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What Happened to Google Maps?

justinobeirne.com

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Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#141

Post by rory096 »

swiley wrote: post #111
Gustomaximus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For driving Google Maps getting quite bad. See this screenshoot: http://imgur.com/uPO8QJh This kind of crowded display is fairly common now. I use Here Maps now which is much better + I like supporting a second option to avoid one service getting 2 monopolistic. My theory of why google maps is getting worse is there must be designers dedicated to this that need to constantly look for 'new' things to add even if its t…

The worst part about Google maps while driving is that it won't read directions until your right up on the turn.

The big problem is that routes used to be useful without turn-by-turn navigation - back when there were bubbles on each turn you could click on to see. Now you're stuck trying to read a long list of directions, or you use turn-by-turn and have no idea where you're going until the last second before each turn.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#142

Post by lucb1e »

nud wrote: post #134
googleisking wrote: post #124

Google Maps, like several other google products (like Groups, even Search), has seen a constant degrade in user experience since 2005 or so. Maybe people forgot, but google maps was /blazing fast/ in the beginning. Nowdays, it brings my browser down to a crawl even before the images are shown. Maybe people are just stuck with this "google is the best" mentality, but this has stopped being universally true since many…

OpenSteetMap is very difficult to compare to Google Maps as it uses pre-rendered raster map images at fixed resolutions, rather than a dynamic vector-based approach. For me at least, this makes it far slower to load in non-cached areas, and the lack of precise zooming is super annoying.

For me Google Maps is slower than OpenStreetMap anywhere in the world, cache or no cache. Might have something to do with not using Chrome, where Google makes their websites work the best of course.

What do you mean by "the lack of precise zooming is super annoying"? In my experience, zooming in Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap are very fast, and only in Google Maps you're waiting ten seconds for the region to load and browser to respond before you can zoom further.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#144

Post by lucb1e »

a3_nm wrote: post #113

I think that OpenStreetMap has a bit more information that Google Maps at the same zoom level. To compare on New York: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=9/40.5263/-73.8556 https://www.google.fr/maps/@40.5487361,-73.9399427,9z (Edit: as the child comments correctly point out, this is only the default OSM rendering style.)

It has a lot more info indeed and I love it. But then here come the users, looking for eye candy over functionality (I've heard this from two people):

"ugh that is so ugly look at all this clutter"

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#145

Post by maxerickson »

sztanko wrote: post #129

Optimal placement of labels is an NP-hard problem[1]. Since google maps transferred to vector and label placement is now done on the (mobile) client, I am not surprised by what happened. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_label_placement

It would be cheap to transmit pre-calculated hints for various display situations.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#146

Post by lucb1e »

beejiu wrote: post #73
altitudinous wrote: post #15

Google know more than the author about how Google Maps is used by end users. The author is grading Google Maps based on the number of cities and roads displayed, not how the users use it. Google provide an alternative mapping product, Google Earth, for satisfying curiosity about the planet. Google maps is primarily a navigation tool. They have very distinct use cases.

Google Map's directions doesn't work between postal codes in the UK, unless you specify the space. And it hasn't worked for about a year. I must say, I find Google Maps quite difficult to use.

You could try alternatives like OpenStreetMap. In the Netherlands, Germany, France and nearby countries the map quality is often better (and more up to date) than Google Maps, but I don't know about the UK.

For navigation there are separate websites that use OSM data, like yournavigation.org (not sure that's the best one, I just know of it). They often work a bit differently than Google Maps so there might be a slight learning curve.

There is also Bing Maps which has great areal imagery if you're looking for that, only their map quality isn't as good. Certainly not terrible either, though.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#147

Post by lucb1e »

jrbapna wrote: post #16

While the analysis is fine, the conclusion is almost certainly false. At Google's scale, nearly any iteration made on core products is backed by an immense understanding of their end users and a near unlimited supply of user data.

There can be a million things wrong with user testing, and while I am certain they know more about it than me, I think it's a safe bet to say they're not perfect either and may make mistakes in such a complex topic.

(Small example of what I mean: many people like the new style because it's prettier, but when I use OSM I get to places a lot faster than people using Google Maps, so they might be asking the wrong question even if they did user testing with a million people. But that's just one example of everything that could go wrong.)

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#148

Post by majewsky »

neilc wrote: post #77
chris_wot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also one too many buttons when you choose a route. If I want to drive, then I type in the address, select it, press a button to activate it, then press a similar button to start the route. Why is that last button needed?

Personally I like this UX. I often pullup the directions to a destination without actually starting turn-by-turn navigation: I'd like to see whether Google recommends taking highway X or Y, and then I can drive the rest of the route myself.

Exactly. Just yesterday, I used it to get an accurate reading of the driving distance between two cities.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#149

Post by DonHopkins »

rcthompson wrote: post #21
elmerland wrote: post #8

I'm surprised the author didn't mention the main difference between paper maps and google maps. That is, google maps is interactive. With a paper map what you see is what you get. You had to cram as much information as it would allow. But this is not the case with google maps. You can zoom in, out, and anywhere in between. You can't compare the two based on the level of information displayed at one fixed zoom level b…

Not only zooming, Google Maps also has search. If you're looking for Oakland, CA, you go to the search bar and type "Oakland, CA", and it shows up on the map. No need to scan the map for the thing you're looking for, that's the computer's job!

What's the most appropriate thing to do when a user asks "Do you know the way to San Jose?"

1) Answer "Yes."

2) Show a route to San Jose.

3) Play the song.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#150

Post by majewsky »

SiVal wrote: post #93
x0054 wrote: post #51

So I am not crazy after all! The other day I was driving in Palm Springs, and I was using Google Maps. I literally had to zoom in until the road I was on almost completely field the screen before it would show me the name of the road or the roads around it. They did something to their display algorithm where you now have to zoom almost entirely into an area to see anything about the area, very inconvenient.

It drives me crazy that I can't find half of the labels I'm looking for, and when I do, I can't increase the size of the labels enough to make them readable. Frequently I'll have to fight with the map, zoom in and out and scroll around to get it to show me the name of a street at all, but when I finally do coax it into revealing a tiny name far downroad, the font is often too small to read. If I reflexively expand th…

Try to tap-and-hold on the street. It'll put a pin in there and tell you the address, which contains the road's name.
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