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Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#81

Post by joejoebags »

morsch wrote: post #39
Daniel_sk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mapy.cz is far better than Google in case of Slovakia or Czech Republic. They have full coverage of high resolution pictures taken from planes and not satellites. Also these contain all the hiking, cycling and other routes. The native Android and iOS apps work great and support offline maps - you can download the whole map for a country with one click. Google Maps is unusable for sport or hiking because you only see…

Google Maps just isn't very good for hiking. But it's not just a map, it's got the yellow pages, Yelp, and, depending on where you are, various other things like hotel booking and public transport routing thrown in. My recent favorite feature is the live estimation of how crowded a store is, very useful during the pandemic. Much of this is stuff the software based on OSM isn't even trying, or doing so only very half…

In the US, I use AllTrails for hiking, which I think is built on Mapbox. Hiking, hunting, fishing, running, biking—all interesting examples of niche uses for maps that naturally lend themselves to separate user experiences.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#82

Post by marbu »

morsch wrote: post #39
Daniel_sk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mapy.cz is far better than Google in case of Slovakia or Czech Republic. They have full coverage of high resolution pictures taken from planes and not satellites. Also these contain all the hiking, cycling and other routes. The native Android and iOS apps work great and support offline maps - you can download the whole map for a country with one click. Google Maps is unusable for sport or hiking because you only see…

Google Maps just isn't very good for hiking. But it's not just a map, it's got the yellow pages, Yelp, and, depending on where you are, various other things like hotel booking and public transport routing thrown in. My recent favorite feature is the live estimation of how crowded a store is, very useful during the pandemic. Much of this is stuff the software based on OSM isn't even trying, or doing so only very half…

Mapy.cz covers most of other use cases as well, including business info, public transport and other details. I personally find mapy.cz more tailored to pedestrian/public transport navigation within european city. The only feature which I go to google maps is the mentioned estimation of how crowded a place is (as this comes from android data, and google has an clear edge there).

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#83

Post by joejoebags »

franciscop wrote: post #45

Meta: could someone explain/clarify the sentence "Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old)." please? I highly doubt a 6-years-old wrote this article, so is it a joke? Or is it alluding to some mapping alternative being 6 years old?

I’m the Mozart of Mappy Think Pieces

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#84

Post by wayne »

> Meanwhile at an office down the hall, Azure Maps has been humming along quietly since 2018, beating AWS to the punch by over two years.

Microsoft's actually been in the geo API game for significantly longer, pre-Google Maps. MapPoint started as a desktop GIS product in 2000 that let businesses create desktop maps, and they've had an online API since 2002... it started as a SOAP API: https://news.microsoft.com/2002/04/10/microsoft-announces-ma...

But it was pre-AJAX so Google Maps stole much of their mindshare. And it's been renamed so many times that no one can keep track of it (MapPoint, Bing Maps/Live Maps/MSN Maps, Azure Maps). Though the pricing and documentation has consistently been reasonable.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#85

Post by dschep »

sildur wrote: post #66
bobviolier wrote: post #7

These street maps are becoming insanely precise, probably helped by the competition. I see that Google Maps is now testing "detailed street maps" in some cities: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-testing-detailed-street... Just a thought: maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps?

Ah, they now have the same detail OSM had five years ago. Who knows, maybe some day they will be on par.

That was my first thought when I just saw "sidewalks" & "crosswalks" too. But AFAIK OSM doesn't have anything remotely like that level of sidewalk shape data. And while stairs on paths are mapped, I don't think outdoor building stairs are mapped.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#86

Post by pbhjpbhj »

echelon wrote: post #21
slezyr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. ReCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, CloudFlare definitely don't make it easier to crawl the web than it was ten years ago

Thankfully (1) there just aren't that many useful websites anymore. Most content lives in walled gardens. Negotiate a few deals to get around CloudFlare for those select few and you're set. [1] I'm being sarcastic.

'Many a true word was said in jest' as the aphorism goes. IME useful information has become somewhat concentrated into nodes, instead of trawling blogs for info it's all on stackoverflow/Twitter/whatever (depending on subject).

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#87

Post by mmaurizi »

afavour wrote: post #41
howlgarnish wrote: post #3

> They appear, to me, to be acting from a place of fear and conservatism rather than innovation. Bingo. Here's a fun exercise: try to find the last genuinely useful feature added to the Maps API in the release notes. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/... To give you a taste, here's the largest change made in 3.42: > InfoWindows now have a default max width of 648px which can be overridden by…

I see this as something different: the sign of a mature product. What are competitors doing that Google Maps isn’t? Maybe I’m missing something but I see no significant features. (Not to mention, the Maps API != Google Maps the product)

Google Maps the consumer product is far ahead of any competitors, but the Maps API lacks many features available in Google Maps (vector maps, 3d acceleration, real-time styling).

These feature disparities between the API & the consumer product were annoying at first, but now that the competitors to the Maps API all have had them for years they're simply baffling.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#88

Post by swiley »

Good, there needs to be more competition. All the maps apps (both web and mobile) seem to think the actual map is just a background decoration for something else and don't do basic things like render road labels accept at particular zoom levels.

The more difficult it is for the end user to modify the GUI the faster the GUI deteriorates into something totally unusable.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#89

Post by thinkingemote »

robk wrote: post #55

It’s becoming nearly impossible to fix map problems with google. I have a bunch of weird one way and foot only pathways near me in London and the routing is always awful for delivery drivers. Telling them to come the wrong way down a street etc. despite having a very good history of submissions nothing is ever fixed in the routing despite opening dozens of reports.

Most commerical delivery drivers will use an OpenStreetMap based routing application, so make sure to see if these things are in OSM and if you can fix them.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#90

Post by larrymyers »

I really want to use Apple Maps full time on my iPhone, just because of how much clutter Google Maps has accumulated on the screen.

If anything tells me Google is losing the ability to innovate it's the newly added pill buttons for pre-set searches and branded POIs on the map. I remember when this was added to MapQuest circa 2010, and was the transition from trying to have an excellent mapping experience to just adding revenue focused features.

Google is still operating from an extremely strong position, by nature of having nearly infinite budget and owning their mapping and search dataset. It's concerning that the iOS app seems to be suffering from the same issues that preceded the gradual downfall of MapQuest from a product perspective.

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