Unlike Apple Maps, Google Maps are "powered" by Android devices
DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
251–260 of 284 posts
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question, why do you say that about privacy? My basic assumption is that all of these mega companies are the same and terrible about privacy. Surprised to hear otherwise.
Apple have made it a point of differentiation against Google and Facebook in particular. They say that they try to do as much processing on device as possible and when data (for stuff like Maps) is submitted centrally, they anonymise the data collection - so they can learn usage information without knowing who it's from. We don't know exactly how effective this is, as they are a secretive company, and this doesn't me…
Interesting, I wasn't (consciously) aware of that advertising...
I think personally, I don't find it believable that one of the world's largest public companies would have the discipline to forgo a revenue stream as big as advertising over the long term. If they have the data they'll eventually use it IMHO.
It's interesting to think of privacy concerns as split between concerns about sharing data with a "counterparty" company, and concerns about sharing data with a third party like an advertiser. I think I'm at least as concerned about giving data to a counter party as I am to giving it to a third party.
I never really thought about privacy conerns as beeing the concern that one's data could leave a BIGTECH company. Always thought about it as allowing one of those companies access in the first place.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#253I live in Romania. It depends on the country, but for search what really matters are the points of interest and Apple Maps in my country doesn't have any, whereas OSM and Google Maps are competing head to head. Even for driving, the OSM apps available, while lower quality, are more reliable when I travel to Bulgaria for example. The penetration of Google Maps in Eastern Europe isn't great and Apple Maps isn't worth b…
> Anyway, I wonder why DuckDuckGo is choosing Apple Maps. It makes no sense IMO from a user experience perspective.
It makes sense from a privacy perspective. Both of the companies are probably aware of the fact that Apple Maps are really fucking bad at the moment. So was DDG at the beginning. It's incredibly difficult to offer a product that matches Google's when you're two decades behind. The only way to improve is to gather more data. You don't need to collect personal data in order to improve the service, just data in general.
Including Apple Maps in a privacy-first search engine gives Apple the marketing boost in their target market: relatively rich people that do have something to hide. If you use a privacy-aware search engine, and you see that search engine partnering with Apple, it's easier to believe that Apple truly is privacy aware. I still have my doubts, but they're slowly but surely diminishing.
From DDG's perspective, it gives them relevance. They're no longer just a small player in the market trying to make a name for themselves. They're big enough to be able to partner with Apple. This isn't their first collaboration neither: Safari was the first major browser that included their search engine out of the box (Firefox was the second one, about two months later).
It also makes perfect sense for them to stick together, because their ultimate goal is the same: to offer an alternative to surveillance capitalism. It still doesn't make much sense in the short run, but it makes perfect sense in the long run. The more people distrust Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon, the more they're gonna look for the alternatives. DDG, Apple, and similar companies just need to be stubborn. The market will find them, not the other way around.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#254About a year ago Apple maps helped me find the entrance to an airport when Google maps was absolutely insisting the only entrance was something extremely wrong. Outside of waving someone down on a motorway to get directions (yes I was really dumb and walked alongside a major road to an airport, had a lot of free time...) or paying an absolute ton to get a taxi to find me and take me to the correct entrance I was probably going to miss my flight home if I didn't think to try Apple maps.
Anyways, it was a really good lesson in the value of checking multiple sources of truth, which gets harder and harder to remember as Google penetrate further into our lives.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not saying it’s clearly better than Google If privacy is worth something to you, it’s clearly better than Google. I, too, use Apple as my primary map. In many cases, Apple Maps is better Google. The ones in which it’s behind are more than made up for by Apple’s values.
Interesting. Here in UK Apple maps seem to be a barren wasteland, at least up here in the north of England. Anything outside of major cities is exactly how my first Garmin satnav looked circa 2003 - lines going through absolute nothingness. And wow, don't even get me started about voice navigation - it constantly picks a wrong address, like 90% of the time. Google maps is pretty bad too(absolutely zero clue about one…
I was in Scotland last month, using Apple maps with a rental car, and it was not reliable. I'd look up an address and when near the destination I would get instructions like "park the car here and continue on foot" to waypoints out in the wilderness, for the Helensburgh area. That's not a huge city but it displays correctly in Apple Maps and seems like it should work until you actually try it.
I reverted to the HERE maps app for navigation which worked perfectly, but does not appear to be compatible with CarPlay yet, so I had to use a mount for the phone.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#256I live in Romania. It depends on the country, but for search what really matters are the points of interest and Apple Maps in my country doesn't have any, whereas OSM and Google Maps are competing head to head. Even for driving, the OSM apps available, while lower quality, are more reliable when I travel to Bulgaria for example. The penetration of Google Maps in Eastern Europe isn't great and Apple Maps isn't worth b…
I'd second this, Apple Maps is still useless in Egypt and most of Africa. There is plenty of room for these tech companies to plow some of their profits into data sets from outside San Francisco.
As an Apple fanboy - most of Apple's things are severely gimped outside of USA/Canada/Western Europe/China.
Not a lot of localization, no voice control in different languages, maps suck, Google is well ahead of them in that regard.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#257I live in Romania. It depends on the country, but for search what really matters are the points of interest and Apple Maps in my country doesn't have any, whereas OSM and Google Maps are competing head to head. Even for driving, the OSM apps available, while lower quality, are more reliable when I travel to Bulgaria for example. The penetration of Google Maps in Eastern Europe isn't great and Apple Maps isn't worth b…
If I am not mistaken OSM will only give you a database but not the map tiles. For that you need to get them from some service such as MapBox, Google or Apple. Usually these are paid by tiles and Apple is currently the cheapest.
To my knowledge, OSM don't distribute tiles in bulk themselves (i.e. there's no way of downloading an archive of all the map tiles at all scales for a country), but they DO provide a tileserver (with a usage policy), and they DO provide tooling to generate tiles from their (open) database.
See: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_servers and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Creating_your_own_tiles.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#258Unfortunatelly Apple Maps are irrelevant outside the US though.
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
In DuckDuckGo's implementation at least it looks like they proxy all requests to Yelp so there is nothing Yelp gets from you in a non anon way.
Unfortunately it's incredibly difficult to become fully anonymous. Yelp can infer who you are by things like your home address (a few searches to see how far away restaurants are, for instance) This Wikipedia article has a few examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification
So if DuckDuckGo proxies your requests and they are mixed in with all other requests, how would Yelp combine your searches?
Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likewise. Note ddg.co works too, saves lots of typing.
My brain doesn't do .co. No matter how I try. Duck.com works for me though.
I hadn't caught up with that. Duck.com is a relatively recent development: https://edgy.app/duckduckgo-search-engine-duck-com
None of the articles I found explain how DuckDuckGo managed to convince Google to give it to them.