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The New Google Maps

maps.google.com

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Re: The New Google Maps

#171

Post by chaz »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #161

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.

Let's presume that Google in ~2010 believed that more personal services (like Google Now today) are the future. That requires identification to be layered onto everything they do, including search. But requiring a login for search seems absurd and immediately seems creepy (even if the intent is innocent) and would have been met with intense resistance.

It seems a far easier strategy to create a social service where identification is a presumed requirement, and then sprinkle a bit of that across all of the other services. By 2011, half a billion users had been trained by Facebook that logging in with your real identity was the norm. After all, all of your friends were doing it.

Thus, Google+ was born. It was the first time that all of Google made a consolidated step toward identification across all of their services. It was a rally point internally and externally, was easily understood, had a clear product roadmap, and opened the door to all kinds of new, stickier products.

I think that the expectations of G+ being a Facebook killer were misguided. Google would love to replace the FB News Feed, but I think it's already achieved much of what it set out to do.

Re: The New Google Maps

#172

Post by eric_the_read »

tmzt wrote: post #159

I can't figure out how to do the simplest thing with Google Maps: send a location to my phone (running Android) in such a way that I'm guaranteed that it will appear as the top choice when I click the Google Maps icon in Applications. I can "send to phone" (SMS) a link, email a link, or send to a car I don't own or a GPS unit I haven't purchased however. So I have meeting tomorrow, I want to be sure that when I click…

The chrome to phone extension does exactly this. If you search for an address in Chrome, and click the extension's button, it'll fire up Maps with the address selected in your phone. It can be finicky about making you log in all the time, but it's nice for this exact case.

Re: The New Google Maps

#173

Post by [deleted] »

eridius wrote: post #60
cscheid wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which security risks are you talking about? In the spec or in the implementations? Currently, the biggest security risk in WebGL is, indirectly, your graphics driver. As an example, the latest security problem with WebGL was in OS X and had to to with exposing uninitialized memory contents. Of course, it is true that graphics driver writers are only now warming up to the fact that a webpage shouldn't cause a kernel p…

I'm talking about the OpenGL drivers. They were never intended to be exposed to untrusted code running on web pages, so they haven't really been hardened appropriately.

[deleted]

Re: The New Google Maps

#174

Post by BuddhaSource »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #161

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.

Google tried to catchup with social by ripping FourSquare checking using latitude.

Fast forward this is officially FourSquare rip and FourSquare is officially going to die.

Re: The New Google Maps

#175

Post by _lex »

JakeSc wrote: post #157
rallison wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I wish Google well in this realm. Given yelp's somewhat shady practices, I welcome more competition (well, I would welcome the competition regardless, but especially in this case).

> Given yelp's somewhat shady practices I remember reading about this a couple years ago. Is it still an issue? Can you point to any recent sources?

My company's currently the subject of sabotage on yelp, and it's having a pretty substantial effect. Now, I don't think that yelp itself is responsible, but they make it pretty easy to attack competitors if you've got no scruples. Check my hn username and email me if you want specifics.

Re: The New Google Maps

#176

Post by chaz »

tmzt wrote: post #159

I can't figure out how to do the simplest thing with Google Maps: send a location to my phone (running Android) in such a way that I'm guaranteed that it will appear as the top choice when I click the Google Maps icon in Applications. I can "send to phone" (SMS) a link, email a link, or send to a car I don't own or a GPS unit I haven't purchased however. So I have meeting tomorrow, I want to be sure that when I click…

If I get directions to a destination on Maps desktop (web), then I can use Android Google Maps, press the search button, and that same destination is the first option. This only works for directions, not just looking up a location.

I do agree getting little things between devices still feels hard. Chrome to Phone works for URLs and works one way, but I feel like things should be seamless, instant, and universal. Still missing in every ecosystem.

Re: The New Google Maps

#177

Post by cromwellian »

OGinparadise wrote: post #96
dreamdu5t wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 has Search to promote their stuff, even if it's inferior. Put theirs on top, meaning other reviews are much harder to find (people click on top links). That's how many people installed Chrome for example

You really think Chrome when launched was an inferior browser? It had a radically simplified UI, secure multiprocess sandboxing, vastly faster Javascript engine, and continuously autoupdating system. It reignited the browser wars again, and I congratulate Firefox for upping their game, and now overall, if you look at browsers today (Chrome, Firefox, IE11) they are vastly more capable than the situation before when Chrome 1.0 was launched. Yes, Google marketed Chrome, but users love it, just like iPhone users love it regardless of the number of Apple billboards or commercials, because fundamentally, it is a good product.

