Small Privacy Bug in Google Maps

I was poking around in Google Maps tonight, and discovered that the “Link” button contains a reference to the last map you looked at, as well as the current one.

Steps to replicate:

Go to http://maps.google.co.uk/ and search for “Birmingham”

Now search for “London”

Click “Link”. The link should look something like this:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=London&sll=52.487798,-1.893768&sspn=0.262996,0.617981&ie=UTF8&ll=51.510452,-0.126343&spn=0.537601,1.235962&z=10&iwloc=A

If you snip out the sll attribute (52.487798,-1.893768) and feed it back into Maps, you’ll find it’s the lat/long for Birmingham, not London. I think it’s intentional, because the ll attribute points to London. I can’t see any obvious use for the sll attribute, though – there doesn’t appear to be a back button or history tool on the target page.

Not a big deal, but it could conceivably be an embarrassment to someone, some day.