Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MapQuest still exists

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 58 posts

Re: MapQuest still exists

#21

Post by exogen »

qbrass wrote: post #7
shalmanese wrote: post #5

Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pr…

After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.

I wasted a few minutes the other day searching for a spreadsheet in Google "Drive"...because by default only "Docs" are selected and for whatever reason that refers only to "Word" style documents now, not spreadsheets. Especially confusing since people still call it Google Docs, so when you open it and it just says "Docs" you're just thinking, "yes, I'm on Google Docs" not "I'm viewing only Word style documents". Terrible.

Re: MapQuest still exists

#22

Post by Gibbon1 »

a3n wrote: post #6
shalmanese wrote: post #5

Reviving MapQuest seems about as likely to me as AOL reviving it's dialup business. The simple fact is that the quality bar has risen to the point where maps have become a pay to play space with serious table stakes. You can't just buy a bundle of 3rd party data, slap a nice UI on it and call it a day anymore. Maybe MapQuest could do something unique with merging it's brand name with OSM but even that seems like a pr…

If google keeps loading their interface down with widgets and geegaws that I can't get rid of, and keeps screwing up their route line that now sometimes can and sometimes can't be sensibly dragged around, then at some point one of my frustration visits to mapquest will see me not returning.

You can try bing maps. I'm basically done with google maps for good. My impression is it's no long a map service but show me the nearest Chili's Grill & Bar on my smart phone service.

Re: MapQuest still exists

#24

Post by gs7 »

derf_ wrote: post #19
jinushaun wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Google keeps ruining maps with needless UI changes. I still occasionally drop down to Classic because some feature I use is hard to find or hasn't been ported yet.

I thought Classic had finally been removed for good? When I went to get directions a few weeks back and they told me that a) I couldn't use Classic anymore, and b) the new UI only had a drop-down for arrival time with half-hour increments, instead of letting me type a precise time (trains often arrive a couple minutes after the hour), and c) they removed the option for getting public transit directions at all (that h…

You can still get to it by going to https://maps.google.com/lochp

Re: MapQuest still exists

#27

Post by a3n »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #22
a3n wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google keeps loading their interface down with widgets and geegaws that I can't get rid of, and keeps screwing up their route line that now sometimes can and sometimes can't be sensibly dragged around, then at some point one of my frustration visits to mapquest will see me not returning.

You can try bing maps. I'm basically done with google maps for good. My impression is it's no long a map service but show me the nearest Chili's Grill & Bar on my smart phone service.

Thanks, I think you just gave me my new map.

The map itself is fairly clean. It had a little trouble figuring out that Northsouth and Eastwest, mytown, mystate was an intersection on a map site (WTF?) and not a search for businesses with Northsouth in the name, but when I gave it blvd to Northsouth and figured it out.

The routing line on directions was nicely moveable.

And, duckduckgo has a bang code for it, !bm.

I'm there.

Re: MapQuest still exists

#28

Post by mintplant »

Google is the "always online" company. So MapQuest should be the anti-Google: make a good, free offline maps app. All of the ones I've tried (on Android, at least) either had too little detail or a cumbersome user interface. But all of them were promoted to me directly by word-of-mouth. Make a great one, and people will spread it around. Become the fanatic's map app. The MapQuest brand could have the perfect retro-niche appeal for this.

Re: MapQuest still exists

#29

Post by wpietri »

exogen wrote: post #21
qbrass wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After spending 10 minutes trying to find where Google moved their menu so I could print directions, (I completely missed the hamburger menu blended into the text box) I gave up used MapQuest instead. Instead of focusing on the quality of their map data, MapQuest can just compete by not ruining their UX.

I wasted a few minutes the other day searching for a spreadsheet in Google "Drive"...because by default only "Docs" are selected and for whatever reason that refers only to "Word" style documents now, not spreadsheets. Especially confusing since people still call it Google Docs, so when you open it and it just says "Docs" you're just thinking, "yes, I'm on Google Docs" not "I'm viewing only Word style documents". Ter…

I'm so relieved to learn it's not just me. Google has spent years building a magic search box that finds everything I want. I have no idea why they decided one day that spreadsheets were so thoroughly not documents that they would only sully the search on docs.google.com.

Re: MapQuest still exists

#30

Post by dopamean »

ghshephard wrote: post #23

I find this hard to believe: "Though MapQuest still has the second-highest share of the domestic market in online mapping, about 25 percent"

I worked at two companies in the last 3 years that both used MapQuest a lot. Both companies had fleets of drivers (one had about 200 trucks and the other had about 500). The first was pretty low tech and just distributed MapQuest printouts to drivers that had to go somewhere. The other was quite a bit more technically sound and had a pretty cool dispatching and routing system. All the maps were rendered using MapQuest. I was pretty surprised but in both cases it seems that these companies started doing things that way before Google Maps took off and they just stuck with what worked for them.

I know its anecdotal but I think it could point to something. The first company was in central Florida and the second was in NYC. They were also in completely different industries.

Post reply on HN