Hate to be contrarian, but I actually agree with the author. It's often a collection of little things like this that puts one site over another.
Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#22Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
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Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#23I would actually like to see one of them have an updated ariel view of some rural areas. Something in the last 5 years would be nice.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#24I don't really agree with the author's proposal, although it is well explained. As many others pointed out, Google's usability was (and maybe still is) much better than the others. Another big point in Google's favour is how their maps look . Back when Google Maps came out, the other maps were bitmapped and horrible to look at on the screen and in print. The quality of Google's maps is much more like what you see in…
Bing Maps does a lot of cool stuff but always feels perpetually in beta to me (and not in the way that Gmail used to always be in beta). The end-to-end UX is never quite all there.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#25For me, and many I know it was speed. Scroll speed, zoom speed, search speed. Even today GMaps wins in that category. I barely ever use satellite view for anything but casual amusement.
V3 of the Google Maps API is blindingly fast. Unbelievable how much they've sped up since V2 , and V2 was already fast.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#26Google maps won because they provide accurate directions and maps in a really simple, clean, fast interface. Competing products have caught up quite a bit, but I still cant bring myself to go to mapquest because of how much it used to suck.
I don't think most people switch to satellite view, or care if those views are consistent.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#27I use google maps because it has the most usability IMHO.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#28Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
The author updated the article with a special message for us: He basically appologizes that somebody submitted his blog post with a misleading title to Hacker News and emphasized again, that consistency isn't the reason that Google Maps is still #1 on the market.
Re: Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps?
#29Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first company to not do maps horribly? Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a 200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you. If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload. Google did maps right, an…
The author updated the article with a special message for us: He basically appologizes that somebody submitted his blog post with a misleading title to Hacker News and emphasized again, that consistency isn't the reason that Google Maps is still #1 on the market.
Okay, now I feel bad. I skimmed the article and posted a reaction. I am wrong for doing that. (Honestly, it was probably a reaction to how much I hated pre 2005 online mapping software and not the article. I guess it is such a strong hate that to this day it gets a reaction out of me...)