A few days ago, we reported on complaints that Google Maps for Israel was in Hebrew, people wanted it to be English or to have the option. Well, Googler Dave updated the Google Maps Help thread to inform us it was a bug. He said:
Thank you for reporting this issue. This was due to a error in one of our internal software settings. We're aware of the problem and are working to return the language settings back to their previous state. I hope it won't take much longer for us to complete our fix, and we'll roll it out as soon as it's ready.
Now, I see English cities and data on the maps (new next to old):
English:
Hebrew:
Want Hebrew back? Just change the hl=en to hl=he in the URL, for example, here is the URL for Hebrew text, http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=he&geocode=&q=Jerusalem,+Israel&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=59.769082,101.601563&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Jerusalem,+Israel&t=h&z=12.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
