Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#1

Post by thex10 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 3:00 AM UTC

Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?
maphappenings.com

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#2

Post by gniv » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 4:31 AM UTC

From the article:

  I think it is a text book example of the main difference in DNA between Google and Apple:

    Google is all about crowdsourcing.
    Apple is all about curation.

But how does Apple scale discovering new places without crowdsourcing? Relying on business owners is not enough to have decent coverage.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#3

Post by wodenokoto » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 6:09 AM UTC

I've only added a business to Google once, and it was a restaurant I worked at. We received a physical letter, with a stamp and all from google with a verification code we had to enter in order to add our business.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#4

Post by HnUser12 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 6:34 AM UTC

gniv wrote: post #2

From the article: I think it is a text book example of the main difference in DNA between Google and Apple: Google is all about crowdsourcing. Apple is all about curation. But how does Apple scale discovering new places without crowdsourcing? Relying on business owners is not enough to have decent coverage.

Apple now allows regular users to add new places to maps but it looks like they have a review process. I added a park and they didn’t accept my report until I added photos of the park sign board.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#5

Post by aib » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 6:37 AM UTC

  I think it is a text book example of the main difference in DNA between Google and Apple:
      Google is all about crowdsourcing.
      Apple is all about curation.

What's in their DNA is being corporate entities answerable to shareholders. Anything else is their culture, which, unfortunately, is too amenable to change. Oh, and in this analogy, their blood is money.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#6

Post by forgotmypw17 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 7:24 AM UTC

I'm not sure about the places per se, but I've learned to do my own homework on hours and closing times.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#7

Post by joeamroo » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:10 AM UTC

aib wrote: post #5

I think it is a text book example of the main difference in DNA between Google and Apple: Google is all about crowdsourcing. Apple is all about curation. What's in their DNA is being corporate entities answerable to shareholders. Anything else is their culture, which, unfortunately, is too amenable to change. Oh, and in this analogy, their blood is money.

> “unfortunately”

There only exists few companies with the financial might and margins relative to Opex like Apple and Google, and even rare a company that is controlled by a major shareholder (Meditations on Moloch comes to mind). I don’t see why or how Apple or Google would change their approach to business given the difficulty of doing so coordination wise and the opportunity cost of doing so. I can only see a company doing so if they had an assertive leader at the helm who is ready to pick up the low-hanging fruits of whatever upcoming technology is gonna make the shareholders the most money.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#8

Post by ahefner » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 8:24 AM UTC

Curious. For a few years I'd have looked to Google Maps / Google Local as one of the great services Google provides (along with gmail, Chat, Android, Chrome and ChromeOS development...) as an argument for how ad-supported Google is a substantial net benefit to society and against any antitrust or punitive government action. Call the legitimacy of the maps data into question and another pillar of the empire begins to crumble - not directly from any misdeed of Google, just a naive (or not..) reliance on algorithms and crowd-sourcing and inability to deal with the flood deliberate/malicious gaming of their systems by third parties.

A minor tragedy of the past 15 years of social networking is it feels like we're reaching the end of that era and, despite every opportunity for better or worse (e.g. Facebook's real name policy), we've emerged with no useful reputation system or web of trust to stem the tide of spam and SEO garbage.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#9

Post by seanhunter » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

No they can't be trusted. There are "Google Maps Placement Consultants" who basically do SEO for Google Maps. How do I know this? I got an attempt by one of them to pitch me his services on linkedIn just this morning.

Re: Places on Google Maps. Can They Still Be Trusted?

#10

Post by loupol » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

> The French had invented a new acronym: GAFA. GAFA stood for “Google Apple Facebook Amazon” and if you were a member of this group you weren’t to be trusted.

Author seems to characterize this as an unreasonable stance to have, but I personally feel like not trusting is a pretty good default even if it's not necessary the best for all situations.