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maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

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Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#231

Post by AaronNewcomer »

hbn wrote: post #217
gatefun wrote: post #61

As others have noticed, this is not a new move. For the past several years I've been accessing Google Maps simply by typing in maps.google.com and it has always redirected me to google.com/maps.

Even more confusing and a regular cause of annoyance for me that's been ongoing for a while now is there's like a knockoff version of Google Maps built into Google search that it'll kick you into if you click a map from search results. e.g. you type "gyms near me" and it shows you a map in the search results, and you click it to expand. It's still at the google.com/search domain and while you can zoom and pan around,…

Same. It's so annoying and I feel like they do not always include the relevant info like the URL in that mode. Though looking now I did not find examples of that.

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#232

Post by delroth »

dpryden wrote: post #195

I recall from my time in Google Geo years ago that the idea of integrating Search and Maps was a big part of the "New Maps" release that happened around 2014. The rumor I heard was that someone (possibly even Larry himself) wanted to be able to have interactive maps directly on the search results page, so that the navigation from a search query to a map wouldn't involve even a page reload. So the big Maps frontend re…

I have links to google.com/maps in my IRC logs dating back from June 2014, so this absolutely tracks.

I actually remember google.com/maps being launched at IO in 2014 -- the presentation had a broken link in it for the new version of Maps, and a few of us DoS SRE watching the livestream were able to hack together a config change in a few minutes to fix it without waiting for a urlmap push :)

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#234

Post by pifm_guy »

titzer wrote: post #228
nolok wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes perfect sense product wise, if I'm searching "bakery" on my mobile phone I probably want the ones around me and not the generic location-agnostic google search of it, just like I would if I was searching on map. Matter of fact, this is actually something I do a couple times a month, search then clic the maps tab to see localized results then from them click the website result to find their webpage. As a te…

This is achievable with geolocation based on IP address, which is how it works on, e.g. a desktop web browser.

Less than half the population has decent geolocation by IP. Most people the IP address will only identify the country or even nothing at all.

Not much use if you want to search bakery's.

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#235

Post by ce4 »

dotancohen wrote: post #170
mngnt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a OSMand user and OSM contributor. However, sometimes I hate the routing OSMand provides, taking me through narrow streets with awkward turns. Wish they used GraphHopper... A nice feature in OSMand is that even if you get the free version off the Play store, if you log in with OSM and are active, you get free map updates and all the "plus" functions. And on top of that, the full plus version is available off F-Dr…

Maybe you know. I've been told twice that OSMand can show the altitude above sea level of a location, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Have you any idea? Thanks!

It's these steps:

- go to pugins section and activate the contour lines plugin

- then go to download maps and load the contour lines data for your region

- go to configure map and check the show contour lines option

I think you need the f-droid Version or the paid pro Playstore version or the subscription. Please note that this will only show marked contour lines and not interpolate/estimate the elevation for any point. So you need to search for the next line and get your own idea what that means for the specific location. Not ideal for very flat areas with sparse contour lines.

For the current position you can show GPS elevation (settings, configure screen, widgets)

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#237

Post by michaelt »

titzer wrote: post #228
nolok wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes perfect sense product wise, if I'm searching "bakery" on my mobile phone I probably want the ones around me and not the generic location-agnostic google search of it, just like I would if I was searching on map. Matter of fact, this is actually something I do a couple times a month, search then clic the maps tab to see localized results then from them click the website result to find their webpage. As a te…

This is achievable with geolocation based on IP address, which is how it works on, e.g. a desktop web browser.

Not in my country - unless your ISP is in the business of selling customer PII to advertisers (coughvirgincough) your IP geolocation will often be a completely different city.

Of course, personally if I wanted to search for nearby bakeries on my phone I'd have just opened the google maps app....

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#238

Post by probably_wrong »

raybb wrote: post #93
dbrgn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need OSM on Android, I can recommend: - "Organic Maps" (a fork of the old MapsMe codebase) if you want a clean, simple user experience - "OSMAnd" if you want a very powerful, highly customizable map application, which comes at the cost of a steeper learning curve Both apps are open source and support navigation, offline maps and POI search. The things I miss most compared to Google Maps is live traffic informa…

Lets not forget StreetComplete is a dead easy app to use to help contribute to OSM. It just asks you a few questions like "is this bench still here" or "is there a bike lane on this road" etc https://streetcomplete.app/

Can I use this app to suggest issues? In one of my projects I found a bunch of buildings that have either the wrong direction or the wrong coordinates. Think "Random street 1, 2 and 4 are next to each other, but Random street 3 is 500m away". But since it's a city I don't live in I can't go there in person and confirm.

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#239

Post by NavinF »

college_physics wrote: post #175
canbus wrote: post #7

https://www.openstreetmap.org

osm and wikipedia are proof that an alternative, more desirable, digital universe is not utopically distant but begging to be born. imagine if the world would somehow muster to dedicate something more than token support to such projects / designs prediction: osm will eventually surpass wikipedia as the most successful crowdsourced effort because the more objective and simple nature of its data allows dramatic scaling…

Would you bet money on that? Google Maps is pretty entrenched. A competing 2.4 trillion dollar company that preinstalled their app on the most popular phone in the US couldn't dethrone Google Maps.

Re: maps.google.com now redirects to google.com/maps

#240

Post by dclowd9901 »

__michaelg wrote: post #126

This is a fantastic example of motivated reasoning. This "change" (which apparently isn't even new) can have so many different reasons, some of which are less harmful and some of which are probably worse (privacy-wise) than the one mentioned here. There is no indication that re/mis-using permissions is specifically what they wanted to do here, there is also no example of them doing it right now. Don't get me wrong, t…

Are people really surprised when they hand their location off to a domain that any other part of the domain might have access to it? Like, taking away the technical specifics of how location allows actually works, you’ve given the data to the _company_. At the very least, they throw it on an internal service and allow other parts of the company’s infra to grab it.
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