This is inexcusably disgusting. Reminds me of the bullshit Amazon feeds their employees about unions.
I may be wrong since i'm not american, but it seems like unions are generally a controversial topic in the US.
Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
11–20 of 139 posts
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#12I cannot comprehend how the developed world gave up the POI landscape to one American company. Without a fight or second thought.
Going for a walk in your neighborhood and adding all the POIs to OpenStreetMap is fun btw.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Apple Maps got released and everbody made fun of how bad it was, it was revealed that Google Maps had something like 6000 people working on it for years and years, funded through Alphabet corporation's search monopoly and ad revenue. Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue. And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still fai…
I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but if you told me it collectively saved hundreds of billions of dollars a year i wouldn't be surprised. Not to mention the cultural value of being able to teleport virtually anywhere in the world and see the streets, visit places etc. Isn…
A fair number of HN takes are snark and critique I think these days, it's a bit more reddit now?
I think folks underestimate just HOW MUCH data google maps has and how many users it has, and the integration / scale is impressive particularly as some parts of the system are real time. They seem to update both street view and satellite data pretty frequently, and you can go back in time in sat vie as well, so we have a geo and time dimension now.
When I do routing I can route by walking, transit, driving etc. It seems to know every train / bus route and stop and even schedule. It seems to have most businesses. With street view I can zoom from space to a street and see a storefront.
This is stuff the CIA spends $20 billion on and gets a crappy product only 3 users at a time can use in a room.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Apple Maps got released and everbody made fun of how bad it was, it was revealed that Google Maps had something like 6000 people working on it for years and years, funded through Alphabet corporation's search monopoly and ad revenue. Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue. And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still fai…
I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but if you told me it collectively saved hundreds of billions of dollars a year i wouldn't be surprised. Not to mention the cultural value of being able to teleport virtually anywhere in the world and see the streets, visit places etc. Isn…
I was on my way to an important meeting and Google Maps had an outage. I panicked, and it took me a good 5 minutes to realize there were other map products that I could use to get directions.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn’t Google put a lot of the POI data together themselves? And aren’t there lots of competitors? And nothing but money stopping another player from entering the market?
When Apple Maps got released and everbody made fun of how bad it was, it was revealed that Google Maps had something like 6000 people working on it for years and years, funded through Alphabet corporation's search monopoly and ad revenue. Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue. And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still fai…
Who cares where in the company money funding it comes from. It's normal for a company to reinvest it's profit from other products to build new ones.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn’t Google put a lot of the POI data together themselves? And aren’t there lots of competitors? And nothing but money stopping another player from entering the market?
When Apple Maps got released and everbody made fun of how bad it was, it was revealed that Google Maps had something like 6000 people working on it for years and years, funded through Alphabet corporation's search monopoly and ad revenue. Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue. And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still fai…
Do you have sources on those employee numbers?
Also, even if Apple had an equal number of employees and worked as fast as Google, of course they wouldn’t be able to catch up. Google has a head start. But it’s not like Apple isn’t leagues ahead of where Google was in 2011 by now.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#17I cannot comprehend how the developed world gave up the POI landscape to one American company. Without a fight or second thought.
Going for a walk in your neighborhood and adding all the POIs to OpenStreetMap is fun btw.
Some people are even using google street view to do this - not sure what the licensing rules if any are there.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#18Good. The government shouldn't be getting in the way of companies trying to make great products and services.
It seems like if you are too good at playing the game people will want the government to slap you with things like anticompete / antitrust to try and give you a handicap since you are too good at being competitive.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but if you told me it collectively saved hundreds of billions of dollars a year i wouldn't be surprised. Not to mention the cultural value of being able to teleport virtually anywhere in the world and see the streets, visit places etc. Isn…
A fair number of HN takes are snark and critique I think these days, it's a bit more reddit now? I think folks underestimate just HOW MUCH data google maps has and how many users it has, and the integration / scale is impressive particularly as some parts of the system are real time. They seem to update both street view and satellite data pretty frequently, and you can go back in time in sat vie as well, so we have a…
> When I do routing I can route by walking, transit, driving etc. It seems to know every train / bus route and stop and even schedule.
Not only that but they seem to route through the "most popular" or "most attended routes" crowdsourced by their unaware users. Meanwhile others just calculate the "best time" or "shortest path" routing.
Re: Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps
#20I cannot comprehend how the developed world gave up the POI landscape to one American company. Without a fight or second thought.
Didn’t Google put a lot of the POI data together themselves? And aren’t there lots of competitors? And nothing but money stopping another player from entering the market?
By themselves do you mean how they tricked a bunch of "volunteers" to do it for them with google photos gps metadata scraping, google maps local guides, and Ingress.