Access to these data will help governments, NGOs, researchers and individuals plan without waiting for the changes to be approved and added to the official maps. World Bank partner organizations, such as government and U.N. agencies, can contact World Bank offices to request access to the data. Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Mozambique, Nepal and Haiti will pilot the project.

This partnership could improve response time and effectiveness in crises in underserved areas of the world. It's just a shame that Google has decided to compete with Ushahidi and other open-source efforts to solve this problem. Access to Google Map Maker data is privileged, and Google has chosen the mother of all elite gatekeepers, the World Bank, to facilitate this program.

The World Bank has supported much-needed online mapping efforts, such as the April 2011 project in South Sudan that enabled Google to put the new country on the map. It has also financially backed apps supporting economic development in a worldwide contest for software developers. In partnership with academic institutions, the World Bank has also backed a Web-based knowledge platform for urban development.

These are all great efforts, but they establish a familiar pattern for the World Bank. In Web technology, just as in global economic development, the World Bank has positioned itself as an unavoidable, privileged gatekeeper, and this time Google helped.

No More Open Source

We've reached out to Ushahidi for comment on the news, and we'll update with the response. While Ushahidi's non-profit, open-source efforts carry on, Google is closing off access to its mapping platform upon which great works of software were once built. Having realized the enormous value of Google Maps as a resource, Google decided to start charging for API access last year.

That's Google's commercial prerogative, but its proprietary efforts are now in competition with the open-source community. Today's partnership with the World Bank is a clearer example than the murky history of access to the Google Maps API. Google Map Maker is a moderated Google program, and Google has selected the World Bank as an arbiter of its data.

Last December, Google overhauled Map Maker's editing tools to make it easier for any Google Maps user to add new data.

What do you think? Is the World Bank a good choice for Google as a partner? Share your thoughts in the comments.

That peer review element is key to Google Maps' new direction. In September, Google rearranged the Map Maker review process, deputizing regional expert reviewers to expand its capacity to handle crowd-sourced edits. Today's new tools take that a step further, allowing anyone to review proposed edits before they're incorporated into the live map.

Google Map Maker has been around since 2008, but it had limited scope for a while, and all edits were reviewed by staff. It only came to the U.S. this April. As Google Maps spreads and gets more detailed around the world, the influx of content has strained its capacity. It took two months for the Google team to incorporate South Sudan's independence, for example.

But by opening the door wider to crowd-sourced content, Google was able to quickly add more detailed maps of a range of important countries this year, all thanks to volunteer Map Maker editors.

The Google Maps team runs a pretty tight ship; it can usually handle edits faster than you might think. Improving the quality of community edits will only speed up the process. Google Maps needs more capacity, too. With its plans to move inside buildings, Google Maps will have lots of little details to deal with.

Today's announcement incorporates community contributions from a bunch of new countries, territories, and even an entire continents into the live Google map. The graduates are: Afghanistan, Antarctica, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Honduras, Iraq, Norfolk Island, Saint Pierre & Miquelon and Saudi Arabia.

Google has strained under the weight of mapping the entire wold. After launching Map Maker to crowdsource the effort in 2008, it has steadily increased the importance of community contributions. In April, Google opened Map Maker in the U.S., a tacit admission that it can't map all the locations and businesses itself, even in the world's most wired places.

In September, the Google LatLong team even shifted some of the Map Maker approval process onto Regional Expert Reviewers from the community, rather than having staff moderate all changes.

The system has shown signs of strain. It took the Google Maps team two months to recognize South Sudan's independence, despite a clamoring community. But Google has pressed forward with its effort to expand the global importance of Maps. In August, 40 new countries received localized top-level domains for Google Maps.

As curating Maps becomes a worldwide effort, crowd contributions from Map Maker will only become more important. Today's large crop of graduates is a recognition of great work by a community of volunteers around the world.

Congratulations to the graduates!

For more before-after photos and videos, check out the Google LatLong Blog.

The Map Maker Global Competition, which challenges users to add high-quality data on universities, schools, hospitals and medical clinics in Google Map Maker, will run from Dec. 15, 2009 to Jan. 31, 2010. The grand prize for the user who adds the greatest quantity of data is a $50,000 UNICEF donation to the winner's home country.

Google's Map Maker shows users satellite images and asks them to add data to make actually useful maps. These citizen cartographers can add directions, streets, schools and more; data is subject to peer moderation. The app is available in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Romanian and Vietnamese, and in more than 170 countries.

UNICEF representative Gerrit Beger told Google, "We know that mapping is a proven method to enhance community development. Google Map Maker is a powerful tool to create better situational awareness for both young people and communities at large. It will enable organizations like ours to better deliver services, respond to crises and adapt to change."

Google has also just wrapped up a similar competition focusing on Latin America. In that event, more than 50 teams from all over the world participated, which led to a 500 percent increase in mapping activity for several Latin American countries.

The Google Maps team just announced the addition of a new feature to Google Maps: the ability to contribute to and edit maps through Google Map Maker. Users can now edit and moderate various map features, including roads, lakes, power lines, and bike trails among others.

While Google already allows users to create and share new map layers through 'My Maps', this is the first time it is actively looking for help in creating maps (almost) from the ground up.

Basically, these are all countries that could, as the Google Maps team puts it, "benefit tremendously from local knowledge and expertise that you and other map makers posses, and we're excited to see how you put that to use."

Those maps that are currently available for editing vary greatly in the detail already available for them. Barbados already has a relatively complete set of roads, while Vietnam is almost completely devoid of any details outside of the major cities and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are nothing but gray blobs on the map so far.

The editing functions of Map Maker are extremely easy to use and it is probably only a question of time before more users start using their local knowledge to add to these often bare maps. For most of us, however, the real question is when Google will open up the rest of its maps for editing at this low level - or if this is even desirable.