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DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

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Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#261

Post by Spooky23 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #221
Spooky23 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last trip I encountered this was on a Saturday night around 11pm north of Syracuse, NY. Drove about 20 minutes in empty, industrial areas to get to a restaurant. It was one expressway exit from our hotel, 5 minutes tops. I think that the app did that to avoid a u-turn or a left turn.

Which is fine, but avoiding left turns and U-turns needs to be available as a user preference, and it (inexplicably) isn't.

Agreed, that’s why I find it a user hostile app. Amazing mapping engine, not so amazing UI.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#262

Post by raxxorrax »

bad_user wrote: post #242

I 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…

In Germany I use OSM exclusively for navigating and it is very good. Maybe not quite on the level of Google maps concerning things like live traffic, but certainly good enough to reach your goal and then some. Love the project and would have liked to have DuckDuckGo support it instead of using proprietary data.

Google Maps has shown what can happen if you use it for anything business critical.

edit: Sadly OSM doesn't yet have services like forward adress search (might be too expensive to provide). It would enable many businesses to use it for adress comparison to clean up their own data for example. I think that could put OSM on the map so to speak.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#263

Post by danskeren »

lucb1e wrote: post #232
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surprises me how many people think this. I'm not sure where it comes from. All it does is redirect you to Google. So `!g hello world` just redirects to ` https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hello%20world` I'm can't see how that could possibly be more anonymized then just going to google.com yourself.

> I'm not sure where it comes from I guess because it makes zero sense the way it is. What's the point? Might as well have gone to Google directly. And what DDG user would ever want to be redirected to Google? They're using DDG for a reason (and for 99%, it isn't the search engine quality). It just makes no sense. > I'm [sic] can't see how that could possibly be more anonymized then [sic] just going to google.com you…

> I guess because it makes zero sense the way it is. What's the point?

There are over 10.000 different bang shortcuts. They’re very valuable for several reasons, especially if you make DDG your default search engine. “Denmark !w” will take you to Denmark’s Wikipedia page, saving you the time and bandwidth it would take to click on the link through the DDG/Google result. Similarly, you can search “hello !gtda”; and sure, for short translation queries then you could also just type “hello danish” in Google, but try doing that with an entire paragraph. You could also search “duckduckgo !gandi” to see available duckduckgo domains on Gandi (or whichever domain registrar you prefer).

> And what DDG user would ever want to be redirected to Google? They're using DDG for a reason (and for 99%, it isn't the search engine quality). It just makes no sense.

DDG users aren’t (or at least they shouldn’t) append !g to all their searches.. it should only be used as a last resort (and even then they should still be using !s instead of !g). DDG’s primary selling point is privacy, but even if they were just as evil as Google (and there were no other privacy-friendly alternative available) then I’d still be using DDG as my default search engine thanks to the bang shortcuts.

> DDG could proxy the traffic the way startpage does.

That would defeat the purpose of the bang shortcuts, which is to take you to the search results on other sites. Besides, they already offer this through !s.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#264

Post by bad_user »

r3bl wrote: post #253
bad_user wrote: post #242

I 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…

I use Apple devices at the moment primarily due to privacy concerns, but I don't trust Apple in the long run as it would be foolish to do so.

Apple is one of the world's biggest companies and they'll do whatever it takes for them to stay on top. This year they may be privacy friendly, but what about in 5 years from now? Google was not creepy when they started out and even now they are more trustworthy than many other companies.

True privacy oriented solutions are open solutions, projects and databases that can be forked. And the forking aspect is essential, because these online services are locking people in.

This is why OpenStreetMaps is so important, because it can be forked, whereas Apple Maps cannot be.

DuckDuckGo can't be forked either AFAIK, which is also a problem. We need an open index of the web too.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#265

Post by kalleboo »

solarkraft wrote: post #24

Why support proprietary Apple Maps instead of Open Street Map? Is the data a lot more precise? Is the viewer smoother? Is it just another step towards aligning with Apple for an eventual buyout/search engine standard? That said: If privacy is the only concern Apple seems to be a pretty good ally, as the only major player with a significant interest in it.

AFAIK, OSM is not happy when you use their tile servers for large commercial projects like DDG[0], so DDG would have to run, maintain and update that whole infrastructure themselves. For a service of their size it would probably require at least a dedicated engineer.

With Apple Maps, they just have to include some JavaScript and Apple deals with all of that.

[0] https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#266

Post by kreetx »

raxxorrax wrote: post #262
bad_user wrote: post #242

I 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…

In Germany I use OSM exclusively for navigating and it is very good. Maybe not quite on the level of Google maps concerning things like live traffic, but certainly good enough to reach your goal and then some. Love the project and would have liked to have DuckDuckGo support it instead of using proprietary data. Google Maps has shown what can happen if you use it for anything business critical. edit: Sadly OSM doesn't…

Any tips to switching, as in which app etc?

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#267

Post by rahoulb »

habnds wrote: post #252
rahoulb wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, Apple say that they don't actually have the data in the first place.

For example, with maps, they chop your travel into pieces with no common identifiers.

So that way, they get traffic information and can understand which routes are busy or frequently used.

But, because there's no identifiers involved and it's broken into pieces before it reaches them, even if they wanted to, they can't tie that data back to you or recreate your actual journey on a particular day.

Which in turn means they can't build a picture of where you, as an individual, go.

That's a rough paraphrase of what Apple have said, anyway.

As far as revenue streams go, they make their money from hardware and increasingly subscription services. Differentiation is important - and because of their business model, they can talk about privacy in a way that their competition cannot.

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#268

Post by olah_1 »

lucb1e wrote: post #229
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same issue I have with Open Street Maps, if you're not in SF/NYC/Chi they're damn near useless OSM long-time mapper here. SF and NYC are not our strong points. Europe is our strong point.

I think for the Americans, contributing data feels too much like work which would violate their idea of letting the free market do its thing. Where would the world go if people just did things for free? Same as with self check-outs, you ain't gonna do that work yourself if you're not getting a discount!

To be fair, contributing to OSM is more work in America. You have to drive every where and you technically aren't allowed to use other maps as a source (I don't know if that's ever followed though)

Re: DuckDuckGo Expands Use of Apple Maps

#269

Post by raxxorrax »

kreetx wrote: post #266
raxxorrax wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany I use OSM exclusively for navigating and it is very good. Maybe not quite on the level of Google maps concerning things like live traffic, but certainly good enough to reach your goal and then some. Love the project and would have liked to have DuckDuckGo support it instead of using proprietary data. Google Maps has shown what can happen if you use it for anything business critical. edit: Sadly OSM doesn't…

Any tips to switching, as in which app etc?

Currently I am using Navigator for Android. It has the option to use osm or proprietary maps (TomTom I believe). The app itself is free but serves some adds in that case. You can download maps for offline use. Not the best app, but very reliable.
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