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Google Maps' Moat

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat

#441

Post by kuschku »

ghshephard wrote: post #93
Lunatic666 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Singapore the Apple Maps capabilities seem to be a little better, after they introduced bus lines a couple of months ago I’m using it as my main guide to go around the city or when I’m lost. The general direction is always correct, points of interest or businesses are sometimes missing, but it feels like they’re improving, so I don’t think they gave up on it. I think they just don’t put so much effort on it compar…

The problem in Singapore is that Apple (or whoever they contract this to) hasn't updated major parts of the city in several years - Go take a look at Maxwell Road near the Singapore Chinese Cultural Center connecting to Central Blvd from Straits Blvd - that road hasn't been there since 2015 (at least, maybe longer) - but Apple Still says that it exists and uses it for directions. Maps are one area where Apple has a "…

I live in a city in Germany (280k population) where Google hasn’t updated the 2D satellite images since 2004.

A few months ago, they introduced 3D buildings, and Earth shows up-to-date satellite imagery now, but still didn’t update the satellite imagery used in the Maps app.

Worse yet are maps and transit – roads and sometimes entire districts missing, data from somewhere between 2005 and 2009, and no transit data at all.

Every other map service has it all. Apple, Here, Bing, OSM, everything. Google doesn’t.

And yet people here continue using Google Maps, because "it’s the default", and Google Now can only give you estimates from Google Maps.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#442

Post by kuschku »

wingworks wrote: post #279
dirtbox wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more impressive, when in satellite view hold control, click and drag upwards.

Similarly cool as the web version of Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/

That’s not really a web app (it’s native code, transmitted as LLVM IR, and runs natively but sandboxed), and it only runs in Chrome.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#443

Post by carussell »

aluhut wrote: post #292
sytelus wrote: post #142

Many people don't realize why Google maps are so much better than anything out there. I would actually give lot of credit to Marissa Mayer who suddenly became in charge of maps from otherwise more higher position. Thanks to her influence in Google SLT and ability to make impressive arguments, she was able to make a case for maps as core pillar in Google's offering and consequently obtain huge investment and large tal…

No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci

> No love for OpenStreetMaps here?

Last year, when SVP of Engineering at Google left for Uber, I suggested[1] here on HN that Uber getting into mapping (for exactly the reasons in the article) with OSM would be mutually beneficial (in the same way as outlined in another comment from today[2]). It didn't get a warm response. (IIRC, at first it was even downvoted into the gray.)

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13447070

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15968077

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#444

Post by thanatropism »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #274
jjeaff wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is actually not a highly complex algo. They have enough data to simply look at people who took the exact same or almost the same trip at the same time of day. Mix that with a bit of user provided traffic data to make sure it is similar to the comparisons and viola.

It's a problem that seems really simple until you dig into it. Traffic usually changes, and that's hard to predict. In broad strokes it's a "simple problem" but that's true of so many things (from bridges to self-driving cars). The complexity is in handling all the subtleties and edge cases and tuning everything so that the results actually are accurate.

There's a lot of traffic engineering theory based on viscous fluid approximation though. They'd be idiots not to leverage that.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#445

Post by exhilaration »

BrandonM wrote: post #409
matt4077 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cycling is a relatively new feature even on Google maps. I believe it appeared about three years ago? While Apple is still playing catch-up, it appears to me that cycling, and all other features mentioned in the article, are exceptionally ameliorable to machine learning, and its advances over the last few years. Apple being the only other company in the world with access to the wealth of position data on users' phone…

I first used Google Maps for cycling over 7 years ago.

Ha, you got it exactly right, it was added in 2010: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/biking-directions-ad...

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#446

Post by makomk »

oakesm9 wrote: post #400
kogepathic wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google Maps offline functionality include POIs? The last time I tried/was allowed to save Google Maps offline (it's not available in all regions) you could not navigate or search for POIs while offline. Here allows both navigation and POI search using an offline map. This is incredibly useful if you are in a country without service or where roaming data is very expensive.

They added offline support for POIs last year I think. Offline navigation works too, but it's not always as good as it lacks traffic data.

Last time I checked, offline navigation on Google Maps seemed to be car-only for some reason.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#448

Post by eref »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #29

tl;dr - Google Maps has buildings and Areas of Interest (streets with more businesses) based on satellite & street view data. "Google is creating data out of data ... It makes you wonder how long back Google was planning all of this—and what it’s planning next" My guess is that they weren't planning it. Somebody decided to use their 20% time to learn TensorFlow and process the Street View imagery for fun, and that si…

I do not get what makes this post so popular. Google Maps is often better and uses automatically extracted features from photogrammetry. Eh. 350 points at most.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#449

Post by slackoverflower »

rmc wrote: post #324
puzzle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more pedestrian reason for Google's investment for its own maps was that the licensing costs for data to use in turn-by-turn navigation, which is many times as expensive compared to simpler uses, were going to skyrocket once mobile adoption took off as projected. You could give millions or billions to TomTom, which is what Apple has been doing, or you could pour the same amounts into creating your own datasets, a…

It's kind of a shame that Google doesn't release all this data they have collected/created as open data.

That's like McDonalds giving away food. Or Ford giving away cars. Google's business quite literally is data.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#450

Post by 24gttghh »

whazor wrote: post #298
aluhut wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci

Same in Netherlands. Google Maps has recently become worse and worse. Small pedestrian roads are missing, and the navigation is getting stupid. Google applies the one-way limitations for cars also on cycling routes.

It's not too hard to suggest changes to the maps using their feedback option. I've done it around my town to fix some one-ways and lane options a few times now and they get added within a week or two usually.
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