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Google Maps has become an eyesore

fastcompany.com

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#411

Post by makeitdouble »

smcin wrote: post #312
makeitdouble wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How did you arrive at this number ? Straight comparison to the other service I paid for for a while I gave up as it didn't seem worth it. > Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much. They costed a bunch and were a lot less useable in day to day life. There was no device that would tell me the schedule of the next train departing from the station 10 min from where I am, when th…

> There was no device that would tell me a) the schedule of the next train departing from the station 10 min from where I am, b) when the store I am going will close, and c) how I'll get back when there's no train left for the day anymore. To your point there were service providing this info in part, in text format, on super small screen, and they'd cost around 5/10 bucks a month. There is a free Android (+ iOS) app…

Transit looks like a nice app. I assume it's based on the open data initiatives in places where it works (France etc.). There's similar iniatives in many places now (Japan has one as well) and I'm pretty much rooting for more of those.

You're still left patchworking all these apps, switching from one another at every point and assembling everything in notes by yourself. It's super nice it can be done at all, but I'd also pay for an app that has it all in one place if it wasn't free.

To note, the c) part is not just public transport but anything from private bus network/taxi/private bike networks/just walk. While Maps deals with that decently, I'd agree it would be way too much too ask from a free transit app.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#412

Post by noirbot »

tetris11 wrote: post #211
tananaev wrote: post #22

Probably not a popular opinion here, but I like Google Maps. Sure there's some clutter, but it's pretty good at navigation, public transit and searching for places. I don't know any better alternative.

Compare it to the sheer readability of open street maps though, and you realise the vast white spaces next to the yellow lines are full of interesting buildings. If anyone wants to try it, OrganicMaps on F-droid do a fantastic job delivering raster maps with navigation

Except I find OrganicMaps to have an even worse version of the problems of Google Maps for the exact reason you say it's good. I mostly don't care about all of the "interesting buildings". I care about the one interesting building that I'm trying to get to. Often, I literally cannot get it to show me the business I care about because it's the ground-floor coffee shop in a 10-story office building, and it would rather try to have 40 tiny pins for every legal firm and startup crammed onto the building than show me the ground-floor option that 95% of people would probably want.

I get it - they have no information about me. They maybe don't even have a way to understand or even guess which one I may care about, but in a city with any amount of density you need some fairly strong heuristics on what pins you're showing to filter out the valid businesses that you're unlikely to care about.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#413

Post by dmd »

konspence wrote: post #32

I would add to this article that a major issue with Google Maps has been businesses trying to SEO-pad their business names on Google Maps, to the detriment of readability. This is also against their TOS – the "business name" form is supposed to be their legally registered business name, the one that they probably have signage for. Moderators simply don't enforce this, and with Map Maker basically gone, the community…

https://sports.yahoo.com/nyc-restaurant-named-thai-food-2027...

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#414

Post by BLKNSLVR »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #9

It's inflammatory, but this website is worse. There's some video playing of a stranger eating mustard skittles taking up the bottom quarter of the screen.

Brave + PiHole + uBlock Origin = no video ad, no top banner ad

Firefox + PiHole + no extensions = dumbass video, blank top banner ad (all the space is taken up but no content)

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#415

Post by CydeWeys »

muricula wrote: post #172
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.

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

You're not always looking at a map at all times though. If I verbally tell a friend "Let's meet up for lunch at Westville Chelsea", they can then unambiguously locate the exact one later on on their own.

Also, lots of people (especially visitors!) don't know where the neighborhoods actually are. So having the names of the locations in the pins is better than them struggling to figure out exactly which of a series of identically named pins is actually the right one in an area they don't know about.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#416

Post by CydeWeys »

scrollaway wrote: post #245
iggldiggl wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is the same name is also used for lists of search results – having a neighbourhood name being displayed there can definitively be helpful to distinguish multiple branches of the same company, while also having a higher chance of being at least roughly recognisable to people as compared to specific street names (which is what Google currently displays for POI listings).

Yes exactly, if you want to, say, meet at a specific Marriott hotel and put it in directions, this helps disambiguate. Google Maps does a good job of it without, but will still show you completely different ones if you don’t have the unique-ish name.

Every branch of a hotel chain should have a unique name, at least per city. Way too many mistakes get made otherwise.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#417

Post by BLKNSLVR »

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.

It's been like that for a frustratingly long time. I've tried Open Street Map, but it doesn't quite cut the mustard (skittles). I think I'm going to have to try again, OSM fits my ideology better.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#418

Post by yankput »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #347
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…

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…

Not directly related but last time I was this creeped out is when a antivirus company wanted to sell us crazy amount of data on our customers.

Apparently AV companies lose money on the customer endpoint protection (it’s basically for free!) but make it up on selling users data. Also on the business licenses though

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#419

Post by makeitdouble »

wholinator2 wrote: post #375
makeitdouble wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get your point of view, and I think it comes down to how much you rely on the service

As you mention gas, for instance my gas cost are ridiculously low (less than 10 bucks a month) as the car is only for specific cases, and 99% of the time I'm not driving.

Same way I care a lot more about visiting new places than going to theaters, and I'd never end up with 5$ of paper maps (to dig my own grave, I also buy paper maps of the wilder areas I go and they sure cost way more than that...)

On the other had, getting lost somewhere I have no familiarity with, being stuck at a station that has an incident and not having any backup plans, looking for someone in a town for 30 min because they're describing places in a way that is too vague are situations that are highly stressful and can cost a lot more than 10 or 20 bucks. Have you ever missed the last train and thought how much it will cost you to do something about it ?

That's where I put the price of an app I actually use a ton, it could be one of the main reasons I have a smartphone and not a combination of a dumb modem and a tablet.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#420

Post by TheRealSteel »

h1fra wrote: post #264

I understand the ads and everything else, I don't not enjoy it but I understand. What I really don't get is the product is hiding a lot of stuff for no reason. Whenever I zoom in my neighbourhood: it doesn't display all the streets, some shops are missing even at maximum zoom, search is removing some results that should match my query, etc... I have slowly lost trust in the products (except for navigation), it's stil…

I'm always so annoyed at Google Maps for not displaying street names. Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you zoom or pan, it just won't show it.

I know it knows them because it announces them just fine during navigation.

Why? What's the point? It's a map. Street names are pretty much the #1 most important thing.

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