I stopped using Google Maps a few years back. I received a notification on my phone that a store I was near was having a sale. It was clear that something was leaking my location, and that was being used to push ads to me through Android itself. A little investigation revealed that the culprit was Google Maps. I uninstalled it at that point and never looked back.
So what do you use now
Not OP, but been using Here maps and super happy. It's been said before but I'll say it again - amazing offline support.
> Why should they offer a free maps service? The shouldn't. They should be forced to close, and Maps and Search should be provided by a non-profit, internationally controlled (UN etc), organization, not a for-profit company. That's my opinion of what would be best. Some services (like "indexing the world's knowledge") are too important to be left to private interests and be monetized via ads...
Forced to close? Why? That's a terrible authoritarian idea. The only solution is more competition, not less. Trying to limit who can do what has only ever led to worse outcomes. There's nothing stopping a non-profit group from creating maps today if they wanted to.
Authoritarianism is not a solution, but neither is the magic of the free market when the dynamic is increasingly consolidated wealth looking for ever faster returns due to the technology cycle.
The idea that a non-profit could compete in the current economic and cultural climate is laughable. Some social change is required, and government for all its flaws is the logical place for such change to actually gain some teeth.
Forced to close? Why? That's a terrible authoritarian idea. The only solution is more competition, not less. Trying to limit who can do what has only ever led to worse outcomes. There's nothing stopping a non-profit group from creating maps today if they wanted to.
Authoritarianism is not a solution, but neither is the magic of the free market when the dynamic is increasingly consolidated wealth looking for ever faster returns due to the technology cycle. The idea that a non-profit could compete in the current economic and cultural climate is laughable. Some social change is required, and government for all its flaws is the logical place for such change to actually gain some te…
The idea that a non-profit must compete is what's laughable. This service is expensive. Who's going to pay for it? Taxes? Subscriptions? Ads again?
The free market is exactly what allows anyone to compete, and Apple and Microsoft already do so, along with dozens of industrial providers.
OSM has impressive geographical data now, but in the meantime Google Maps has gone well beyond "we can help you find that street address." Their places data, reviews, photos, navigation, and street view are all adding a massive amount of value. They have shifted the goal posts.
I think there is a good argument to be made for crowdsourcing some of those as well.
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
> Why should they offer a free maps service? The shouldn't. They should be forced to close, and Maps and Search should be provided by a non-profit, internationally controlled (UN etc), organization, not a for-profit company. That's my opinion of what would be best. Some services (like "indexing the world's knowledge") are too important to be left to private interests and be monetized via ads...
As maps go, its pretty nice - much more reminiscent of printed maps. But, its of no use for more practical tasks like providing directions, or finding restaurants.
Maps has been awful and getting worse for a long time. If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names. Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.
What killed GMaps for me was the dogged insistence that the correct route through the city involves making left turns onto busy multilane roads at rush hour from a side street with a stop sign, just to avoid a half-block of stopped traffic waiting for a left turn signal.
Maps has been awful and getting worse for a long time. If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names. Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.
Do you mean rerouting? Google Maps is tuned differently than Waze, which caters to drivers looking to shave off minutes or even seconds. It tries to keep directions simple and easier to follow (e.g. not making a large number of turns), even if that means a slightly slower route. That was a deliberate product decision, at least until a few years ago. What kind of incomprehensible directions and business names are you…
Waze feels more like the R&D app for maps. It doesn't shave seconds or minutes off my time, but what it does do is constant A/B testing to see if another route could be faster. I know the area fairly well and I routinely ignore the route Waze wants to send me unless there is a clearly identified problem on the normal route, and when it re-routes to the path I chose, it's a minute or two shorter. Why did it try to send me down the slower route in the first place? Waze pulls this crap routinely.
There aren't a lot of good alternatives to Maps though. I do find that the service is becoming more and more unusable with all the shitty product placements.
Depends what you use it for. For driving directions, there are plenty of alternatives. An excellent one is a standalone GPS device like a Garmin nüvi or a TomTom, which works entirely offline (except traffic reports, which are received over FM radio or Bluetooth). The only time I actually use Google Maps is when I'm at my PC, and Bing maps works just as well.
I think if you tried using gmaps for navigation you’d find it to be a far superior to those devices. Does your TomTom tell you “turn into the driveway after the Vitamin Shop”? Because gmaps does.
I stopped using Google Maps a few years back. I received a notification on my phone that a store I was near was having a sale. It was clear that something was leaking my location, and that was being used to push ads to me through Android itself. A little investigation revealed that the culprit was Google Maps. I uninstalled it at that point and never looked back.
Using your activity as a substrate for ads has always been Google's business model, and never been a secret. You don't have to go along with it, but it's not a revelation.
Clearly, it was a revelation to him. Which is Google's fault, not his. Google should communicate clearly and visibly what data they use and for what.