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Google Maps has become an eyesore

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#371

Post by seb1204 »

devnullbrain wrote: post #294
walthamstow wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really bad in London. Instead of telling you the road is called Oxford Street (quite a famous road!) it shows instead the road number, A40, which is not known by 95% of the local population, nor by 100% of visitors.

A population of 9 million but big tech's allergy to scaling customer support means they don't pay a local person to adjust things for local expectations. But why would they? We have to use it anyway.

You can use Open Street Mmap and a suitable app of your choice. OSM is strong on the local level. Check out https://organicmaps.app/

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#372

Post by seb1204 »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #319
khazhoux wrote: post #41

> Why won't you show me the street name? I've been running into this a lot lately. No matter how much I zoom -- no street name. This is Mapping 101.

Another stupid thing they've done is to use local language for street and place names. Why the hell even have a phone language then? Just switch everything over to whatever language people are speaking in my immediate vicinity then! There is a reason I have chosen English as the language of my phone, because that's what I can read properly.

Not sure if I understand your point. If you're in Spain you want to see Street names written in Kanji or Greek? Or do you want the street name translated to your phone language?

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#373

Post by stiray »

runeks wrote: post #304
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peole forget that millions of people submit data to Google Maps for free. I placed all the local postboxes on google maps, people sibmit information about their businesss, opening hours, etc. This is hugely valuable. Also google grew laxy. Not tskes them a year to add a royal mail postbox

Agreed. And not just that, but also the fact that people use Google Maps for car navigation means Google can derive the location of traffic jams by comparing current speed with the speed limit. This is hugely useful for navigation since it means these bottlenecks can be avoided, some thing which is not possible unless this data is available.

If I present you the other side of the coin - we are a small country, where we cant keep up with number of cars of tourists traveling to the next country over summer.

Since the Google Maps is here, not only we have a completely congested highways but also all other roads that were free of tourists before are now blocked. Tourists that are traveling to the next country while their number has doubled as they dont stand in line from border to border but rather destroy any viable traffic for locals.

In some locations it has gone to the point where small villages with historically very narrow roads are literally blocked by **** (pardon my french), using google maps and see that there is a pass (while every road is the same, right) so the police needs to deter tourists to even head there. Wont even go into suffering of locals there.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#374

Post by BrandoElFollito »

LimeLimestone wrote: post #193

Is it just me or have you guys also noticed that the routes suggested by Google Maps have gotten worse? It seems that it only takes into account current traffic jams and not the ones which will occur 30mins into the trip. For instance, there's this spot in my city where I know there is a traffic jam at around 3:20 PM every day. I usually set off from home around 2:50 PM, which means I'll hit that congested area by 3:…

This is something I have wondered a lot about: whether the routing is based on current conditions, or if it takes into account what usually happens on your route as your journey unfolds.

Your comment seems to suggest the former.

I live in France and school vacation, especially during the winter break, yield to horrendous tragic keeps from the Paris region towards the Alps. I needed once to drive through them, but not towards the ski resorts, just more south.

There were several possible routes but the fastest one was chosen despite the fact that it would hit the bottleneck right at the worst time. Another route, summer 20 min longer, was not taken into consideration at all despite avoiding the bottleneck.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#375

Post by wholinator2 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #128
AlbertCory wrote: post #34

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…

What kills me is I'd easily pay 50~100 eur a month if Maps had to be non ad subsidized. This is to me Google's most everyday impacting product, and what makes the difference between me being stranded/lost or making it in time. The stories of people ending in a lake for blindly following directions are cheeky, but decent maps are just that important, and Google Maps, how flawed it can be, is currently the best for so…

50 eur a month is insanity. I bet that i and all the other 'poors' like me would start buying $5 permanent paper maps and asking for directions again. That's the kind of hemorrhagic price that only someone who never thinks about the cost of groceries or gas could pay. I'm not trying to tell you that you're a rich asshole or anything, but i do want to communicate that those numbers are vastly detached from the reality of most people. I'd pay 50 eur one time but monthly is a lot. Just pin me to the version i paid for, don't update road closures or any of that other bullshit and let me opt out of the parasitic subscription pricing.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#376

Post by seb1204 »

konspence wrote: post #187
CydeWeys wrote: post #125

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.

I already know where I’m looking. And the map TOS state it should be the business name. I pointed this out as a UX problem, which it is.

Business names have all this useless PTY LTD and not necessarily the differentiator that is required. E.g. two fast food chain places operated by the same franchise holder but are located on opposite sides of the highway. For me as map use I am interested in identifying the one on the lane Northbound in the list of search results while driving.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#377

Post by urbandw311er »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #321
AlbertCory wrote: post #34

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…

It's funny Maps has become so crap that I paid 10 euro for OSM. But I think open street maps has a killer feature that Google doesn't have: the community.

Except of course that Google can just freely use the OSM data anyway.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#378

Post by fnordpiglet »

tommit wrote: post #363
hgsgm wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anywhere you put your data can be read by the people that run the place, regardless of what other products they make.

It seems like the person you're responding to has a problem with them selling their data in real-time to 3rd parties, rather than just any Google employee knowing where they are heading.

Yes that’s the specific issue. We didn’t fear specifically they could read our data; the key management systems available appeared sufficient at some level (although the gcp audit system had some issues, particularly access audit is available as a IAM decision log rather than point of use, so any access bypassing IAM or that failed in the service but succeeded in an IAM call would appear a positive access, etc - aws does the right thing here). More of concern is they appeared more than happy to harvest utilization information for the profit of others, and in our business that was a potentially serious side channel.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#380

Post by octacat »

vmfunction wrote: post #235
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about indirect revenue? Google decision makers must know of its importance as a moat, a data collection pipe, a vehicle for other services and so on. No offense, but trying to squeeze direct revenue out seems kinda laughable. Or maybe even a way to plausibly deny the indirect revenue importance.

with giant data beast company like google, everything is about indirect revenue. Just because map doesn't make money, doesn't mean it won't drive up other ad revues.

Google uses maps to collect the location data from iOS devices. So, Apple Maps are useful, because they prevent Google Maps from becoming "too many ads app".
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