In the blast of social media noise, government warnings, blog posts, and breaking news updates this week on the expanding swine flu epidemic, one link seemed to carry some added weight: Google had posted a collaborative map to track the outbreak on a global basis.

"Follow the Swine Flu Pandemic in Real Time With Google Maps," urged tech blog Gizmodo. The Twitter recommendations were legion. News outlets from MSNBC to the Chicago Tribune cited the online map, with its virtual push-pins linked to suspected and confirmed cases.

Clearly, an example of a new paradigm of crowd-sourced reporting in a crisis, right? Perhaps. But there are a couple of serious problems with the much-hyped Google swine flu map: the Google team didn't put it up, and the map is fantastically inaccurate.