford a new gaff, how about writing your beloved a simple message of love?

We’re still in California, where a field displays the simple message of “I (heart) U”. Presumably all the local men have at some point claimed responsibility for the declaration¹.

On a German beach near Warnemündethere, there’s a message of love which reads “Andrea möchtest du mich …”. Jenni from Google Sightseeing Deutsch has translated this as “Andrea, would you like to … me”, suggesting that the missing work (obscured by an unhelpful cloud) is “heiraten” (marry). ²

To seal the deal our suitor has even added a large love heart.

Lastly, we visit a packed Brighton seafront for a building promotes Love and Peace in one giant message.

Google Sightseeing wishes you all a happy Valentine’s Day, however you’re spending it! For more romance, we’ve previously visited various other heart-shaped things and heart pools.

Thanks to i-cube, Catherine, PatrickSalsbury, 89shelby, Marc Cohen, Meigel and Alexei.

Many people have tried to get their personal messages captured on Google Earth, but for whatever reason, most have failed – even when they knew the images were being taken.

On this basketball court in Australia however, someone has finally succeeded in having their message deliberately captured, and this time the message is a rather anti-Google one…

The message, which covers the entire court (you can see the shadows of the nets at either end), reads “Google stole my Adsense” – implying that whoever created these words is in some sort of dispute with Google over payments from their “contextual advertising solution”, Google Adsense.

What isn’t clear however, is who the person responsible is or, more importantly, whether or not Google will allow this image to remain visible.

We’ve seen many times that El Goog are happy to remove Street View images at the request of members of the public, but will they remove satellite or aerial images that are critical of their practices?

Thanks to Ella.

There’s some odd sightings on the ocean floor, thanks to the much-improved ocean surface depth images that were added to Google Earth and Maps last week!

Reader aliosha was browsing the atlantic and discovered a bizarre grid pattern in the deep.

About 150 km square, it presumably isn’t a natural occurrence, but what else could create such a pattern it what must be extremely-deep water?

Even more bizarre, off the coast of Indonesia is what would easily be the largest writing on the planet. At around 130 km wide, it would dwarf second place by a factor of about 30x.

Unfortunately, it is only the largest writing on Google Earth, as this message doesn’t actually exist.

It says “DTS/SIO”, and was added by David T. Sandwell (DTS), a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).

The sea bed imagery comes from a variety of bathymetry sources, including the SIO, and Mr Sandwell added the false underwater canyons so that they could see where the SIO’s data was being used.

Thanks to aliosha and GEarth Blog (who also have news of a special event Google are hosting next week in relation to oceans on Google Earth).

Written in the sands of the Atacama Desert, Chile, are the words “ni pena ni miedo” which translate more or less as “No shame nor fear”, and together they form what must surely be the world’s largest poem.

While we’ve seen large type in every corner of the world, in this particular case the absolute enormity of the words is jaw dropping. The four words are in excess of 3.15 kilometres long!¹

The poem is the work of Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, a man who suffered directly at the hands of the military dictatorship that ruled Chile during the 70s and 80s. Zurita said that during Augusto Pinochet’s regime he “began to imagine writing poems in the sky, on the faces of cliffs, in the desert”.

In 1982 Zurita published part two of his “Anteparaiso” poetic trilogy, which he then had written in the skies above New York by five aeroplanes in 8 kilometre high letters. In the 90s, Zurita turned his attention to this bit of desert, where he had the sand bulldozed into these magnificent words.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this exceptional land art is the attention to detail that has been lavished upon it. It’s obvious that the shapes of the letters themselves are exquisitely crafted – but zooming in closer reveals the huge effort that must have gone into the process.

Due to the nature of deserts, these words should have been swept away by the wind many years ago. However, it seems that the local village has taken stewardship of the poem, and sends the local children out every Sunday to maintain the shifting sands.

See our related posts on LUECKE, The Readymix Logo, Mundi Man and Marree Man for more enormous artworks.

Thanks to Frank Taylor at the ever-informative Google Earth Blog, and yipero at the newly renovated Keyhole Forums.