Humans have been making maps since cave dwellers scratched on stones 14,000 years ago.

Yet in less than ten years, and despite eight billion people living in the world, the responsibility for charting the globe has fallen into the hands of one company.

Google is now the guardian of mapping. The internet start-up created in 1998, with the remit to build a search engine which ranked web pages in order of popularity and usefulness, has become the single most important cartographer in the world.

“They have become THE player, which is extraordinary because they have had to learn cartography extremely fast,” says Simon Garfield, a journalist and writer, whose most recent book, On The Map, explores humans’ long relationship with maps.

Google only began to make maps to sit beside its search listings. Five years on, it has a total of 71% of the market of online computer maps.

By 2012, it was estimated that 75% of the world’s population had been covered with its high resolution maps. Because – as well as cities and contours – Google charts every house and driveway.

To research On The Map, Garfield travelled to Googleplex, where the Google Maps building stands on a “campus”, with a picnic area, vegetable garden, massage rooms, a car wash, a dry cleaner, a crèche, a dog parlour and so on.

“The single most interesting thing is a wooden signpost in the building made to look as if it is old. It looked like something Davy Crockett might have used to find his way across a frontier.

“It has all the names of the great explorers: Eratosthenes, Marco Polo, Leif Ericsson, Sir Francis Drake, Shackleton, Buzz Aldrin, which point left and right or up or down.

“It’s a good joke to have but it’s saying Google has won. We don’t need these guys any more. We’ll take all the information they learnt in the past 700 years. This lot read like the dead wood they are.”

Google’s global impact in mapping the Earth is already greater than any other company in history. It wants to map the ocean floor and the moon. It hopes to map the Earth’s 400 billion trees. Only last week it unveiled its new version which renders cities in 3D.

Making mistakes

If Google has the information, it can control the flow of information. And it can get it wrong. When the Nicaraguans invaded Costa Rica, they blamed Google Maps because its borders weren’t right.

“Google has just released the new Google Maps and there are many more wonderful things it can do but my main interest and passion are old-style maps.

“There are great tales around them; the idea is to tell those tales, and to try to build maps into a way of writing about ourselves.”

Garfield’s previous book, Just My Type, featured stories about fonts.

“Both subjects have been hugely affected by the digital age. That was the starting point. We now sort of expect great maps for free – that would have been unimaginable 15 years ago.

“The idea of having a map on our phone which moves when we do would have been unimaginable.”

Mapping has always been a pasttime of those with aims to do more than simply record. The old empires centred their maps on the motherland, made it larger, more imposing.

Then there are the decorative, sinister maps. The Serio-Comic War Map For The Year 1877, drawn by Frederick Walrond Rose, paints Russia as an octopus with long tentacles over Eastern Europe. England is a colonising businessman and Spain is sleeping layabout, with its back to Europe.

Mappers have muddled badly, too. In 1622, in a drawing by the Spanish Historia General company, California appeared as an island. It later appeared on another 249 maps as a landmass off the US West Coast.

“I like those who got things wrong. They provide great tales,” says Garfield, who appears in Brighton on Sunday to flesh out the history and human stories of mapping.

He cites the cartographers who misplaced California and the Englishman, James Rennell, who invented a mountain range in West Africa which stayed on maps for almost a century.

Garfield’s first map was the London Underground. His mapping hero is Jean Blaeu, who is part of the 17th century Blaeu dynasty from Amsterdam. They dominated European map-making for a century. Their pièce de résistance was the Blaeu Atlas Maior.

Coloured editions would have cost 430 to 460 guilders. In those days 60 guilders could buy you the island of Manhattan from its native Indians.

“It is the most expensive book ever produced. It was a glorious thing. The most beautiful, elaborate, expensive, heaviest and stunning work of cartography.”

  • Brighton Dome Corn Exchange, Church Street, Sunday, May 26. Starts at noon, tickets £8. Call 01273 709709