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.
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Google Maps has become an eyesore
481–490 of 705 posts
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On sheer readability I also prefer Google Maps, but I've been using it so long that that might be just familiarity. Interesting – personally I find Maps absolutely horrible for usage as an actual map for orienting myself (as opposed to just serving as a vague geographical background for displaying POIs or navigation information). When you zoom out, it often doesn't really distinguish between forests and other open…
Yes, there is a lot to improve. I also have my gripes about what POI are kept from the detail view to the zoomed out view, or how I'll completely lose a location if I happen to misclick on some random POI that happens to fall under my finger on the edge of the screen. On the rougher part of the maps, I often get back to satellite view and/or StreeView if available (even as they sometimes don't show the same info as t…
> even as they sometimes don't show the same info as they come from different points in time
And for unfathomable reasons Google Earth (the desktop version) can show historic aerial imagery, but no historic street view pictures, whereas Google Maps works just the other way round – you can view historic street view photographs there, but no historic aerial/satellite imagery. (And the browser version of Google Earth apparently can't do either.)
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#483I 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.
> Why? What's the point? It's a map. Street names are pretty much the #1 most important thing.
My pet theory here is mislaid/misaligned interests: 90% of Google Maps users are probably using it for automotive navigation, not for identifying cross-streets.
A more strident person would argue that Google is consequently, in part, responsible for reinforcing America's obscene car dependence. I'll leave them to make that argument :-)
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#484The 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.
Why is it that whenever somebody comes up with a clear cut and reasonable shortcoming of a big tech product, there's a mass of sycophants that crawl out of the ground to say "nobody wants that, you're just a weirdo"?
Everybody drinks water. It often isn't intuitively obvious where you can find water. Even in city parks, water fountains may not be where you expect but often are where you wouldn't. Google maps also sucks at finding bathrooms. Everybody pisses, even cyborgs.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#485A more insidious failure is how google maps does not always show local businesses. When I lived in another city I would search for "tacos" and I would get Taco Bell. Never mind there were five local places that serve tacos nearby. These were not deprioritized, they were never listed. Search for them directly and they come up. But broad search.... you realize that the yellow pages app is actually better at a comprehensive list of businesses.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#486I 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…
Let's hope they don't forget about the indrect revenue because honestly the only reason I even use google for local results at all is google maps.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think this a myth told by marketing.
They already know the photos have the objects they are interested in. Are they still working on motorcycles buses and signs?
The recaptcha part doesn't even depend on recognition, it's just a statistical comparison with what other humans clicked on given the same prompt + some pointer analysis and browser fingerprinting.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#488I've felt that Apple Maps has been better than Google Maps in many ways for years now (although I still switch back and forth between them, seemingly at random, for no real reason, using each for about 50% of my map browsing). Finding street names seems to be a massive issue across all maps -- not just mobile, not just Apple and Google. One of the most important things to me when looking at a map can simply not exist…
Try mapy.cz - https://apps.apple.com/cz/app/mapy-cz-navigation-maps/id4114...
They're based on OSM data, and I generally find them better than Google for street names
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#489Google and Alphabet and all of its services including on Android have been slowly turning into a buggy counter-intuitive mess for the last several years.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried Waze? I find that better at detecting jams and routing around them.
It's deeply concerning that the only alternative to Google Maps being terrible is to use Google's Waze. The only thing stopping another Inbox situation is the threat of anti-competition law.
What do you mean another Inbox situation?