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Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#21

Post by echelon »

slezyr wrote: post #14
hliyan wrote: post #8

This is a familiar refrain I've recently begun to hear about many of Google's products and I'm starting to see the point. Technology has evolved significantly in the last ten years. It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. Maps too, will go that way soon. It took IBM and Intel, who were regarded the same way Google is…

> It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. ReCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, CloudFlare definitely don't make it easier to crawl the web than it was ten years ago

Thankfully (1) there just aren't that many useful websites anymore. Most content lives in walled gardens. Negotiate a few deals to get around CloudFlare for those select few and you're set.

[1] I'm being sarcastic.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#22

Post by barnacled »

One thing I have noticed and found really irritating is the degradation of the street view functionality in Google maps. They have got lazy. I used to be able to click or keyboard navigate through a route but now it either stops responding to clicks, transports me onto a nearby motorway randomly,or gets massively unresponsive.

I am very glad there is some competition coming, as good as Google maps is they are clearly resting on their laurels and not bothering to fix blatant issues.

Competition is good.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#23

Post by Joe8Bit »

Great article, but I think the conclusion about Google Maps languishing because it’s a low margin product is wrong.

While Google Maps as a distinct product has a bottom and top line I think the author underestimates the value that the underlying places data has for Google’s core search product.

The local place data is _massivley_ important to search. I don’t see any foreseeable way Google let’s the product that generates it languish. It’s far too strategic for them. Not to mention the amount of brand value maps has for them as an ecosystem.

My view is that as Google’s Maps advantage dwindles, they’ll do more and more strategic acquisitions of places data sources. Tying more data into their closed ecosystem. Whether the new tech anti-trust landscape in the US and EU allows this is another question.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#24

Post by captain_price7 »

partingshots wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, a potential counterpoint: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat And the discussion that came with it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653

If you click on the first link, it says "This essay no longer reflects the current state of Google & Apple Maps".

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#25

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

bobviolier wrote: post #13
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in central Europe. Maps and navigation in the Croatian countryside is comically broken. Not only are the locations of addresses way off, if you travel to that location, they'll then send you somewhere else and eventually in a circle. Maybe they don't care about poor countries with lower usage, but I'd be embarrassed to have that in my product. Having said that, rich western Europe is in some ways no better. If y…

Can't speak about Eastern Europe, but here in the Netherlands the public transport with Google Maps is really good. Including live-timing as to when your tram will arrive.

I have no problem with that, it works fine for me too, but public transport routing here (the actual mapping functionality) in Den Haag is broken and has been for years.

Even when I don't encounter obvious bugs, Google serves up illogical routes.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#26

Post by hobofan »

bobviolier wrote: post #7

These street maps are becoming insanely precise, probably helped by the competition. I see that Google Maps is now testing "detailed street maps" in some cities: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-testing-detailed-street... Just a thought: maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps?

> maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps?

I think that sounds plausible. I don't see why else they would resume scanning parts of Germany even though they have to blur out large chunks of it on Streetview.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#29

Post by hobofan »

mnky9800n wrote: post #17
samoa42 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imo for the 95%-task of get-me-to-this-address i find the apple routing actually superior to gmaps (in germany that is)

I thought that's because Google stopped doing street view because of German privacy laws. Without the street view cars roaming around there's a lot less street level data to be had.

I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data. I was always under the impression that "paved" (or similar) streets were pretty easy to get right (and can possibly be obtained from a governmental agency?). For smaller footpaths I always assumed that they were using movement data (the same they use for traffic forecasting) to detect where they are.

They also resumed Streetview in parts of Germany this year, and I'm not sure they ever fully stopped running them for private data collection.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#30

Post by Dirlewanger »

hliyan wrote: post #8

This is a familiar refrain I've recently begun to hear about many of Google's products and I'm starting to see the point. Technology has evolved significantly in the last ten years. It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. Maps too, will go that way soon. It took IBM and Intel, who were regarded the same way Google is…

I hope for the startups too, but I'm not as optimistic. While the HP/Intel/IBM/etc. dinosaurs are slowly being sapped of relevance, I don't think Google will fall victim to the same fate. Those dinosaurs largely saw their maturation before the rise of Internet, and as such still have a lot of pre-Internet culture in them, especially in the C-suite. Google (largely) doesn't have that. And they, along with the rest of the FAANG companies, just deal with menacing upstarts by buying them. They're public, they're starting to become too massive, but no one cares as long as they continue providing their core free services.
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