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Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

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Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#101

Post by ma2rten »

peteretep wrote: post #84
ubercore wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound like a downer, because I really appreciate open source mapping, but that's the part where I think the costs, long term, will swing back. Google maps is deceptively simple, in that the javascript library and tiling is a relatively solved problem. Google has the best datasets, and the best large-data know-how in the business, so outsourcing things like an up-to-date transit location and route database is b…

> Forgot to mention my own personal white whale. Google's geocoder is far from perfect, but it's the best I've seen Lulz wht? Google's Geocoder is by far the suckiest of any of the ones I evaluated. I'd highly recommend Bing or Yahoo before Google's geocoder.

I did a test with different Geocoders (Google, MapQuest, Bing, Yahoo, Nokia). Google was lightyears ahead of the rest in my test. It was for the Netherlands, though.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#102

Post by CountSessine »

cryptoz wrote: post #11
dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go. On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty…

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app?

Nope

On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty good.

This doesn't happen for me. I have a Galaxy Nexus with ICS, and I have Google+ installed and linked to my account, and this doesn't work - it opens the post in the browser. Is there some magic fairy dust that needs to be sprinkled into my microusb port for posts to be redirected to the Google+ app?

What's much worse, though, is that Google+ posts actually reliably crash the ICS chrome browser - as in 100% of the time. Whenever anyone posts anything on Google+, I have to open it in Firefox to read it.

Clearly Google needs to work on this.

Edit: Also, I think it's kind of silly that you wish people would stop publicly posting on Google Plus due to your phone experience being subpar. I think the problem lies much more with you and your phone than it does with Google Plus as a writing platform.

This isn't really that different than putting the post behind a paywall or some other inconvenient barrier to your audience. It might be a nice writing platform, but I think it's a pretty lousy reading platform.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#103

Post by ma2rten »

This might just be a matter of taste or just what I am used to, but I have yet to see another online map, that looks as good as Google Maps. Do others have a different option about this?

Btw, when Google announced it's ridiculous new pricing scheme for Google Maps, I though maybe they actually just wanted to force people to become Google Maps Premier costumers. I mean, no way they really except people to pay that much. So I am really curious if their Premier program is actually less expensive. Did you actually contact Google Sales about it?

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#104

Post by Stormbringer »

cryptoz wrote: post #11
dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

Does the iPhone not open Google Plus posts in the Google Plus app? Or do you not have it installed? The reason your experience is awful is because Google doesn't care to make the G+ mobile web experience perfect since their app is the way to go. On Android, when I click one of these links it opens the app and the reading experience is very pleasant. Maybe I've just been spoiled, but I find the experience to be pretty…

It shouldn't be that hard. Serve up basic HTML.

If Google can't do simple HTML after all these years, there's something wrong.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#105

Post by r00fus »

lazerwalker wrote: post #86
smackfu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile Safari does support apps registering custom URL handlers, so google could rewrite the links as gplus:// and they could open in the G+ app. Unfortunately I don't think this behaves nicely if you don't have the content handling app installed since it just errors.

That's correct. If you don't have the app in question installed, you get a nasty "Page could not be found" error. There are hacky and unstable JS tricks you can pull with setTimeout to send the user to the app store if they don't have the app installed, but I haven't heard of any reliable way to deal with this (pretty glaring) failure case. Even just the ability to suppress the error message would be more or less fin…

So just load up the page (on iOS user-agents) with a big red button up top which allows the user to self-redirect, or default a preference on the G+ profile (if they're logged in).

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#106

Post by unobfuscate »

kennywinker wrote: post #92
kooshball wrote: post #7

I really wish there is a way to show more than just the domain name next to the title. >Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish (google.com) is simply misleading.

People use google plus enough that a special hook to note that it's from google plus, not google.com would help immensely.

I just assume any google.com url's are for G+, less surprised that way.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#107

Post by Andrenid »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #99
dpcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not on the topic of the article, but... I wish people would stop blogging on Google plus. Period. It's the worst reading experience ever on the iPhone - nearly impossible as the text blurs, and you have to drag the article around to see it all and then wait for the blur to go away.

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Google+ is one of the easiest correctly sized columns of text to read on my iPhone. The following is a screen shot. Do you care to elaborate on what is wrong? http://imgur.com/xDksb

Agreed. I actually find it one of the nicer reading experiences on the iPhone considering so many other sites don't wrap properly and make me scroll sideways to read each sentence.

I also don't get any of the blur mentioned when scrolling.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#108

Post by jsnell »

When those prices were announced, I was really expecting that they were just for show, and really everybody would end up paying way less than list price. It's bizarre that this isn't happening. Making a real and profitable business out of providing a geo API is great. Pricing it out of just about everyone's range and driving the potential customers away, less so. I can come up with a lot of theories, but none that is really believable:

1. So many companies really paying nearly list price that it's worth losing the other business.

2. Using different pricing schemes on different customers to figure out what the pain threshold really is, to maximize profit.

3. The sales people have a bad set of incentives, and are too strongly encouraged to try to make sales with low discounts.

4. ?

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#109

Post by ConstantineXVI »

nextparadigms wrote: post #64
Xuzz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should you need a third party app installed for a good reading experience? I don't use Google+ and don't want the app on iOS, even if it was launched when I click a Google+ link (which, fwiw, you are correct: it currently does not). (On the other hand, Tumblr looks great on mobile, and it doesn't need an app. Facebook, too, is at least readable on their mobile site.)

Can you imagine using Facebook without an app now?

The current Facebook mobile site is almost 1:1 with their app (on Android, anyway). I wouldn't surprised to know the app is one giant WebView with a few system hooks sprinkled in.

Re: Good bye, Google Maps… thanks for all the fish

#110

Post by AntiRush »

lazerwalker wrote: post #86
smackfu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile Safari does support apps registering custom URL handlers, so google could rewrite the links as gplus:// and they could open in the G+ app. Unfortunately I don't think this behaves nicely if you don't have the content handling app installed since it just errors.

That's correct. If you don't have the app in question installed, you get a nasty "Page could not be found" error. There are hacky and unstable JS tricks you can pull with setTimeout to send the user to the app store if they don't have the app installed, but I haven't heard of any reliable way to deal with this (pretty glaring) failure case. Even just the ability to suppress the error message would be more or less fin…

How about loading the gplus:// link in a hidden iframe. Then continue to load the page in the browser. If they have the app installed, it will redirect, otherwise the page will just load in the browser.
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