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Google Maps' Moat

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Google Maps' Moat

#511

Post by NelsonMinar »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #505
NelsonMinar wrote: post #2

It sure is nice having Justin O'Bierne writing publically about maps again. His old 41Latitude blog was phenomenal and then got blackholed when he went to work at Apple Maps. Then he left Apple and is back in the free world and doing phenomenal analysis of digital mapping like this article. I can't wait for him to finish his book.

> he went to work at Apple Maps ??? He writes a lot of this article like he's trying to guess from press and outside observation what Apple is doing / planning. If he was JUST working there, wouldn't he know all this? Should his 'outside observations' be considered to be him fitting outside information to what he already knows?

I think he left Apple over a year and a half ago. But yeah, his observations about Apple Maps are particularly well informed. http://www.tested.com/tech/573368-brief-comparing-digital-ca...

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#512

Post by scooter_de »

craigds wrote: post #344
scooter_de wrote: post #126

The problem of "under addressed" places in the world is addressed (no pun intended) by several companies. Eg. What3Words (w3w.co) has created a grit of 3mx3m squares which cover the entire planet. Each of this squares is identified by three words. Post/Mail organizations in several countries already accept those addresses. Google also has the OLC (Open Location Code) to address an area of adjustable size on earth. I…

Is it really more convenient? Coordinates make sense to everyone and every map tool can understand them. W3W phrases are useless unless you happen to have the app. Also, there are a few amusing clones... http://www.what3fucks.com/

Almost every Sunday morning I put my kayak at mere.digests.undergo. I could say "at the 8th line bridge North of West Montrose, ON, Canada" or I could say at "43.624987N, 80.447249W" or I could say let's meet at OLC "86MXJHG3+247" or "JHF3+X4 Inverhaugh". Yeah - some of the clones sound funny but not useful in real world social interaction.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#513

Post by jonknee »

ghaff wrote: post #146
jonknee wrote: post #111

Google also has a giant lead in trails / feature names. I hike a ton and Google has been adding trails at a brisk pace. I just checked the Snoqualmie Pass area about an hour outside of Seattle and Apple Maps has almost no trails, named mountains or named lakes (even quite large ones). A few trails show up as unnamed roads. There's also no relief shading to tell where the mountains are or a terrain view for contour li…

Although I find, in a lot of places, that OpenStreetMaps is a lot better than Google for hiking trails.

Yep, though I use All Trails when actually on the trail, it's fantastic. I just appreciate seeing trails (and trailheads as POIs) when using Google Maps for drives.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#514

Post by jonknee »

saagarjha wrote: post #209
jonknee wrote: post #111

Google also has a giant lead in trails / feature names. I hike a ton and Google has been adding trails at a brisk pace. I just checked the Snoqualmie Pass area about an hour outside of Seattle and Apple Maps has almost no trails, named mountains or named lakes (even quite large ones). A few trails show up as unnamed roads. There's also no relief shading to tell where the mountains are or a terrain view for contour li…

> There's also no relief shading to tell where the mountains are or a terrain view for contour lines. At least in my experience, this is done to keep the view uncluttered. The data is still there, and turning on Satellite view+3D shows the mountains and hills.

Knowing that you're looking at a mountain range isn't clutter! Nor is a different map layer for topographic contour lines.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#515

Post by rmc »

slackoverflower wrote: post #449
rmc wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a shame that Google doesn't release all this data they have collected/created as open data.

That's like McDonalds giving away food. Or Ford giving away cars. Google's business quite literally is data.

Sure, but Google does claim to be an open company, and giving things back.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#516

Post by abruzzi »

wott wrote: post #496
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…

I find Google Maps a PITA to use since the last big revamp of its interface a couple of years ago. It became slow, unreliable (tiles never loading, UI element never loading, freezes) and unpractical (moving routes points became horrible, I started failing half of the time to drag the route, removing points also often causes extra points of interest or route points to be added: a nightmare). It used to be very good wi…

The biggest loss with the Google maps redesign is that I am limited to 10 via points. If I am creating a route I frequently use far more than that to ensure that the route goes where I want it to go. The only thing that keeps me using Google maps is street view, which to me is 1000x more useful than building shapes (most of the roads I ride were last street viewed in 2008, so I wish more resources would be put into updating the images.)

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#517

Post by maxerickson »

upofadown wrote: post #430

> In downtown Los Angeles, Google’s buildings are so detailed that you can sometimes see the blades inside the rooftop fans. Doesn't that mean that in that case we are just seeing image processing with no real meaning? I am not sure how this represents the first step in the creation of data from data. If we just want to see the buildings we can switch to "satellite" view. Contrast this with something like Open Street…

The discussion of building details is just a side trip.

The data from data is more about how they have decent building representations and POIs even in pretty remote areas and so have really wide coverage on their areas of interest.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#518

Post by maxerickson »

scooter_de wrote: post #509
saagarjha wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the concept is interesting, the issue I have with What3Words is that they force you to use their service to figure out what an address actually means . In other words, you can't use it at all without being bound to their whims. Kind of a big deal when working with something as open and public and universal as addresses.

I don't understand your "what it means" statement. Can you elaborate a little bit plz?

Say I successfully convey to you a 3 word address from my proprietary location database: Beep boop blort.

Without access to my database, you don't have much information.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#519

Post by trustyhank »

irrational wrote: post #133

One thing I really appreciate about Google Maps is how accurate the times are. There have been numerous times where google maps says is will take x minutes to get there and I think "Nah, I'll be able to get there faster than that." Nope, I've never had google maps be off by more than a minute or so. I think it must take into account not just road conditions and traffic, but also how much I am likely to go over the sp…

Interesting, Ive had the opposite experience while driving back to NYC from other east coast cities. Google generally takes into account that traffic will increase as I approach NYC, but the initial estimate is always off by at least 1-2 hours.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#520

Post by AnodyneComplex »

ucaetano wrote: post #178
AnodyneComplex wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be attacking a strawman. The original comment was bemoaning the duplicated effort instead of cooperation amongst parties. If you had a single company, you wouldn't have 10 teams doing the exact same job. The competition here isn't fruitful because so much of the work is shared. Competition is more effective when there is a diversity of approaches.

And how many approaches do you think there are in mapping? Street View, satellite, 3D modeling from airplane flights, manual mapping, etc. These are all different approaches being used more or less by all players. Think about how mapping was done before Google. Competition is exactly why we have Google Maps, and why Google Maps is continuously improving, instead of just sitting on its advantage. Not only competition…

It seems like we are talking about different things. No one is arguing that there shouldn't be multiple map interfaces, but rather that if the data was shared, you could have more investment in the interesting parts.

I'm glad that Nvidia and AMD compete to build better graphics chips, I'm also very glad they both work with a shared, cooperative standard (PCI-E) so I can plug them into my computer. They've chosen to compete on some areas and cooperate in others.

The parents are suggesting, hey, wouldn't it be nice if _everyone_ contributed data to OSM, and then competed on providing the best interface on top of that, rather than constructing data moats. Is it realistic that Google would do this? Of course not. But if 10 companies are all constructing their own data completely independently, that's an awful lot of duplicated work that could be avoided.

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