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Google Maps' Moat

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat

#121

Post by taneq »

canoebuilder wrote: post #90
taneq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why efforts based on exhaustive mapping make me nervous. Things change, sometimes rapidly. The vehicle should be using its maps as a general guide, not as some kind of ground truth.

The vehicle should be using its maps as a general guide, not as some kind of ground truth. Not to sound like a jerk, but I would be shocked if there were anyone working on this that was not pursuing things in this way. It just seems kind of obvious that you can't have some big hunk of metal rolling around, following some abstracted track from a map, without "looking" where it is going.

And yet we have Waymo building 2cm-resolution maps and not operating outside of mapped areas, and (more scarily) Tesla geotagging false positives where Autopilot misidentifies some roadside feature and panic brakes.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#122

Post by gonyea »

krisdol wrote: post #72
encoderer wrote: post #43

I recently switched to Apple maps primary for car play after 10+ years. I haven’t looked back. Building outlines are not much of a moat for me.

I switched as well, for different reasons. Some things I found that I liked about apple maps: its navigation has speed limit information and I much prefer its design. It seems less busy, and it gets out of my way. Something about google maps just felt really cramped. I know that sounds really subjective, but I enjoyed using one more than the other. That said, google has better directions and estimates. And maybe that…

Google Maps has a show speed limit toggle, behind a setting.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#123

Post by prewett »

wutbrodo wrote: post #25

Is there a reason anyone uses Apple Maps, aside from wanting to avoid Google out of principle/privacy/monoculture concerns? To be clear, these are entirely legitimate reasons, but I was wondering if the product has any direct benefits for the user (which is a coherent subset of reasons given the modal users' level of concern about systemic issues). I'm not trying to randomly snipe at Apple here, I just know very litt…

I use Apple maps for navigation and Google maps for looking. Apple maps's navigation does basic things like tell me what the next exit on the freeways, even thought it's twenty miles away, so I have some idea what I need to do next. It knows that in the UK, roundabouts go by the city the road goes to next (on signs), instead of Google which uses road names (not on signs, useless). It tells me right before I need to turn, unlike Google which I always misinterpret. Apple maps seems to label the major roads better. Google maps seems to have decided that things like freeway numbers aren't necessary until you zoom in really tight, which is extremely unhelpful when driving.

Google maps, however, knows where everything is, everywhere. Also, you can download offline maps and get navigation in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#124

Post by Pxtl »

Stratoscope wrote: post #79
sharpercoder wrote: post #6

Google maps is improving since the day I first saw it - that must have been around 2003 or so. The improvement on the data is phenomenal if you look at it over then past 10+ years; The amount of times I blindly trust GM to go somewhere increase every year. I suspect the edgecases will be solved slowly, like navigating to a shop inside a mall, a market stall, an ad-hoc gathering, a planned building, et cetera. Typing…

This is all true, but of course there will always be a few missing features that seem so obvious and useful that you wonder why they still don't have them. For me it's one or two announcements of the actual destination address at the end of the drive. If it's not an address I'm familiar with and not a business with a sign out front, by the time I get there I've usually forgotten the street number! But when I arrive a…

For me the problem with Google Maps is how appallingly badly it fails when things go wrong. The offline mode is prone to silently getting locked in "rerouting" and just completely leaving me hanging for 10 minutes at a time. And if it loses gps signal, it doesn't seem to think the driver needs to know about this. A Silent failure is terrible.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#126

Post by scooter_de »

The problem of "under addressed" places in the world is addressed (no pun intended) by several companies. Eg. What3Words (w3w.co) has created a grit of 3mx3m squares which cover the entire planet. Each of this squares is identified by three words. Post/Mail organizations in several countries already accept those addresses. Google also has the OLC (Open Location Code) to address an area of adjustable size on earth. I find w3w very convinient to communicate a place over a voice connection (radio) or by writing it down on paper. Nothing you couldn't do by sending latitude and longitude, but more convinient.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#127

Post by _s4qd »

jonknee wrote: post #111

Google also has a giant lead in trails / feature names. I hike a ton and Google has been adding trails at a brisk pace. I just checked the Snoqualmie Pass area about an hour outside of Seattle and Apple Maps has almost no trails, named mountains or named lakes (even quite large ones). A few trails show up as unnamed roads. There's also no relief shading to tell where the mountains are or a terrain view for contour li…

I've added a lot of those places manually through the "Add a missing place" in the menu. The review process either takes 2 days or stays in limbo forever. Google maps also gamified the contribution process so you can get internet points for improving their maps.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#128

Post by CamperBob2 »

A good summary, if a bit repetitive, of how Apple has fallen behind in the mapping department since Scott Forstall's fateful call to divorce the company from Google Maps. But I think he buries a rather important lede farther down in the post:

   That sounds great—but living in San Francisco, 
   it’s hard to imagine this working smoothly. That’s 
   because half the time I request a ride, I have to 
   text/call the (Uber) driver to coordinate my pickup spot.
The company that really needs to fire its entire cartography department and rebuild or license a new one from scratch is Uber. The deficiencies in their maps add a ton of unnecessary friction to the customer experience, and not just in crowded urban areas. I can only imagine the frustration their drivers must feel, especially since quite a few of them aren't native English speakers.

If I were Uber's new CEO, I'd treat mapping and location services as a class-one emergency, up there with any others that people commonly criticize the company for.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#129

Post by irrational »

ovao wrote: post #87
dvt wrote: post #31

I accidentally used Apple Maps once as I was going to a (new) doctor's office. I realized I was using Apple maps halfway through my drive and I joked with myself that it wouldn't bring me to the right place. I was heading to a fairly large medical complex in Orange County (CA) and I sort-of had an idea of where I was going anyway, but boy, was I wrong. According to Apple maps, the doctor's office was literally in the…

To offer a counterpoint, I decided to start alternating between Apple Maps and Google Maps a few months ago and — so far — I haven’t been led astray by Apple Maps. I do live in L.A., however, which is probably among the best case scenarios for Apple Maps at the moment. Google does have the better product, but for the most part I can see Apple Maps being at least “good enough” for my use, much the same way that Safari…

The problem for Apple is why would anyone want to use "good enough" when the alternatives are better, free, and easily available?

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#130

Post by ChuckMcM »

A couple of things stand out for me from the article, one is that this sort of aerial image to detailed map was one of the things the US Government was doing with satellite images in the 70's, and with Google's compute resources if it this seems like the kind of 'side' use that would be encouraged. It is certainly a more useful use of compute resources than computing cryptohashes :-).

The second thing was that Google owns all of their data. When I was there Maps was pretty new, Google was digesting the acquisition of the Keyhole folks (who became Google Earth) and was complaining bitterly about how restrictive the usage rights were for the map data from a major mapping company. They kicked off a program to become independent of third parties for map data and to have the most accurate data in the world.

And if you turn the problem into an algorithm that can be parceled up between machines, you have way more of that than people. It's the one thing that the previous generation of computer companies didn't get, when computers are cheap having 50,000 of them isn't all that much different than having 5,000 especially if you can code up ways for them to route around damage. I think Maps is a good indication of what you can do when you think like that.

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