Google Maps has become an eyesore • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#511

Post by fnordpiglet » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

behringer wrote: post #504

wredue wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GeForce experience tracks every single window you have open, sending the title and window information, along with every single spot that you click on your screen to Nvidia, tied to your now mandatory account. That was a couple years back. Who knows how much more invasive it’s gotten since. Oh. And this data is considered to be “valuable debugging information”, so is not prevented by opting out of analytics.

I use glasswire firewall and I just checked nvidia's activity and it doesn't even amount to a megabyte (uploaded) in the last week. I'm thinking this is tinfoil hat stuff.

Hey great I was just wondering if there was a little snitch for windows

https://www.glasswire.com

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#512

Post by carlosjobim » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

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…

What kind of comment is this? You act like the commenter has insulted you personally, just because they appreciate the service and would pay a lot of money for it. You even go as far as calling the other person an asshole, in a weaselly way. Each one of us have different means and put different value on things. People pay €50 to do a bungee jump.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#513

Post by picadores » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

In a way, the enshittification is impressive to behold. The moment competing empires prop up there "giants" all ilusion o free enterprise competing for customers falls apart, leaving us this. I wonder how bad it can get..

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#514

Post by registeredcorn » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

Knee_Pain wrote: post #355

coldtea wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#515

Post by xp84 » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:28 PM UTC

datavirtue wrote: post #471

aembleton wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth adding that information to open street maps so that it available for other maps too.

OSM should be scraping Google maps.

Legally how?

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#516

Post by Ajedi32 » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #433

TheRealSteel wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If organic maps did traffic, reviews and opening hours I'd never touch google maps again. Literally everything else is worse.

I'm surprised it doesn't do opening hours, as that information is readily available in the OSM tags (though maybe a bit sparsely compared to Google Maps).

As for the rest; yeah I'd love to see a serious effort to get an OMS-based map up to feature parity with Google Maps. Place photos, contacts integration, and the timeline would be big ones for me.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#517

Post by fouc » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

One thing I absolutely hate about Google Maps is you can't do text search for buildings/businesses with "hotel" or "inn" specifically in the name, it'll jack that search and show you its special hotels interface in an attempt to sell you rooms.

Also there's no way to look up "serviced apartments" specifically, it's an actual category, but that also gets used as an excuse to load the hotels interface.

The interface basically hides totally valid hotels that don't necessarily have an online presence but their name/category is on the map.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#518

Post by chaps » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #501

Biganon wrote: post #494

> TOO MANY ADS CLUTTER THE MAP ...he complained, in an article on a website where 30% of vertical space is used by an autoplay video ad featuring an idiot asking me whether I'd eat "mustard Skittles". Ironic.

I was never able to stop the auto play video. Just make it small and pinned to the bottom. Playing something and wasting data the whole time I read the article.

And one of the advertisement's X doesn't work and just opens the link. It'd be funny if it wasn't sad.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#519

Post by coldpie » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #144

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…

That’s a stretch but I agree id pay 50 bucks a month for a total Google Subscription: gmail google maps docs and drive. All of it. No ads, personalized only to serve me. And bring back reader and I’ll pay 100.

Just use Feedly. It's great and free, or $6/mo if you want to support the business.

Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore

#520

Post by floren » Mon, Aug 07, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #470

phiresky wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was some articles on here about how maps have been changing over the years (also other map apps). The gist is that why would you need to show street names anymore? On printed maps that's the only thing you have, but that's not how most people navigate anymore. They search for a place or POIs and then use navigation. So the things most people care about have changed, streets are less important now and things lik…

Perhaps not a large use case, but I use street names regularly when discussing bicycle routes. "How to get from Town A to Town B by bicycle" often relies on street names - take Rt 123 for 2 miles, turn left on Fancy Farm Lane, etc. The route-finding often keeps you on Rt 123 for the whole route, but it's a busy dual carriageway and really not suitable for bikes.

I think a big problem is that Maps' bicycle routing would prefer to send you down a 55mph 4-lane street with a "sharrow" in the right lane, because that's a "bike friendly street", instead of the 25mph quiet residential street that parallels it.