But still sometimes Apple Maps can find more shops nearby than Google Maps. At least in Barcelona.
Google Maps' Moat
361–370 of 619 posts
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci
Same in Netherlands. Google Maps has recently become worse and worse. Small pedestrian roads are missing, and the navigation is getting stupid. Google applies the one-way limitations for cars also on cycling routes.
To go with the comparison mentioned in the article though, Apple maps doesn’t even have an option to cycle at the moment. I never use it in London for just that reason. They’ve decided that it’s more important to add ride sharing as an option before cycling in what I can only assume is a product of their being in suburban America.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#363Creating data out of data is literally the job of any machine learning model to be honest. And even though it is speculation from my side, but should be not far from the reality because this problem is literally everywhere, that Google spent some really big bucks to do the manual quality control of their data by hiring thousands if not 10s of thousands qualified people. And such quality control itself is quite an art to master, and have to be done on ongoing basis.
With good data, then model can better do the tricks, but data is the real gold here.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#364The cartography is pretty good. But I'm convinced nobody who works for Google does actually use Google Maps. The quality of the software and the user experience is terrible and notably worse than ten years ago.
Example 1: I had a saved route map from a long while ago. Google Maps can no longer load that map -- it is quietly truncated to the first 10 stops. Given the lack of support, Google apparently doesn't care about losing your data.
Example 2: The move from 'old maps' (tile based) to 'new maps' (webgl based) was a shambles. It still doesn't work as smoothly as old maps, and old maps had working features removed like the ability to edit routes. New maps still performs terribly compared to old maps -- it's slower, less responsive, and about a quarter of the time clicks do nothing.
I now use Bing maps day-to-day, which is worse than 2010-era Google Maps, but immensely better than 2017-era Google Maps.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#365Many people don't realize why Google maps are so much better than anything out there. I would actually give lot of credit to Marissa Mayer who suddenly became in charge of maps from otherwise more higher position. Thanks to her influence in Google SLT and ability to make impressive arguments, she was able to make a case for maps as core pillar in Google's offering and consequently obtain huge investment and large tal…
I was just on a road trip through Spain, France, Italy and Slovenia. Google Maps was good enough for road navigation but not perfect, and some things I really would have expected to work did not: location of service stations on the highway comes to mind.
When searching for places in European cities large and small, Google is missing a ton of information and much of what it has is wrong. Opening times, for instance, or which thing is a bar or a restaurant or a bakery or a shop.
And we found the main party bar in three different (smallish) cities, totally unknown to Google. Thank God we're still social enough to ask the locals. :-)
My sense is that the map data that can be acquired programmatically is very good on Google, and anything requiring human input or verification is relatively weak, especially outside the USA.
This is presumably a big opportunity, long-term, since it's getting easier to have robots acquire data but anything high-touch seems uninteresting to AlphaGoo.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci
Last time that I checked google maps was vastly superior in all the aspects.
I'd suggest to check outside the USA.
And even where the actual map data is superior, the "we know better what you want than yourself" approach to UI is infuriating: Hiding of map detail/information based on zoom level is LCD design - you have to zoom in ridiculously close to get most of the info you want, and even then you usually can't be sure that the POIs shown are complete. And don't get me started on "Oooh, you cleared this text field? Lets zoom/move around like crazy!1"
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
To offer a counterpoint, I decided to start alternating between Apple Maps and Google Maps a few months ago and — so far — I haven’t been led astray by Apple Maps. I do live in L.A., however, which is probably among the best case scenarios for Apple Maps at the moment. Google does have the better product, but for the most part I can see Apple Maps being at least “good enough” for my use, much the same way that Safari…
The problem for Apple is why would anyone want to use "good enough" when the alternatives are better, free, and easily available?
"better, free, and easily available" is variable, especially if you're in Apple's ecosystem.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#368Unless I missed it, the essay doesn't include mobile phone location tracking or location search information in the speculation of how Google is doing this rich mapping.
I'm sure there's a lot of AoI value in these two sources, so I would expect it to be part of the big equation.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if you don't like how OSM is showing something, you're free¹ to take the data and make your own map showing your own things. [1] free to set up a rendering database that is
And if something's wrong you can fix it
Indeed. I have made several approved corrections to Google maps over the years. They are responsive.
Re: Google Maps' Moat
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use it frequently. It's not. Especially regarding updating businesses, small roads (and road quality), paths, opening hours, closed roads&paths/construction sites, bike maps, everything regarding detailed information basically. I have been adding bus stop markers for blind people or types of pedestrian crossings, recycling containers, street light, to OSM with StreetComplete. There is so much more there. Next time,…
Or, if OpenStreetMap is lacking in your local area, help out! OpenStreetMap thrives when local mappers are involved. Compare this section of a Dutch city: Google: https://www.google.nl/maps/@53.1983621,5.767509,16z?hl=nl OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/53.1986/5.7679 Apple: (I guess Apple maps can't be linked to on the web?) It also helps a lot if your government can be persuaded to open up their…
FYI, you can link to Apple Maps [0]. The equivalent URL isn't really much different [1]. A bit unfortunate that there's no consensus on the URL params between providers, though.
Trying to open that link on macOS from either Firefox or Safari shows a modal asking if I want to open it with the Maps app. I'm not sure what happens on iOS, but I'd expect something similar.
IMO, the lack of web client for Apple Maps makes it the worst of the bunch. Vendor lock-in is a tragedy.
I've been trying to use OSM more over the last few months, but it's hard to compete with Google on their home turf. Although OSM started to become more appealing as Google began requiring you to enable all sorts of data tracking for many or its features to work. If you disable location tracking you run into all sorts of bugs.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/featuredarticles...