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Google Maps has become an eyesore

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#341
post #149
post #82

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Absence of street names is not accidental. I wonder if the theory is that leaving them off is more likely to ensure you remain dependent on the app.

I don't know whether this actually happens, but it's an interesting thought that removing street names could indeed lead to higher engagement metrics.

When you look for them, perverse incentives abound.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#342
My biggest frustration with Google Maps is its insistence on always showing me Marx's grave. I live in North London, and whenever I plan a photography trip Google always shows me that genocidal maniac's grave. Oddly enough if I zoom in more it disappears. The Germans are much better at it. They just made a car park over Hitler's death location.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name} Wait, what's wrong with this? This is just good practice. It's helpful to be able to, when communicating with someone, unambiguously refer to the exact location, e.g. Westville Chelsea v Westville East v Westville Hudson v Westville Wall Street.

Because on a map it's already implicit in where the pin actually is. You're staring at a pin in Westville Chelsea.

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#344

The funniest thing to me is that Google Maps seems to be the "normal person" option and yet only OSM tells me where water fountains are. Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer?

> Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer? It’s almost like this isn’t a thing folks are actually looking for.

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a couple weeks ago, Google announced they're going to re-photograph Street View in my country, though, which is still running on the initial 2007ish data. How would that be profitable? The idea of virtual ads placed onto pseudo 3D walls was already present when Street View started but apparently didn't deliver economically. Maybe they want to break resistance this time around as they had lots of data protection…

Mind that they don't only take pictures. The cars are full of sensors. From GPS to verify coordinates of roads, over Wifi to scan SSIDs for locating devices without GPS to LIDAR to scan 3D features and probably a lot more ...

And all the pictures have things like street signs and traffic lights and fire hydrants which people have been helping locate with recaptchas.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#346

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I personally think that ads on maps were a bad idea even for monetization. At glance, this seems to be a plausible ads inventory for local businesses but in reality this doesn't scale very well compared to Search or App ads (or even Display) since most of ads will be limited to a very narrow area so big advertisers don't feel as strongly as other channels. They could design ad campaigns specific to local areas but th…

I hate ads as much as the next guy, but I actually think that if this were better implemented, it wouldn't be that bad. One way I commonly use google maps is as a restaurant or bar finder. Like "show me open restaurants around me". I even do this when at home and feel like eating out for whatever reason. I don't want to walk too far away or take transit. I just want to see the restaurants in a 10-minute walk radius a…

I do something similar when going around and about in the UK (and to a lesser degree Malta when I happen to be there). I like to visit random places, seeking out locations off the touristy paths. One particular search has helped me over the years: "pubs near me".

Local pubs, even those part of a large chain, tend to give a nice feel of the region and the people who live there. And you can learn interesting details about the local history.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#347

I worked on Google Maps monetization, and then on Maps itself. Monetization was a dismal failure. I don't know how well they're doing now, but Maps was a gigantic money-loser, forever. I'd be a little surprised if it didn't still lose money, but maybe less. I don't what those "pin ads" cost, but I'd bet it's way less than a search ad. If you don't believe that, that's fine. "What about indirect revenue?" you ask? Goo…

I know, because they tried to sell it to me when I was at a megacorp, they resell the real time location and local data correlated to user characteristics, as data service to large discrete customers. This includes constant real time information about where people are traveling to, businesses being frequented by demographics, with a sophisticated query interface for asking relatively complex questions of maps derived data. It has some differential privacy layers but we suspected it could be attacked to suss out individuals with sufficient care and effort. Our impression was “holy shit that’s creepy” and it convinced us to never put our sensitive workloads or data in any Google product, cloud or other.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#348

The funniest thing to me is that Google Maps seems to be the "normal person" option and yet only OSM tells me where water fountains are. Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer?

Probably because 99% of normal people "don't refill their water bottles" (and surely not off of water fountains), just buy bottled water and/or drink when they stop at cafes and restaurants?

Not saying it's good. In fact, it's quite bad and harmful. But it just is.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vivaldi's ad blocker thankfully means I have no idea what you're referring to. Stay tuned though, by next year they'll have ads of your friends eating mustard skittles, whether they do or not.

Huh, I have uBlock on mobile and I still got the video - which is not an ad, it's just really shitty web design.

uBlock Origin is the correct one.

I'm on firefox with uBO and have no video playing.

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