Great. I stopped using Google Maps the moment I bought my IPhone. Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority when I say I get a better experience with Apple Maps. Apple Maps with carplay for the past year have been miles ahead of Google maps with Android Auto on all accounts for my trips. I was skeptical at first but I was never rerouted on weird residential neighborhoods / state highways or switch 3 freeways to shave off a minute of my trip, very accurate estimating traffic and transit time, etc... Keep in mind, I was also a huge fan of the Zune.
Google Decides to Monetize Maps
41–50 of 374 posts
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
OP is not saying they cannot monetise their product as they see fit (it's their product). No one is saying that. But when you have been offering something for free for years, people get used to that being the way of things, users are not going to respond well to the increase in advertisement. Had Google done this from the beginning, people would have been more accepting of it. Generally speaking, if you change a serv…
I think that period was part of their investment and also helped them to improve the product. And like any other investment, they need to make money as well. I can imagine Maps is an expensive product to operate. I also hate ads and I hope they find a different way to make it reasonably profitable.
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#43I can't stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. I was stunned when a few days ago I was looking up something on Google Maps and started seeing advertised locations/suggestions. Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning. Don't know what…
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
It's not free and installed by default on every android devices ?
You mean, I can buy a subscription and not rent the service with my search history ?
Where's the sign-up button ?
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish there was an app using OSM that had at least some usability and design. I tried some but had to quit out frustration.
Sometimes you have to sacrifice usability for something more important. AMP is a good example. Users love it. It's more usable, but HN thinks it's evil.
Do users love it, or even notice it? I haven’t seen any data either way.
I’m not implying such data don’t exist; as I’m not deep in SEO or anything like that I would t be exposed to it. Any pointers?
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#45I can't stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. I was stunned when a few days ago I was looking up something on Google Maps and started seeing advertised locations/suggestions. Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning. Don't know what…
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
It isn't free. They're already monetizing your location data.
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#46Maps has been awful and getting worse for a long time. If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names. Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.
And the app has become absolutely atrocious performance-wise. It used to load nearly immediately, but starting ~1.5 years ago I began noticing extreme slowdowns. Now it's barely functional for me. Every part of the UI is appallingly unresponsive -- taps that take 5 seconds to register, hitches in animation, etc. From tapping on the icon to being able to get underway (including typing in an address) used to be about five seconds or less. Now it's upwards of thirty.
This coming change to their monetization (really? mining our location data isn't enough?) is just going to be the final impetus I need to find some other solution.
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#47Great. I stopped using Google Maps the moment I bought my IPhone. Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority when I say I get a better experience with Apple Maps. Apple Maps with carplay for the past year have been miles ahead of Google maps with Android Auto on all accounts for my trips. I was skeptical at first but I was never rerouted on weird residential neighborhoods / state highways or switch 3 freeways to sha…
Apple’s coverage is spotty; quite good in many major cities and certain less urban environments, but there are vast areas where its coverage is pretty sketchy.
Like you I mostly use it in areas of good coverage and think it’s great. But some places I’m SOL and have to switch to google as a fallback.
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#48Great. I stopped using Google Maps the moment I bought my IPhone. Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority when I say I get a better experience with Apple Maps. Apple Maps with carplay for the past year have been miles ahead of Google maps with Android Auto on all accounts for my trips. I was skeptical at first but I was never rerouted on weird residential neighborhoods / state highways or switch 3 freeways to sha…
Apple’s coverage is spotty; quite good in many major cities and certain less urban environments, but there are vast areas where its coverage is pretty sketchy. Like you I mostly use it in areas of good coverage and think it’s great. But some places I’m SOL and have to switch to google as a fallback.
That may be the case. My trips have mostly been around the west coast high density areas.
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#49Meanwhile... MapKit.js has “a free daily limit of 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls”
https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/
Re: Google Decides to Monetize Maps
#50> Before the changes, Owczarek’s startup got 750,000 free map views a month and then was charged 50 cents for every 1,000 views on top of that. Then Google started charging after 30,000 views and the cost was $7 per 1,000 views. His costs jumped from nothing to $5,000 a month. Ouch . How could that possibly be worth it? Are they just trying to squeeze money out of businesses that are already locked into the Maps API?…
Although I appreciate the effort that has gone into and continues to go into OpenStreetMap the reality is that their data set is still pretty poor in comparison to Google Maps. I would not want to create a delivery business that depended upon it for success.
Just last month I found myself in need of a source of map data for a personal use application and thought of OpenStreetMap which led me to looking up my home address. Unfortunately I couldn't find my address by searching, so I zoomed in on my neighborhood. About 50% of the street names in my neighborhood were incorrect, so I spent time correcting them. The last time I had visited OpenStreetMap was about 4 years prior. On that visit about 1/3rd of the streets in my then neighborhood didn't appear.