291–300 of 442 posts
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Google was the dominant provider of maps I'm guessing by a large margin. GCP is not the dominant provider of cloud services (they're third or distant third).
So that means it should be safer to rely on GCP (or in general on services where Google is not dominant) than something like Maps where it is dominant.
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Google's fundamental relationship with users is statistical, and I think it shows. They're very good at optimizing metrics; their search, for example has remained the leader 20+ years on. In that world, if you lose a few users or give a bad experience, well, there are plenty more where those came from, and the ones who leave will often come back. I think they mistakenly bring that attitude to their consumer businesse…
> Amazon is even more rapacious, In what way? It seems a bit like stone throwing to immediately toss another company into the conversation without providing some anecdote.
And TRAFFIC data. The main reason I still use GMaps/Waze is because they give better arrival estimates than anyone else, because they have more traffic data, because of network effects.
I think the winner of the maps wars will be the one who gets the best traffic estimates, and I think Google/Waze are still way ahead on that front.
I just wish the GMaps UI and Waze UI would be combined. I love the cop, traffic camera, and hazard notifications of Waze, I love the lane markers in GMaps, as well as their navigating by landmark (I was once told "turn in the driveway after the Chipotle" by GMaps). I also love Apple's "turn at the second stop sign".
So if I could get a UI with all those things and Google's traffic data, that would be peachy.
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>It's not reliable if you're cross referencing constantly. Eh, I cross reference Google Maps with Waze all the time back when I used it, but I wouldn't dare call Google Maps unreliable. It costs nothing to do, so why wouldn't it?
It costs time?
Disclaimer: I'm from New Zealand. Map data is constantly out of date here, no matter which vendor you deal with. Google, Apple, Bing, OSM, whatever. For me, double checking is no problem.
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AWS is already incredibly profitable while continuing to lower prices over time. What makes you think they would choose to run this scheme and forever ruin their reputation?
The point is that nobody expected Google to just hike their price for mapping by 1400% overnight. If they can do it with one product, what’s stopping anyone else in a similar dominant market position doing the same?
I’m no amazon apologist, but one thing I trust them to do is keep my things running as they are.
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You can make up as many fictional backstories as you want, but gmail was launched because signed-in users enjoy vastly better search quality and prior to gmail there was no reason to associate your identity with Google.
From the outside, it looked like GDocs, GMail, and crew were originally created for internal use because engineering Googlers used Linux and hated Windows. Microsoft was still quite the enemy in teh early 00's after all. Along the way a few someones figured out that they could offer it as a product outside the company as a means to attack Microsoft more broadly. Is that view incorrect?
My overarching view on Google's evolution is that their real product is dirt-cheap computing facilities, and their products are often just a way to exploit that capacity. Part of Gmail's genesis was an abundance of underutilized hard drives. YouTube was acquired because they already had the networking in place to operate it. Inbox Smart Reply was a way to use a novel and cheap ML inference device to launch a feature that nobody else could afford. In all these cases the infrastructure existed first and the products emerged to fill them.
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To me, Apple Maps still doesn't feel as good for searching obscure things as Google Maps did 5 years ago, but neither does Google Maps. An example: I recently searched for "photography repair" in my area and Apple gave me film developing places and local event photographers, Google gave me (I kid you not, first result) McDonalds and Best Buy. The latter I can understand, they sell photography equipment and they do re…
I agree, I’ve often found smaller or less “online” businesses (e.g. a local car stereo shop) on Google that Maps doesn’t surface. But I usually just search for these in a browser anyway, and open Maps when I actually want to navigate there.
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Apple’s approach to cycling directions is second rate IMHO. It’s only available in certain media city locations. If you stray out of those areas you’re out of luck. Basically Apple seem more interested in rolling this out as a tick box item for journalists than helping me get to work. This tells me that Apple is not serious about its Maps app.
Google still doesn't have Street View for my house. This tells me Google is not serious about its Maps app.
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I actually don’t really trust business hours on google anymore, I have to go to the restaurant directly or just call since I’ve been burned so many times looking forward to dumplings/teriyaki/pizza and then having the restaurant be closed.
This has become an even bigger problem recently, with COVID forcing businesses to suddenly change their hours.
I really want to use Apple Maps full time on my iPhone, just because of how much clutter Google Maps has accumulated on the screen. If anything tells me Google is losing the ability to innovate it's the newly added pill buttons for pre-set searches and branded POIs on the map. I remember when this was added to MapQuest circa 2010, and was the transition from trying to have an excellent mapping experience to just addi…
8 years later, Apple Maps still doesn't show buildings in Russia, even in largest cities. So it's essentially useless for actual navigation. It's okay-ish when all you want is to see a point on a map in a city you know, and that's about it. Out of other companies, Yandex and Google have by far more detailed maps. This leaves me with one question — why does Apple reinvent it anyway? Why can't they just use ridiculousl…
Because Apple learnt a long time ago that something essential needs to be in their hands; third parties let Apple down.
Google let Apple down by refusing to allow Apple to craft vector-based maps, only allowing Apple to download bitmaps. Thus Apple Maps.
Intel let Apple down by failing to predict where the market was moving since about 2012 or so, with the Core processors not gaining much in terms of performance and somehow managing to guzzle more energy. Thus Apple Silicon.
Plenty of other examples where Apple realised they can't offer the whole package until they own all the components. The formula is " didn't do and it impacted Apple's offerings. Thus ".