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What Happened to Google Maps?

justinobeirne.com

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Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#171

Post by adzm »

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…

Google News on mobile has become an awful experience on mobile. They hijacked the scrolling so it doesn't keep momentum like every other scrolling page in the system, and if you accidentally scroll downward with too much of an angle it swipes to a new section. I'm amazed every day it still exists and has not been fixed!!

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#172

Post by a3n »

The difference between the album-cover paper map and Google Maps is that every "pixel" on the paper map was put there by conscious, functional and esthetic choice. In fact the people who designed and drew that map probably bragged about it to their peers.

No designing human ever sees a rendered Google Map, except for testing. The overall esthetic programmed into the algorithms are designed, but no human looks at the final result and says "it would just look better if this was shifted up and to the right a bit." There are an infinite number of possible renderings on a digital map, but a specific published paper map goes out the door with a sigh of satisfaction.

Which is to say, there's a long way to go before a digitial map is beautiful, and a specific rendering is as good as possible for the person viewing it for a specific purpose.

The only way digital maps win (and they do) is that you can ask them things, and they cover the world.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#173

Post by Tempest1981 »

powera wrote: post #47
mbrock wrote: post #25

There's a broad trend of tech companies disrupting traditional industries and then making rookie mistakes and generally not living up to the standards of the tradition. Google, hire cartographers. Amazon, hire librarians and typesetters. Spotify, hire musicologists.

Why do you think they haven't?

Maybe the feeling that you are revolutionizing an industry -- which gives you contempt for those who came before you?

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#174

Post by yardie »

ehnto wrote: post #70
mbrock wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I assume Google has a big staff of skilled people working on GIS, but I'm curious to know what kind of input they get from people trained in the art of cartographical mapmaking... My hunch is that the tech industry is bad at taking advantage of this kind of traditional trade knowledge, and the essay in question here is an indicator. As for Amazon, the Kindle e-books very often have horrific typesetting that wou…

Something that has become interesting to me recently is the amount of knowledge about maratime weather and sailing that isn't readily accessible in a some kind of neat database, app or website. You actually have to talk to people and wander through museums to find out some of it. It's an example of an industry and body of knowledge that still grows and is passed around outside of the internet. Weather patterns for a…

The best application I've found that can be used offline is ActiveCaptain. The database is free and actively updated. The mobile app is garbage. An old Adobe AIR concoction that sometimes crashes or freezes arbitrarily.

Other apps I've used that have a slick interface are unfortunately online only. Which is useless to me. When I'm coming into a new, unknown, anchorage I need the information now, not after I've already tied up.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#175

Post by jamesdelaneyie »

nud wrote: post #161
lucb1e wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 br…

On Google Maps, your zoom factor is any real number within a range. On Open Street View, you are stuck using one of several predefined zoom levels (integers 1-20). To test out, try modifying the "10" in both of the links below: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7058316,-74.2581905,10z https://maps.here.com/?map=40.71455,-74.00714,10,normal&x=ep

Google maps also changes the zoom level to the nearest integer. You can't do 12.5 for example. When I change the 10 on the google maps link in your comment to 10.5, it rounds it back down to 10 and rewrites the URL. Have ran into the issue before doing custom maps for sites where 14.5 would be the perfect zoom level, but can only pick 14 or 15 :(

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#176

Post by jrbapna »

lucb1e wrote: post #147
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 questi…

Sure, it's possible, however unlikely, that a mistake of this sort fell through the cracks, but I wouldn't place any bets on it

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#177

Post by Tempest1981 »

AJRF wrote: post #109

I think what Google is doing makes sense given smartphone adoption and the fact the maps are use for fundamentally different functions now. You don't need a hulking great map with loads of detail at a high level to get from point A to point B, you now just use your smartphone for that. I assume Google spotted a trend of people searching place names as opposed to picking points between two separate locations. So how d…

Why can't the map serve multiple functions? I guess I wasn't overloaded by the detail.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#178

Post by AJRF »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #177
AJRF wrote: post #109

I think what Google is doing makes sense given smartphone adoption and the fact the maps are use for fundamentally different functions now. You don't need a hulking great map with loads of detail at a high level to get from point A to point B, you now just use your smartphone for that. I assume Google spotted a trend of people searching place names as opposed to picking points between two separate locations. So how d…

Why can't the map serve multiple functions? I guess I wasn't overloaded by the detail.

I would guess that placing labels on a map has some cost. Not doing this(especially over 3G, 4G, EDGE) might have some gain in loading time.

If you need that fine-grain detail zoom in?

Not saying I advocate this approach, but thought I would try give you an answer :)

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#179

Post by tempestn »

powera wrote: post #46
kylec wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Google knows more than the author about their own maps, but please give the author his due: he wrote a successful blog called 41Latitude that did a lot of in-depth analysis of Google Maps's display of information, and later led the Apple Maps team. If he has something to say about information density on maps, I'm inclined to listen.

I don't think the fact that the author prefers the map he designed means anything about which one is actually better or more usable, regardless of his credentials.

Don't you think it's possible to benefit from someone's expertise while recognizing and taking into account their inherent bias? It's generally difficult to find the former without some degree of the latter.

Re: What Happened to Google Maps?

#180

Post by altitudinous »

kylec wrote: post #23
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.

I'm sure Google knows more than the author about their own maps, but please give the author his due: he wrote a successful blog called 41Latitude that did a lot of in-depth analysis of Google Maps's display of information, and later led the Apple Maps team. If he has something to say about information density on maps, I'm inclined to listen.

That is fair comment. I'm certainly one for respecting someone who has experience.
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