You can't see the grid they're talking about in the article's pic, so here's a link to it in Google Maps.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

It does look quite artificial compared to the surrounding ocean floor.

Its striking, but Google now says no.

Here's Google's official denial:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h3fST...

Could the journalist not have spoken with someone at Google prior to publication of this article? It's just irresponsible journalism that they clearly did not.

Irresponsible journalism? No such thing!

The telegraph admits it was a false alarm:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/g...

Aww. :( I knew it wasn't going to be real, but I still wanted to believe for just a few hours before it was debunked.

You can write a book or a game based on this, and stick a reference to this google maps thingie as part of the plot. That would be slick.

Each street is ~1 mile across. The distance between two successive "streets" is ~10 miles. The whole "city" is ~100 miles measured on one edge.

I, for one, welcome our new undersea giant overlords.

P.S.: Gmaps is full of artifacts like that. Here's another one, bigger than Ireland:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=54.188155,-12...

on another note... why is google ocean the 5th search result on google?

People see patterns everywhere. See also: the Martian canals.