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Google Maps' Moat

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat

#401

Post by dhekir »

sytelus wrote: post #142

Many 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…

Google Maps tends to thrive where there are lots of people, at least in my region. I live in a medium-sized town with lots of new buildings under construction, and Google Maps seems frozen in time. I even registered as Local Guide and tried adding a new restaurant in May. Still waiting. There are inexistent shops, duplicated restaurants (when they changed name, the old remains but a new one has been added next to it), and mislabeled buildings. I quit trying to work for free for Google, they take too long to accept my changes.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#402

Post by rusk »

flor1s wrote: post #211
dvt wrote: post #31

I accidentally used Apple Maps once as I was going to a (new) doctor's office. I realized I was using Apple maps halfway through my drive and I joked with myself that it wouldn't bring me to the right place. I was heading to a fairly large medical complex in Orange County (CA) and I sort-of had an idea of where I was going anyway, but boy, was I wrong. According to Apple maps, the doctor's office was literally in the…

I was using Google Maps in Amsterdam a few months ago and tried to go to a restaurant. Google Maps led me into a tunnel and in the middle was it was happy to announce I reached my destination. It happened to be that this restaurant was located on an island above the tunnel and I actually drove right under it. I have no experience with Apple Maps though.

I've noticed that Google maps doesn't correctly render a spaghetti junction near my neighbourhood ...

Amsterdam is a very interesting case. From my own personal experience it's very easy to get lost there. There's even a coffee shop with that name!

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#403

Post by thriftwy »

skate22 wrote: post #399
aluhut wrote: post #292

Earlier 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

OSM data is highly variable in quality. Features like building footprint geometries will be great in some areas and completely missing in others. This is not easily detectable, and when you pull open a google map, they often have those features.

When going to less developed regions, it's the reverse.

You don't even know if towns will be on the map with Google, but with OSM, there's always at least something.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#404

Post by whywhywhywhy »

mastax wrote: post #63

Great article, but it has me thinking: what is holding Apple back? My ideas: - Apple is just a few years behind; they launched a decade later. Come back in 3 years and they'll be close to parity. - Apple only needs Maps to be good enough to avoid PR disaster, since they need a reasonable default on iOS. On the other hand Google needs to be good enough to beat competitors since they want to make money on traffic, usag…

> what is holding Apple back?

If you worked at Apple would you want to be working on Apple Maps? I just doubt any of the core talents in Apple are interested in it at all, it's not what the company is known for.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#405

Post by j_s »

ctz wrote: post #364

The 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 abo…

No doubt Google Maps is A/B testing towards maximizing their key metrics; the decline in usability is a reflection of how poorly this aligns with the best interests of the end users!

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#406

Post by maaaats »

kogepathic wrote: post #302
mhaymo wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google Maps app on Android has offline maps.

Does Google Maps offline functionality include POIs? The last time I tried/was allowed to save Google Maps offline (it's not available in all regions) you could not navigate or search for POIs while offline. Here allows both navigation and POI search using an offline map. This is incredibly useful if you are in a country without service or where roaming data is very expensive.

Same, even though Google Maps has "offline abilities" it's still nowhere close to what HERE Maps have had for years.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#407

Post by jakubp »

To the author of this writeup: thank you, this is a phenomenal story with compelling visuals. Oftentimes I prefer HN comment thread to the original, but in this case I am impressed by high quality analysis of the original :)

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#408

Post by anc84 »

Dayshine wrote: post #360

The City of Leicester in England has full 3D textured modelling of everything down to trees and the cars that happened to be out at the time. https://goo.gl/maps/dm8zVDGf5TP2 It's absolutely incredible.

Nokia and others had/have the same, just with less coverage. It is mostly a matter of having money to acquire all the data. The technology to turn imagery and laserscans (or similar) to 3D surfaces is booming for more than a decade.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#409

Post by BrandonM »

matt4077 wrote: post #378
iNerdier wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cycling is a relatively new feature even on Google maps. I believe it appeared about three years ago? While Apple is still playing catch-up, it appears to me that cycling, and all other features mentioned in the article, are exceptionally ameliorable to machine learning, and its advances over the last few years. Apple being the only other company in the world with access to the wealth of position data on users' phone…

I first used Google Maps for cycling over 7 years ago.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#410

Post by digi_owl »

mhaymo wrote: post #281
kbart wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google maps are so much better than anything out there." I'd take Nokia's Here anytime instead of Google Maps (offline maps alone are worth it). Also, I honestly don't understand a logic behind crediting something as complex to a single person ("a hero") -- "S. Jobs created iPhone", "M. Mayer created Google Maps" etc., there were whole teams of smart people working on these projects, I'm sure they would have been fi…

The Google Maps app on Android has offline maps.

I have not looked into it in a while, but i seem to recall it worked by basically saving whatever was on your screen at the moment. On the more "traditional" car nav apps you can pick specific nations and get the whole thing.
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