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Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#331

Post by dmje »

Here's a little story: I run a tiny digital agency. Our clients are all non technical. They all want maps of some form. Until Google did their infamous pricing thing, all was well: we could set up as many nice embedded maps on websites as needed, clients all happy.

Then the price / key requirement thing happened. Turns out you have to navigate through the absolute hell hole that is Google Cloud Console or whatever they call it this week. It involves permissions, and users and keys and all manner of layers that only a hardcore Dev can cope with. Google don't let us do it on client's behalf - I certainly can't ask client to do it for themselves. Stalemate.

So, yeh, MapBox here we come.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#332

Post by oblio »

marcinzm wrote: post #238
maxerickson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mapbox responded to Google raising prices by raising their prices. Is it likely that Azure and Amazon would do similar if they raised prices on GCP?

Google was the dominant provider of maps I'm guessing by a large margin. GCP is not the dominant provider of cloud services (they're third or distant third).

I think they're fourth and falling: AWS, Azure, Ali, GCP. I think the IBM cloud is gaining on GCP.

Worse than that, every 1 position drop market share halves: ~50%, ~25%, 12%, 6%.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#333

Post by supertrope »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #327
cldellow wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 11 years of using it, I've never seen AWS increase the price for a service whose cost inputs they controlled entirely. It can happen, though. They increased AWS Pinpoint costs because their cost to send SMSes in India increased by 25% due to a regulatory action that increased the price for all SMS traffic in India. Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it e…

> Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it ensures your early adopters are those who get the most value, and it gives you a big buffer when discovering how much it actually costs to operate. I've thought about this concept a few times lately. Like, I get the impression that a savvy business, when starting a new product with very little competition, should star…

Anchoring

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#334

Post by pedalpete »

Maps as a tool for finding your way is just the starting point. In the last month we've seen MapBox release their 3D API and Microsoft show off what they are able to do with Project Anywhere.

Re-creating the world in 3D and making that a valuable product is next on the horizon, and though Google had the upper hand with Google Earth, they never opened up an API to it, and I think they'll be kicking themselves that this didn't get more attention in the future.

I have a horse in this race as the founder of 3D mapping for outdoor sports start-up https://ayvri.com

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#335

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jimkleiber wrote: post #197
stiray wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google's entire stack, and quickly, or we'd be in a terrible bargaining position later. Yes. You are right. The whole cloud deal is a try to rule out on premise infrastructure an…

These two comments make me see SaaS more like paying rent for housing: If we become fully dependent on a service (shelter) and then the provider (landlord) jacks up the price, we may be quickly forced to switch services (homes) or be out of business (homeless).

unfortunately when we switch services(homes) all of our electrical devices(code) now need to be changed to work with the different way the new service(home) is wired. At this point the analogy breaks down.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#336

Post by supertrope »

mbirth wrote: post #290
ashtonkem wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s incredibly clear from the outside that Google is an organizational mess that struggles to make product decisions and keep them. From the surprisingly bad UX of a lot of their services, to the random creation and destruction of services and apps. It all reeks of bad political infighting.

A few weeks ago someone here (or was it on Reddit?) explained this: Since Google found advertising to be a huge hose where money pours out like crazy, they're trying to find another such hose. I think that explains a lot of their behaviour and why they're even shutting down seemingly successful (from a user's view) services - because they don't earn enough money. Another big point is that to be successful at Google,…

I guess that's move fast and fail fast for you. It's like a weed generating lots of tiny seeds to make sure as many potentially fertile spots as possible get explored.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#337

Post by thrower123 »

I can't think of a Google product that is actually better now than it was a decade ago; in fact they've almost universally become less useful, less powerful, slower, and less ergonomic. Or they've been destroyed and either not replaced, or replaced with one or more increasingly half-baked successors.

It's astounding how difficult it is to use Google Maps these days, and how much less data is available.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#338

Post by makecheck »

Generally agree, except for this doozy at the end:

    “...Google could reduce its cost basis moving forward and free up resources for competing at what they’re really great at: building great software.”
Oh NO, they are definitely NOT great at software. All of my problems with Google Maps, Google Search, admin panels, etc. boil down to mind-numbingly bad software design decisions, that have become worse every year. Google essentially sabotages its own products at this point, regardless of what competitors may do. (They’re not alone, of course...)

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#339

Post by zyang »

dmje wrote: post #331

Here's a little story: I run a tiny digital agency. Our clients are all non technical. They all want maps of some form. Until Google did their infamous pricing thing, all was well: we could set up as many nice embedded maps on websites as needed, clients all happy. Then the price / key requirement thing happened. Turns out you have to navigate through the absolute hell hole that is Google Cloud Console or whatever th…

Have you tried Mapkit JS?

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#340

Post by sangnoir »

hobofan wrote: post #29
mnky9800n wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that's because Google stopped doing street view because of German privacy laws. Without the street view cars roaming around there's a lot less street level data to be had.

I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data. I was always under the impression that "paved" (or similar) streets were pretty easy to get right (and can possibly be obtained from a governmental agency?). For smaller footpaths I always assumed that they were using movement data (the same they use for traffic forecasting) to detect where they are. They also resumed Streetview in parts of Germany this…

> I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data.

Streetview imagery is mined for address information from signs/plaques on buildings. Operating hours and names of businesses can be determined via OCR

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