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DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

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Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#71

Post by nvrspyx »

Erik816 wrote: post #41
scrooched_moose wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have the !g option in their search though. If you aren't happy with the results, append your string with !g and it will send you to google results. You do lose the privacy layer though. From a purely privacy standpoint this isn't much different. There are a ton of other bang options here: https://duckduckgo.com/bang ?

I was under the impression that a !g search was somehow anonymized. Was that just wishful thinking?

It's just a redirect, unfortunately. It simply formats your search to a Google URL query string and redirects you there meaning that it's the same thing as typing it into Google and hitting search. Startpage would be the better option since it uses Google's search anonymously as DDG does for Bing/Oath. You can use !s for Startpage instead of !g for Google. Same results (minus personalized results) as Google, but with the privacy you're looking for.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#73

Post by xenospn »

burlesona wrote: post #40

This is cool to see, and I think should be a virtuous cycle. As I understand it, maps is the kind of thing where more usage really helps make the map better, and while DDG doesn’t bring the scale of being the iphone’s default map, it should be adding a non-trivial amount of traffic. I’ve used Apple Maps as my primary map since it came out, and I’ve only gotten a wrong location one time in literally thousands of searc…

Same as you - been using it for years. In Southern California, its just as good as Google Maps, and the updated version is miles ahead when it comes to actual map details. Google Maps looks spartan compared to the Apple version these days.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#74

Post by xenospn »

m8rl wrote: post #72

In my region (Germany) Apple Maps are not very helpful, compared to Openstreetmap they are incomplete and/or years back. I absoluty can't see why they chose to use them.

Probably comes down to API access and/or pricing. Privacy focused mapping services are quite rare. I'd do the same in their place.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#75

Post by metildaa »

jeromegv wrote: post #64
inferiorhuman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If privacy is worth something to you, it’s clearly better than Google. Is it? Has everyone forgotten the Yelp tracking beacon? Good thing Apple relies on Yelp for business info and has pretty deep Yelp integration with the mobile app.

Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation.

Apple has taken good stances on most privacy issues, but Apple Maps is poorly run.

The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. Apple instead hires a ton of contractors in Austin (and now India) to manually trace roads and guess business hours based on anonymized GPS traces.

Apple lacks the scale of Google's army of unpaid Google Scouts (though they could easily fix this) and is wasting time on minutia rather than task their staff/contractors with sourcing & importing higher quality data regularly. One example would be importing county shapefiles, Apple could easily vault ahead of Google Maps if they diffed their map against each of the thousands of county maps in the USA, and they would be the only one regularly doing this (OSM does this occasionally, but not often).

They could also scrape business data from each state and use that to produce more accurate & detailed business listings than Google, among many other low hanging fruit.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#76

Post by nvrspyx »

duskwuff wrote: post #70
oldgun wrote: post #21

Not sure if it's a lot to ask, but I'll consider it a killer app if DDG can let user opt which map source to choose from? e.g. Some may prefer Google, and some may prefer openstreetmap? Just a thought.

They can't use Google Maps, because Google's Terms of Service for Maps explicitly prohibits using them alongside other map data providers: > (e) No Use With Non-Google Maps. Customer will not use the Google Maps Core Services in a Customer Application that contains a non-Google map. For example, Customer will not (i) display Places listings on a non-Google map, or (ii) display Street View imagery and non-Google maps…

Just to add on Apple using OSM, Apple actually uses a mixture of its own data, OSM, TomTom, and other geodata brokers. However from what I understand, Apple maps uses the others as a fallback when its own data doesn't cover a specific area (TomTom more than the others) and as Apple has been building up its own data, it will use the other sources less and less. Building up their own data has been a relatively recent endeavor though and it will probably take awhile before those other sources are rarely relied upon or dropped altogether.

Apple does make some contributions back to OSM though for submitted corrections in areas that use OSM as a fallback, IIRC. Apple Maps unfortunately doesn't do a great job of mixing those results though and only uses them as "fallbacks". It's why some areas have poorer quality even compared to OSM (such as Germany mentioned in another comment) because they're strictly using their own data instead of using OSM, et al. to fill in the gaps.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#77

Post by jcampbell1 »

Google maps recently made nice improvements when search history is turned off. It used to nag constantly to turn search history on and now it no longer does that and saves searches on my device with a clear setting to turn it off.

The ability to limit the duration of search history is another nice feature.

I feel less inclined to use Apple maps these days.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#78

Post by ibrault »

xenospn wrote: post #73
burlesona wrote: post #40

This is cool to see, and I think should be a virtuous cycle. As I understand it, maps is the kind of thing where more usage really helps make the map better, and while DDG doesn’t bring the scale of being the iphone’s default map, it should be adding a non-trivial amount of traffic. I’ve used Apple Maps as my primary map since it came out, and I’ve only gotten a wrong location one time in literally thousands of searc…

Same as you - been using it for years. In Southern California, its just as good as Google Maps, and the updated version is miles ahead when it comes to actual map details. Google Maps looks spartan compared to the Apple version these days.

Also in SoCal and I've noticed Google Maps has really regressed, I've gotten a ton of "faster route available" prompts that lead to significantly slower routes when on the 405 and 10.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#79

Post by dang »

helix438745 wrote: post #7
cletus wrote: post #3

I think of Apple Maps the same way I think of North Korea's missile program: I know it exists and it has continent-level accuracy.

Oh my God, you're so hilarious! /s Dude, Apple Maps jokes are so 2012. Apple Maps has improved significantly in recent years. With iOS 13, it's going to annihilate Google Maps.

Can you please not create accounts to break the site guidelines with? It eventually gets your main account banned as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#80

Post by m8rl »

xenospn wrote: post #74
m8rl wrote: post #72

In my region (Germany) Apple Maps are not very helpful, compared to Openstreetmap they are incomplete and/or years back. I absoluty can't see why they chose to use them.

Probably comes down to API access and/or pricing. Privacy focused mapping services are quite rare. I'd do the same in their place.

I see this as an ill-informed decision, from a viewpoint of someone living in a big western city. Results are so error-prone, it's basically useless in 99% of the locations in the world. Even Google has so much wrong information gathered from out-of-date websites and public registers. Even in central Berlin.
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