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As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

nytimes.com

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Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#191

Post by darkengine »

RyJones wrote: post #144
cbhl wrote: post #107

Google's San Francisco office is in "East Cut". The idea of divorcing "Google" from "Locals" is utterly ridiculous in our neighbourhood. This is one of the few places I'd expect Maps to actually be up-to-date with changes on the ground. San Francisco says it's a liberal city of immigrants, but unless you're born here and have lived here all your life somehow you're part of the evil "other" that is ruining the city an…

Google has an office in Kirkland, where I live, and I understand some folks work on Google Maps. The data in and around Kirkland is not great. I realized that people that live and work in Kirkland would probably have no reason to discover how bad the directions are - who would dogfood driving directions to the local office? For years , several dozen points of interest in downtown Seattle were transposed into downtown…

I live in neighborhood that was annexed by the City of Kirkland in 2011. 7 years later, Google's geo data still can't decide if it's part of Kirkland, part of Woodinville, or its own city altogether. Twitter identifies the neighborhood as its own city, which it never was, and definitely is not today.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#192

Post by bigiain »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #167
dickbasedregex wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't everyone else pronounce and spell things however they feel is nicest? Because chaos.

People already do that and it works fine.

For some things.

Your compiler isn't going to care about your opinion of the prettiest way to spell "print". Your lawyer is going to have strong opinions about how you spell you name and address on the contract you're about to sign.

Sure, if you're writing poetry, you get to choose everything. If you need what you write to be as close to unambiguously understood as possible to other people (or machines) - then you need to follow the norms and common uses of words, and spell them and use grammar that other people agree on.

(Neighborhood names might well be closer to "poetry" than "reserved words in a computer language", but if we then become beholden to commission-driven real estate agents to define our local nomenclature from a purely personal profit seeking motivation - I think I'd rather have some anonymous city bureaucrat responsible for drawing the lines and choosing the labels...)

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#193

Post by codebje »

kevinh wrote: post #149
_jal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is named for Rincon Point, which took its name from Rincón, the Spanish word for 'corner'. Bored cynicism kinda requires the underlying reality support one's cynicism.

But that name certainly wasn't the name the natives gave it before the Spanish expedition came around. Names change over time. Sometimes because of rebranding, sometimes because of hostile takeover of foreign land. Call it what you want, but I don't see the point of being concerned over the change.

Did you think of the mailman?

I get postal mail for someone living a few blocks away because they're technically in another suburb with a slightly worse reputation, and their real estate agent sold them on the idea they were in my suburb instead.

The post office, however, isn't paying attention to marketing or non-profit interest groups, it's paying attention to council zoning and regulation.

So every so often, I get mail addressed to a street name similar to mine, but in the next suburb over.

Names change over time, but when there's a central registry of names with a democratically founded process for managing those names, and the names are a public utility for locating things, it's best we don't just shit all over it and make up whatever we like because it suits us at the time.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#194

Post by bigiain »

Spivak wrote: post #161
Retric wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who else should make that decision? Agents will arbitrarily change maps basted on what their current listing are and would happily change them daily. Longer term there is little point changing place names as changing demographics will eventually adjust the meaning of these names even if no lines move on a map.

Nobody/Everybody, if people start calling a region by a name it makes sense to record the usage and put it on the map. Sure, it probably makes perfections and planners twitch but it makes maps more useful.

I'd live with that plan, so long as the people with personal profit motives don't automatically end up with way more voice that local residents.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#195

Post by [deleted] »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #3

Because of the power of mind share, Google has the power to control borders. The border between Israel and the West Bank is an odd one. 'Both sides' have their view of it. But if 7 Billion people on planet earth grow up seeing one version of the border, it's what they will come to believe as 'true' and effectively support - particularly those in modern nations that might have influence. China is aware of this and the…

[deleted]

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#196

Post by RyJones »

darkengine wrote: post #191
RyJones wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has an office in Kirkland, where I live, and I understand some folks work on Google Maps. The data in and around Kirkland is not great. I realized that people that live and work in Kirkland would probably have no reason to discover how bad the directions are - who would dogfood driving directions to the local office? For years , several dozen points of interest in downtown Seattle were transposed into downtown…

I live in neighborhood that was annexed by the City of Kirkland in 2011. 7 years later, Google's geo data still can't decide if it's part of Kirkland, part of Woodinville, or its own city altogether. Twitter identifies the neighborhood as its own city, which it never was, and definitely is not today.

I used to live in Kingsgate. There is a section of 124th that runs parallel to 124th. It breaks Google maps :)

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#197

Post by acct1771 »

raldi wrote: post #176
dsnuh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you are saying, places are whatever people agree to call them, but I don't doubt that real estate agents, developers, etc are eager to have places called by new names when they are gentrifying the area.

Sure, but only insofar as any group of people living in a neighborhood likes to name it. Or do you still call the city by its original name, Yerba Buena? :) Edit: Oh wait, that was a renaming too; just ask the Ohlone.

Did the Ohlone use OpenStreetMaps?

Maybe that's the confusion.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#198

Post by [deleted] »

kevinh wrote: post #149
_jal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is named for Rincon Point, which took its name from Rincón, the Spanish word for 'corner'. Bored cynicism kinda requires the underlying reality support one's cynicism.

But that name certainly wasn't the name the natives gave it before the Spanish expedition came around. Names change over time. Sometimes because of rebranding, sometimes because of hostile takeover of foreign land. Call it what you want, but I don't see the point of being concerned over the change.

[deleted]

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#199

Post by tspike »

ErikAugust wrote: post #100
reaperducer wrote: post #73

I deal with this with one of the web sites I maintain. I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names from advertisements as if they are canonical. In my case, the city in question puts out a very specific, very legally defined map of each neighborhood, and has for more than a century. But real estate agents make up names for the neighborhoods, or fudge the boundaries to improve selling p…

"I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names from advertisements as if they are canonical." --- "Currently the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising... We expect that commercial search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers..." - Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 1998 http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ba…

I particularly love this section:

> Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed. This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine.

> But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine.

> In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

Re: As Google Maps Renames Neighborhoods, Residents Fume

#200

Post by _jal »

PeterisP wrote: post #154
_lqaf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the East Cut. It will never be the East Cut. That is Rincon, and the real-estate marketeers can bite me. Put another way, you can call things whatever you want, but a marketing campaign does not obligate me to accept your silly branding nonsense.

Names are kind of a consensus thing - that place is(will be) called East Cut if and only if a sufficiently large part of the people who talk about the area call it East Cut. Conversely, if most people do start calling it East Cut, you will be obligated to do the same if you want people to understand what you mean, since if you'll say "Rincon" they'll (mis)understand it as an area that explicitly excludes territory wh…

I take it you've never asked for directions in a small town? Of course as far as that reasoning takes you, you're correct. I'm pointing out that there is _not_ consensus.

I also refer to the Emperor Norton Memorial Bridge, which is my own small contribution to building consensus on naming a different geographic feature.

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