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Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#431

Post by fgonzag »

panta wrote: post #385
danielheath wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Culture, and the reputation it earns. I’m no amazon apologist, but one thing I trust them to do is keep my things running as they are.

In a world where there are three players, culture and reputation are not worth much, if not only at the beginning. Maybe 5/10/15 years from now the software and competencies to manage bare metal will be only behind the doors of those three companies, and at that point it will be economically convenient for them to act as a cartel and increase prices.

I don't see that happening. As someone who manages bare metal, there's not that much to it besides using a pxe installer. Didn't even use that before we got 20 servers, would just configure IPMI physically the mount the ubuntu ISO via IPMI and manually install the OS at the office.

Ubuntu is actually heavily investing into MAAS (metal as a service) and so is Redhat with cobbler and foreman. So I'm guessing there's enough demand to justify their development (as every major cloud provider uses in house tools AFAIK)

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#432

Post by presentation »

julianlam wrote: post #163
notsureaboutpg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google Maps an example of this? I think it's very clearly an app which dominated the market by offering best-in-class service for untenable prices (Maps API used to be free for developers up to an absurd amount) and is adding monetization elements now that it dominates the market. That's every VC's dream isn't it?

Yes, of course, except that the decision-making has shifted towards priorities that do not benefit the customer, though they used to. I have no interest in seeing where the nearest McDonalds is, unless I search for it. POI markers for places I need to go (via bookings/appointments) are good, but POIs for places I have never been are bad. For whatever reason I can never see the street name I want to see anymore. Betwe…

Until you come to Japan and realize that most of the streets don't have a name, and the addresses look more like random numbers than coordinates :)

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#433

Post by presentation »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #201
tracker1 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the other POI markers do serve one value, and that is with regards to finding a place... if you notice it's right behind the McDonalds, then you know you are close when you see the big M from the street. Similar for strip malls.

That's true, but it's not Google's intent. It's just another source of ad/promotional revenue. The POIs show up before I search anything. A more user focused solution would wait until I selected a destination, detect that where I'm going is a less frequented, and then display something along the lines of "Hey it looks like this location can be difficult to find, here's some near by stores to look for ."

To be fair it doesn't matter what Google's intent is, I use this feature for that purpose all the time.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#434

Post by presentation »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #280
spideymans wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Apple Maps UI: A big map, with a search bar at the bottom. Simple and nothing but the essentials. Google Maps UI: A page full of ads, a map full of ads and ads masquerading as recommendations. Plus five tab bar buttons at the bottom to not accomplish very much. I've switched to Apple Ma…

Problem with Apple Maps is that it doesn’t allow multi stop trips and that the search function is way worse than Google maps. I also have had situations where the directions from Apple Maps were just plain wrong. Apple likes to keep things simple but I think they are going too far. Things like offline maps and search, multi stop trips and others are just way too useful to be left out.

It also has a serious lack of data despite all the work in the original link - a lot of the places I frequent just don't show up in Apple Maps at all.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#435

Post by presentation »

akmarinov wrote: post #5

Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.

Tokyo coverage is also not very good in comparison with Google Maps unfortunately. Considered moving over but the combination of poor search results and the lack of ability to move my places from Google to Apple Maps means it won't be my focus any time soon.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#436

Post by jsinai »

robertlagrant wrote: post #386
jhowell wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your theory is that if other large companies do something, it must be morally acceptable You left something out, "as long as it doesn't effect me (yet), and large companies do it, it must be morally acceptable." I don't know why we defend them. Without Google we still go on. Without us, or support for their practices, they dramatically change or they disappear.

To be fair, these are generally the companies that have got us through the pandemic relatively unscathed.

From GP:

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#437

Post by dcposch »

ashtonkem wrote: post #126
larrymyers wrote: post #90

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…

It’s incredibly clear from the outside that Google is an organizational mess that struggles to make product decisions and keep them. From the surprisingly bad UX of a lot of their services, to the random creation and destruction of services and apps. It all reeks of bad political infighting.

Speaking of organizational mess and product decisions...

I find it shocking how bad Hangouts is.

It's so convenient. Chat, built right into Gmail. It works. But. BUT.

- It does not support video. Drop in a video, and you get a bizarre error message telling you to try "JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and HEIFimage files" (sic) instead. https://twitter.com/dcposch/status/1303193761313206272

- Tiny little chat windows. No replies, no reactions. Basic UX that feels like abandonware from 2010.

- If you have Google Fi, you can take phone calls thru Hangouts, but you cannot send or receive text messages (??)

I just feel bad for whatever rump team of a few engineers has to maintain that product. They are plainly caught on the wrong end of some strange and gross internal politics.

Google has a self-defeating practice of emphasizing "new products shipped" in their promotion packets. That probably explains why their army of PMs has, instead of improving Hangouts for a billion Gmail users, chosen to create the following instead: Google Meet, Duo, "Google Chat", and an endless parade of now-cancelled apps like Allo.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#438

Post by faitswulff »

uptown wrote: post #427
faitswulff wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vendors are in this business?

Foursquare, but not with parking lot data, to my knowledge: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/alternative-data-future-... Satellite image companies sell this type of alternative data to buyers: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/how-hedge-funds-use-satel... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-v... Some of the vendors are RS Metrics, Descartes Labs and Orbital Insight.

Unfortunate that none of these, even when purchased, would be a substitute for actually looking at the parking lot in real time.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#439

Post by setman2 »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #420
antipaul wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also _want_ to like Apple Maps. But I always need to double check business hours using Google.

Hmm. At least in the US, Apple Maps gets their business info from Yelp, so it tends to be about as reliable as Yelp is. In general I find Yelp to be mostly on point -- not perfect, but not worse on the whole than Google.

In my experience, I find Google business hours to be more accurate than Yelp. Not sure why, but I think restaurants find Google easier or more important to update when they adjust their hours slightly.

Re: Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

#440

Post by setman2 »

bamboleo wrote: post #283
larrymyers wrote: post #90

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…

I use the pills daily. One-tap access to gas stations and coffee shops is pretty useful when you’re on the road. The AR button however is incredibly annoying as I seem to activate it by mistake a little too often.

Totally agree on that AR button!
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