It's sort of hilarious that it's taken this long for google to realize how beneficial and valuable it can be to add simple social features to their existing products rather than trying to shoehorn a social experience onto everything even when it doesn't add anything in hopes of driving adoption. Pull is almost always better than push.
The New Google Maps
161–170 of 193 posts
Re: The New Google Maps
#162This is a straight up attack on yelp, targeting local commerce. Their goal is that instead of searching yelp for massage therapy, you search google maps. That sort of query is extremely valuable (trust me - my company pays for it every day). It makes a lot of business sense - it's probably the most lucrative way to monetize maps, and get people to use google reviews more.
Yelp built a community around top reviewers and incentives people to review. Google Places doesn't really offer incentives for people to review or to spend time reviewing.
Google can easily transform reviews into a simple social network feature. Something that becomes a byproduct of the ways that people use maps ordinarily. This is potentially quite huge, because reviews always have a problem of opt-in self-selection. If people start using maps to keep track of which restaurants they personally like the most then that gives a huge amount of implicit information for other people searching for restaurants.
It's like the way pagerank works. It doesn't rely on explicit rankings, it relies on extracting implicit trust and authority information from the natural and organic ways that people link things on the web.
Re: The New Google Maps
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Waze isn't really that good either.
Waze actually really is that good. Its real-time traffic information easily beats Google Maps'.
Isn't that information dependent on the number of users in a given area? So if very few people in a metropolitan area use Waze, the information would suck?
Re: The New Google Maps
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could be worse, they did the same thing with Glass but then charged $1500 for the benefit of being chosen. That said, I think it makes sense. Ask Apple how it feels to make a drastic change with maps.
Glass is hardware, it's not like they're going to give it away for free.
they gave me a laptop for free.
Re: The New Google Maps
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a smart decision to me. I probably wouldn't have cared about GMail if thirteen year old me didn't want an invite more than anything. Anyway, it's still a gradual rollout, just with hype. Seems like a smart decision to me if they don't overuse the gimmick.
> I probably wouldn't have cared about GMail if thirteen year old me didn't want an invite more than anything. A 13 year old wanted "more than anything" a ...Gmail invite of all things?
The only thing else I really wanted was video games, which were effectively not allowed in my household.
Re: The New Google Maps
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Waze isn't really that good either.
Waze actually really is that good. Its real-time traffic information easily beats Google Maps'.
I don't like it at all. It has a cartoonish interface and eats my battery alive. I don't need real-time traffic information while I'm driving, I get that by looking out the windshield.
Granted, I'm sure that interface can evolve, but the fact of the matter is that Waze's technology is not defensible.
Re: The New Google Maps
#167Dear Google Maps Team,
This is very helpful, thanks.
And the rest of us aren't looking for places to eat in the Mission using public transit. (BTW, folks in the Mission skateboard, bike or walk.)
Anyhoo, some of us live in L.A. We drive something called cars, often on roads called freeways.
We want to know if we have to make six lane changes from the carpool lane to merge onto another freeway. Or if we can just stay in the carpool lane and make one lane change to the left in a few minutes.
We also want to know how long our trip will take if we use the carpool lane and FasTrak.
Oh, and give us something like Glympse.
Think of it as Latitude 2.0.
Or, better yet, think of it as a Google+ feature.
Re: The New Google Maps
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waze actually really is that good. Its real-time traffic information easily beats Google Maps'.
I don't like it at all. It has a cartoonish interface and eats my battery alive. I don't need real-time traffic information while I'm driving, I get that by looking out the windshield. Granted, I'm sure that interface can evolve, but the fact of the matter is that Waze's technology is not defensible.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
Waze can tell you if there's an accident along your route, and point out where it is, and it is pretty accurate most of the time. That feature alone has saved me countless hours. As far as battery usage goes, it's no worse than Google Maps.
I'm not a huge fan of the interface, or the gamification aspect, but the data is just that good.
Re: The New Google Maps
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waze actually really is that good. Its real-time traffic information easily beats Google Maps'.
Isn't that information dependent on the number of users in a given area? So if very few people in a metropolitan area use Waze, the information would suck?
I would think so. It uses some kind of peer-to-peer system to divine traffic information I believe.
That said, it works really well where I live, and I don't live anywhere near a major tech hub.
Re: The New Google Maps
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could at least tell you which account has been signed up. Everything's so easy with 1-click, but now that I have multiple accounts signed in at the same time, I have no idea which one requested the invite and I'm going to have to continue to watch _all_ my inboxes... if it has an Android part, which it better, I sure hope I've linked the right account to the invite so that the device can download the app. grumbl…
This and all those other places offering a Google Oauth option prevents me from logging in to multiple accounts on my main browser (Chrome). Although if you do a Google Oauth, it will let you select which email you want to use. I hardly use anything else apart from my personal Apps account, and hence it makes sense to have only a single login on your main browser.
If you set up multiple Chrome users (Settings > Add New User), you can log into multiple google accounts at once.