The video that autoplays on this website is infuriating.
Google Maps has become an eyesore
171–180 of 705 posts
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#172I would add to this article that a major issue with Google Maps has been businesses trying to SEO-pad their business names on Google Maps, to the detriment of readability. This is also against their TOS – the "business name" form is supposed to be their legally registered business name, the one that they probably have signage for. Moderators simply don't enforce this, and with Map Maker basically gone, the community…
> {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name} Wait, what's wrong with this? This is just good practice. It's helpful to be able to, when communicating with someone, unambiguously refer to the exact location, e.g. Westville Chelsea v Westville East v Westville Hudson v Westville Wall Street.
Because on a map it's already implicit in where the pin actually is. You're staring at a pin in Westville Chelsea.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#173Google Maps just isn't a map. I wonder if the people that work on it have ever looked at actual maps before. You have to zoom in almost to the maximum setting to see street names, and even then they often don't show up. Real maps show street names labeled on every street. But Google Maps developers are obviously more interested in it looking 'clean' and in showing little ads all over it than in it actually being usef…
> Real maps show street names labeled on every street.
You are specifically describing street maps. There are other sorts of maps, even maps for areas with named streets where the streets are not named on the map.
A local orientation organization has checkpoints around many areas here in Sweden. You visit each one and tally up how many places you've visited. The web site lets you enter the 1- or 2-digit code for each checkpoint if you want to track it that way.
Here's my local map: https://koncept.orientering.se/provapaaktiviteter/hittaut/tr...
There are no street names on those streets. There are contour lines, making it a topographic map.
Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map and you'll see other examples of topographic maps showing streets but not listing all or even most of the street names.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#174I worked on Google Maps monetization, and then on Maps itself. Monetization was a dismal failure. I don't know how well they're doing now, but Maps was a gigantic money-loser, forever. I'd be a little surprised if it didn't still lose money, but maybe less. I don't what those "pin ads" cost, but I'd bet it's way less than a search ad. If you don't believe that, that's fine. "What about indirect revenue?" you ask? Goo…
I assume people on the Google Maps team use Google Maps in their daily lives. Do they not feel the UX friction from all the ad-centric design?
People who make decisions usually don't use the product. Just look at Uber CEO, who was clueless about Uber ride pricing.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#175Some locals in Brisbane succeeded in getting a brief historical name for the central business district ("Frogs Hollow") boosted up as a locality name which shows up in several zoom levels. It's more prominent than the real name of the location (Gardens Point) sometimes. Nobody appears able to get this rescinded. Either its being contested, or the process boundaries on "this is graffiti") are limiting. I do quite a lo…
There's an entire fake park in my old neighborhood on Gmaps. I reported it ages ago and it's still there for no reason at all.
Maybe it's a "trap" park to catch people copying Google Maps data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kills me is I'd easily pay 50~100 eur a month if Maps had to be non ad subsidized. This is to me Google's most everyday impacting product, and what makes the difference between me being stranded/lost or making it in time. The stories of people ending in a lake for blindly following directions are cheeky, but decent maps are just that important, and Google Maps, how flawed it can be, is currently the best for so…
You'd pay 50-100 euro a month ? Why ? How did you arrive at this number ? Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much. To stretch this, if maps is 50-100 a month, how much is the total bill of all software you use ? Surely, the h/w, OS, browsers etc. should be orders of magnitude more than what they are today too.
> How did you arrive at this number ?
Straight comparison to the other service I paid for for a while I gave up as it didn't seem worth it.
> Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much.
They costed a bunch and were a lot less useable in day to day life.
There was no device that would tell me the schedule of the next train departing from the station 10 min from where I am, when the store I am going will close, and how I'll get back when there's no train left for the day anymore. To your point there were service providing this info in part, in text format, on super small screen, and they'd cost around 5/10 bucks a month.
Now I get that with a mostly accurate map, end to end, automatically udpated as I start moving. And I also get other people's position, and don't need to text them every 5 min to know if they're lost or stuck.
The same thing goes for mountain maps, where I live the trail markers are relatively accurate and I can use it as a reference to check the official maps and on trail directions (and getting the other people's position is that much more valuable)
All in all it's a package that was never at hand before smarphones arised, and is currently only really working with Google Maps, even as we have OSM and Apple Maps at the distance.
> how much is the total bill of all software you use ? Surely, the h/w, OS, browsers etc. should be orders of magnitude more than what they are today too.
I actually think that keeping a worldwide map including cities street level details and natural paths up to date could cost a lot more that maintaining a browser or an OS.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife and I prefer navigating with Apple maps after Google Maps stagnated for years and years. Apple's voice instructions are incomparably better.
I want to like Apple Maps but their reliance upon Yelp for useful information infuriates me.
Reviews and user submitted content are an absolute nightmare. I can’t imagine how much of a legal headache it is for google.
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google play services API's are deliberately designed to be hard to reimplement by third parties. In the case of maps, the placeId of every business or POI is internal to Google, and no other provider can give you a map for a matching placeId. It's no accident.
This isn't unique to Google. For example, the stripe PaymentMethod object is opaque and can't be moved to any other payment provider. That pretty much locks customers into stripe unless you want to force the customer to sign up to your service and enter their billing details again.
You can export card information to another provider: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan...
Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#179Re: Google Maps has become an eyesore
#180I worked on Google Maps monetization, and then on Maps itself. Monetization was a dismal failure. I don't know how well they're doing now, but Maps was a gigantic money-loser, forever. I'd be a little surprised if it didn't still lose money, but maybe less. I don't what those "pin ads" cost, but I'd bet it's way less than a search ad. If you don't believe that, that's fine. "What about indirect revenue?" you ask? Goo…
I personally think that ads on maps were a bad idea even for monetization. At glance, this seems to be a plausible ads inventory for local businesses but in reality this doesn't scale very well compared to Search or App ads (or even Display) since most of ads will be limited to a very narrow area so big advertisers don't feel as strongly as other channels. They could design ad campaigns specific to local areas but th…
I hate ads as much as the next guy, but I actually think that if this were better implemented, it wouldn't be that bad.
One way I commonly use google maps is as a restaurant or bar finder. Like "show me open restaurants around me". I even do this when at home and feel like eating out for whatever reason. I don't want to walk too far away or take transit. I just want to see the restaurants in a 10-minute walk radius around where I am which are open and what they serve. Now, sure, I'd like to see all restaurants, not just those which took out ads. But I'd be fine with those being featured at the top of the list.
Instead, what I get, is ads for hotels down the street when I'm already home. Or ads for a carpet store chain, which was closed that particular day (national holiday), which you also can't really miss if you set foot in the square.
Regarding monetization, they could probably figure a way to tell that if I click on the restaurant's pin, then follow directions there and stop at the address, I'm likely dining there.