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How Google Builds Its Maps

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#41

Post by rogerchucker »

spaghetti wrote: post #24
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit mind boggling.

Google maps is possibly my favorite app that currently ships with iOS. I think I might give up email and texting on the device before I'd give up maps. I'm disappointed that Google maps isn't shipping with iOS 6.

I freaking hate the Google maps app on iPhone - I don't have any need for a map app on a mobile device unless it has turn-by-turn voice navigation along with re-routing capabilities. It's only good for looking up locations/directions when I am stuck somewhere for traveling. If I'm home, my macbook's google map is good enough to serve that purpose. So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping app for a mobile device. Waze saved me.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#42

Post by jzawodn »

nradov wrote: post #32
swalsh wrote: post #14

I work for a company in the telecommunications space. We've talked to several car companies about integrating 4g into their on board computers. I'm really excited for this update. I suppose I haven't really noticed how much better navigation has improved until a few weeks ago. Recently I purchased an 09 infiniti with full tech package. The thing that took me back, was how terrible the navigation system has been insid…

What I'd love to see is for car manufacturers to throw away integrated navigation systems and replace them with standardized mounting points for smartphones / tablets. I'd like to be able to upgrade my car electronics every 2 years without having to rip apart the dashboard.

Yes. That a thousand times.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#43

Post by rogerchucker »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #13
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit mind boggling.

So, Nokia and Microsoft just do not exist in the mapping space?

You might not like it but Google Maps has become synonymous with online mapping/directions the way Google is with searching, at least in the US and elsewhere (I have seen Bing maps used a lot on Europeans websites like france24.com). From that perspective, I think it is fair to put more focus on Google's efforts.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#44

Post by czhiddy »

rogerchucker wrote: post #41
spaghetti wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps is possibly my favorite app that currently ships with iOS. I think I might give up email and texting on the device before I'd give up maps. I'm disappointed that Google maps isn't shipping with iOS 6.

I freaking hate the Google maps app on iPhone - I don't have any need for a map app on a mobile device unless it has turn-by-turn voice navigation along with re-routing capabilities. It's only good for looking up locations/directions when I am stuck somewhere for traveling. If I'm home, my macbook's google map is good enough to serve that purpose. So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping a…

> So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping app for a mobile device.

The terms of the license agreement with Google for maps data likely didn't include the ability to perform turn-by-turn navigation. Another reason why they moved to their own maps backend for iOS 6.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#46

Post by cromwellian »

taligent wrote: post #20
jimbobimbo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Nokia and Microsoft just do not exist in the mapping space?

Well mentioned. Nokia has been far ahead of the curve for turn by turn navigation and Bing's aerial view has almost always surpassed Google. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft's amazing augmented reality research will end up in a mapping product some day soon as well.

Google also has aerial view/45 degree imagery for many metro areas. Just keep zooming in the Satellite view. For my neighborhood at least, the Google imagery surpasses Bing's.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#47

Post by Ineffable »

7952 wrote: post #16
guimarin wrote: post #11

I've always thought that the real money in mobile comes from very accurate map data, and very accurate personal position data. that way when you're walking around town, you can 'ask' your phone for directions to eat/shop/whatever, and it can give you a great recommendation ( for a price to local restaurants ). I asked Eric Schmidt if this was a powerful motivator behind the android acquisition, as at the time it seem…

This idea is just picking at low hanging fruit. It is like saying that the killer app of the web is retail shopping. Sure Amazon is cool, but the web is so much more than that. Perhaps "location" will be like the web and have millions of little niches. IMHO it won't really take off until you have higher smart phone penetration in the developing world. These kind of apps need a market with lots of pedestrians, not car…

America is not the only country in the developed world. Plenty of smartphone wielding pedestrians here in Europe.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#48

Post by yellowbkpk »

vidarh wrote: post #37
tonfa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought OSM was copyleft similar to the GPL. Can you combine OSM with proprietary data and without the licence forcing you to open up everything?

Their license used to be horrible for commercial use, but mostly because it was an extremely bad fit for a data collection, leading to lots of confusion over what was ok and not. A better comparison for their current license would be the LGPL - as long as you keep your proprietary data separate from the OSM data, you don't need to release it but you still need to release any changes to the OSM data itself.

To be clear, the license has not changed yet. We're in the process of changing the license (and they recently announced [0]) that the next full-planet data dump will be under the new license, but it hasn't been switched yet.

[0] http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/09/06/your-first-odbl-pla...

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#49

Post by yellowbkpk »

tonfa wrote: post #28
a3_nm wrote: post #27

> An exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps. Meanwhile, there is another program to build the world's best maps, which is quite the opposite of secretive, involves hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world, offers public dumps under a free license, and has already outperformed Google for some areas and use cases: http://www.openstreetmap.org/

If they built the same kind of tools as what GT uses, maybe they could make better use of the thousand of volunteers?

After seeing tons of videos detailing the tools Google uses for their maps and using Google Map Maker, the OSM tools are much better at empowering the mapper to create map data.

OSM might not have the computer vision tools or the Street View imagery, but there's still plenty of work to do with the existing tools and data.

Re: How Google Builds Its Maps

#50

Post by rogerchucker »

czhiddy wrote: post #44
rogerchucker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I freaking hate the Google maps app on iPhone - I don't have any need for a map app on a mobile device unless it has turn-by-turn voice navigation along with re-routing capabilities. It's only good for looking up locations/directions when I am stuck somewhere for traveling. If I'm home, my macbook's google map is good enough to serve that purpose. So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping a…

> So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping app for a mobile device. The terms of the license agreement with Google for maps data likely didn't include the ability to perform turn-by-turn navigation. Another reason why they moved to their own maps backend for iOS 6.

Does that mean by the time Google had decided to work on the iPhone-like Android interface, they had been planning to work on a turn-by-turn navigation system using Google Maps for Android as well?
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