Google has responded to my query about what caused the entire pre-burned Pacific Palisades to be magically restored in its Maps application — causing a cascade of cynicism and criticism.
This criticism and wonder, of course, centers on whether this miraculous restoration was meant to help (communist) Mayor Karen Bass in the June primary by erasing the biggest and deadliest blunder of her life from the mind of the minds of voters who might find the fully "restored" Palisades reassuring. Ballots are out now. Get YOURS!
I wrote about it on Sunday in Why Did Torched Ghost Homes of Palisades and Altadena Just Miraculously Reappear on Google Maps? and noted that live in a hyper-political time in which online dictionaries, received wisdom, moral codes, and even judges’ sentences are shaped and turned on their head by political ephemera.
It's easy to question whether a Google employee would pull a stunt like restoring the images of a pre-cataclysmic Pacific Palisades to help out fellow traveler Karen Bass. These are the same employees, after all, who attempted to extort change from the Silicon Valley company by staging global walkouts over sexual harassment in 2018, forced Google to cancel a Pentagon contract that would have used its technology in drones and other weapons of war, conducted anti-Israel demonstrations in 2023 and 2024, and held sit-ins that got several workers fired.
I mean, these people look like Antifa on May Day.
I can well understand why nobody to the right of John Fetterman would trust these guys.
So on Monday morning I got my cuppa Joe and rechecked Google Maps. I discovered that you can still see those unblemished houses from here.
I dashed off an email and Google later responded to my query, "Hi Victoria -- Here is our response that you can use for your story: https://x.com/
What a weird response I thought, until, of course, I clicked on the link, which read, "This is a technical issue triggered by a recent, routine update to satellite imagery in Google Maps and Earth, which accidentally restored old imagery from before the fires. We’re fixing it ASAP."
It was then that I saw this response was to mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt's blunt query: "dear @Google Wtf is this."
dear @Google Wtf is this https://t.co/nqCP3UyvyC
— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) May 18, 2026
On Sunday I reported that this sort of thing has been known to happen and was perhaps caused by some technical glitch of which I was unaware. Since no reporting had been done about it at that point, I consulted the Orb — two versions of AI — to see if there were links or writings that would explain it.
I wondered if there was some technical answer that I wasn't aware of and decided to check AI. After checking both Grok and Perplexity AI, Perplexity answered, "The pattern across reports is clear: the return of intact houses on Google/Apple Maps is a technical artifact (reverted satellite tiles or 3D model glitches), not the result of a political directive." Grok agreed and explained further:
Google Maps initially updated its satellite layer post-fire to show the burn scars and rubble (visible for over a year).
Recently (around mid-May 2026), it reverted many affected neighborhoods in Pacific Palisades (and parts of Altadena) to pre-January 2025 imagery. Homes "reappear" because the map is now using older photos, not new post-rebuild data.
I followed up via email to find out how this "technical" and "routine update" happened in the first place and if "ASAP" is measured in minutes, days, or glacial periods. Later, I got this reply:
This technical issue has been fixed. Post-fire imagery is rolling out again now across Google Maps and Earth. https://t.co/I3xly9Iu9E
— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) May 18, 2026
Mistakes can be made. And, as of publication, the pre-fire Pacific Palisades of old was still on the Google Maps app (you can see it here).
Pratt wants Angelenos to know that his house is really — still — gone. While he's deadly serious about cleaning up L.A. as a result of the completely incompetent response before and after the January 2025 fire, he hasn't lost his sense of humor. Look at this latest campaign video — a takeoff of Pratt and his Airstream story in a send-up of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
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