There have been variations of this Google Maps weirdness floating around on e-mail recently, the most common being New York to London, but essentially the ‘swim the Atlantic’ line occurs for any route between places on either side of the pond thanks to the addition of a route on the map between the ferry terminal in Le Havre, and the end of Long Wharf in Boston. For example, check out this route from the heart of the Kremlin to the White House in Washington DC, and this is apparently the longest route possible at 15,289 miles…
I’ll be honest, my thoughts on this are ‘ha ha very funny, why didn’t you just say it’s not possible by surface transport.’ That’s what Microsoft’s service does.
Of course it probably *is* possible by surface transport but if there are any transatlantic scheduled services, neither site knows about them.