You think when Google Maps was launched their primary competitors (e.g. MapQuest) had anything comparable? Maps was one of the first, large scale, Web 2.0/AJAX applications. At the time, most other mapping products were still reloading an iframe or the whole page everytime you needed to change the map.

Gmail was lightyears better in both performance, spam filtering, organization, and speed compared to other major WebMails at the time.

The New Google Maps is a quantum leap over competitors like Bing Maps, even native iOS maps.

Re: The New Google Maps

#178

Post by eloisant »

r00fus wrote: post #113
raldi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean instead of handing out N invites, just pick N users at random? Why would that be better? You confuse and potentially upset the randomly-chosen users, and you disappoint the eager people who actually want to try the new thing.

When google does first-come first served (Google I/O last year) they get dinged. When they do randomized (Nexus4 initial sale and this year's I/O) they get dinged. Fact is, they can't satisfy everyone. The algorithm used to differentiate the few from the many will obviously upset some groups. Would you rather they charge for it? That'd be the Microsoft thing to do [1]. [1] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/101…

The problem with Google I/O is that it was not actually first come first served, but random. As in: the registration site gets pound so hard that you need to be lucky to be able to load the page and proceed with your registration.

Also, for Google I/O it would have served to have people apply, and review applications to pick real developers and not dumbass unable to read a line of code but hoping for a cool gadget to flip on ebay.

Anyway, as much as I want to try the new map right away I would do the invite system like them: you get to ramp up your userbase progressively, and people trying it actually want to try it (not grandma opening Maps and being completely confused by the new UI and possible bugs).

Re: The New Google Maps

#179

Post by grey-area »

This new design looks really impressive, and neatly with the new iOS app branding - Google's eye for design has definitely improved over the last few years. I love the fact they've gone full screen on the map as that sidebar was often awkward and most of the time ignored in my use of google maps. Love the little popups with more info too. My one complaint on the iOS app they have is that it's harder to access streetview, and I'm always opening the side panel by mistake, so I hope they've focussed on the core features people like as opposed to glitzy but less useful features like 3D support and tilting the maps. When Apple switched maps I realised just how much thought has gone into google maps at a subtle level - town names popping at the correct zoom level, sizing and placement of labels, and choice of colouring, are all areas where Apple could still learn quite a lot from the Google maps styling, and with this new restyle they've moved on again.

Re the invites, I suppose when you get to the scale of Google you simply have to limit uptake or the service will be swamped on the first day and everyone will go away with a terrible impression. Better that they get the kinks out first, and they must have decided that request an invite is the simplest way to limit access to the beta while showing it to people who care about seeing it.

I'm a little hesitant about one aspect of this though because it seems they've decided to include adverts on the actual maps - to my mind a better way to do this would have been for businesses which are already featured by the likes of Zagat to be able to play for a nicer entry, with more images etc. Having paid adverts on there seems a bit cheesy and a bit too close to digital billboards.

Combine this with Google's push to take over our digital lives, and it leaves me with an uneasy feeling - like most of the major corporations (Facebook, Apple, MS, Amazon), they want to control every aspect of your online life that they can. Sometimes I wish software companies would just focus on getting a niche just right, and not try to take over our entire life online, but it seems that's just not the nature of large corporations, and so we have a constant negotiation with them as to just how much of our life we're willing to share.

Re: The New Google Maps

#180

Post by coob »

gojomo wrote: post #50
NoPiece wrote: post #38

I feel bad for the Apple maps team - trying to catch up to a fast moving target.

...and Apple Maps is trapped on only one platform (iOS - not even a web gateway), so only receiving a relative trickle of usage-based feedback... and Apple Maps perhaps only ever existed as a leverage chip against Google. Apple Maps might need to ally with other Google rivals to get the mindshare/critical-mass needed to have any competitive chance.

Like Yelp… which they already do.
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