Pawtucket, R.I.-based toy maker Hasbro plans to release an online, Google Maps-ified version of the board game Monopoly, according to the Guardian. Google apparently has a sense of humor about itself, but not enough of one to name the game what everyone will likely end up calling it anyway — “Google Monopoly.”
Monopoly City Streets launches tomorrow. According to reports, players get $3 million to play Monopoly using real streets. Given recent antitrust rumblings in Italy, the game could end up being a good test of the search giant’s algorithm’s ability to parse confusing search terms, or a handy way to divert web traffic from people searching for “Google” and “monopoly.”
And since including Adobe or WordPress would run counter to the spirit of the game — it’s not called Healthy Competition City Streets — the game allows you to design houses and hotels using Google Sketchup, and is releasing news on a Google-hosted Blogger.com blog.
Posted by Brendan Lynch
Tags: antitrust, Blogger, GIS, Google, Google Maps, Google Sketchup, Hasbro, Italy, Monopoly, Monopoly City Streets
RSS Feeds
If you want to see the Monopoly competition buildings on your iPhone in 3D, you can do so with NaviCAD (http://www.navicad.com). Just type in “monopolycompetition09″ in the search interface and tap a result. Note that NaviCAD is only a viewing/navigating app. Any suggestions are welcome–send an email to feedback@navicad.com.
thanks, Chuck Han (one of the NaviCAD authors)