Google Maps' Moat • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#521

Post by dsfyu404ed » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

Now if only they'd cross reference location history, elevation maps and apply some rules like "don't send someone who usually searches for directions to stuff in SV down a steep dirt road with hairpins in Vermont in December when an alternate route that's 1min slower exists" or give me a checkbox that says "don't add extra steps to a route if the net gain from the step isn't large enough"

Edit: Now that I think about it "in $distance turn $direction onto $street just before/after the $business_located_there" or would be great because street signs are much harder read and identify at long distance or high speed would solve my most common problem with google maps.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#522

Post by yeukhon » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:04 PM UTC

sonar_un wrote: post #169

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…

Their acquisition of Waze really gave them the edge here. Waze has been getting better and better at predicting times. I find that in most situations it is rarely off by more than a minute or two.

I have the same opinion about their acquisition of Waze. But I think Waze itself as a GPS is quite frustrating. It tells me to take the worst local road, when Google Map takes me the better route (the exact route I would have taken anyway without the GPS). After tryig a few times I have given up on Waze completely. I feel Google is using Waze for getting additional usee data points.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#523

Post by DonaldFisk » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

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…

Bing maps use Ordnance Survey for the UK, which is far better than Google maps. OpenStreetMap also has better maps than Google.

However, Google has comprehensive streetview and more up-to-date aerial photography.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#524

Post by joshvm » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #346

joshvm wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D extrusion of satellite data is nice in some cases - have a look at some of the more interesting remote islands. In most cases though it's significantly degraded the quality of the photo maps because the imagery is warped and has artifacts all over it, even in 2D. If you want a real map, then Bing is the best solution in the UK because they partnered with the Ordnance Survey. OS maps are the civilian gold standard.

Are Bing partnered with OS or are they just using their data because it's open[0]? [0] https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/pro...

The free map is 1:250k, but Bing Maps uses the 1:50k I think (it could be the 1:25k though, it's very detailed and has stuff like footpaths). It certainly looks better than the 1:250k.

Have a look at https://binged.it/2BFM0UA

And compare to the OS 1:25k example image: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/pro...

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#525

Post by dwyerm » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

The end of the article talking about where the actual doors are reminds me a problem that we had to solve in a previous job: finding your way ON to the road network.

Take this address, for instance: "9901 Grant St, Thornton, CO 80229" It is a gigantic Walmart parking lot. When you ask a navigation system to get you back on the northbound interstate highway from here, it first needs to get you out of the parking lot and connected back to the road network. A naive system would just find the nearest road and tell you to drive in that direction. In this case, it would happily tell you to simply drive west a couple hundred meters to I-25 and take a right. It doesn't understand that there's a greenbelt and a retaining wall there. It doesn't understand that the correct answer is actually to go the opposite way -- east to Grant and around to an entrance ramp.

Google, by connecting parking lots to the road network has -- perhaps unintentionally -- made this problem go away.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#526

Post by dsfyu404ed » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #124

Stratoscope wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true, but of course there will always be a few missing features that seem so obvious and useful that you wonder why they still don't have them. For me it's one or two announcements of the actual destination address at the end of the drive. If it's not an address I'm familiar with and not a business with a sign out front, by the time I get there I've usually forgotten the street number! But when I arrive a…

For me the problem with Google Maps is how appallingly badly it fails when things go wrong. The offline mode is prone to silently getting locked in "rerouting" and just completely leaving me hanging for 10 minutes at a time. And if it loses gps signal, it doesn't seem to think the driver needs to know about this. A Silent failure is terrible.

The best is when it has GPS but spotty cell service and you miss a turn because "turn right onto $longname $state $many_syllable_route_number" is actually a yield that doesn't require you to stop and you need to turn left/right onto $other-street before it's done telling you to do what you just did. Then it tries to re-route you but 3g service is too spotty to do that but not to spotty to get so far along in the process that it discards the old route you just made a U-turn and got back onto.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#527

Post by puzzle » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #515

slackoverflower wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Among other things, they open sourced the Ceres library, which the imaging pipeline relies on.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#528

Post by ken » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

j_koreth wrote: post #118

ken wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps doesn't work well at all on one of my Macs. In Safari, the 2D view works, but the 3D view doesn't work. In Chrome, the satellite tiles are all black (but the roads are visible). In Firefox, the satellite and roads are both black. It's the same (and most recent) version of all these browsers as my other Mac, where it works fine. How does one debug this? I've tried googling (ha) for every combination of wor…

Sounds like a problem with webgl? Try lite mode https://www.google.com/maps/@?force=lite&dg=dbrw&newdg=1 .

Yes, that works, in all browsers. I assumed it's something related to 3D graphics, but that doesn't really help me with troubleshooting it. Other WebGL demos (like the famous ball-in-water one) work fine. Only Google Maps is broken.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#529

Post by Mindwipe » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #293

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…

For navigation, Google Maps are just very poor, at least here in UK. Maybe it's better in the US, but here it frequently navigates over streets that are not connected at all, wrong way on one way streets, doesn't know about closed roads(even if said roads were closed for almost two years now), a lot of businesses are just wrong, I don't know if they were placed there maliciously or by some automated process. The only…

Google Maps is by very, very far away the best mapping solution available in the UK.

Nobody else's business data is even close. Like not even 15% close.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#530

Post by bjt » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #488

Arnt wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as usual: Picking a niche and trusting that Google prefers to spend its attention on improving adwords rather than on inventing a niche product. Google is scary, because it's unusually competent for a big company. But apart from that it's the same as usual: The bigcos can devote a big team to build whatever it is you're building and then leverage their existing customer relationships to sell it to many of their…

Most bigcos aren't doing that because it's illegal, not because they don't want to. If you, e.g., have market dominance in operating systems, you can't prefer any web browser, install any browser as default, or advertise any based on the OS. In the same way, if you control web search, you can't prefer one web shopping site, or one web maps service. And you especially can't integrate one, but not the other. The goal o…

It's not as clear cut as that. Someone actually has to bring the antitrust suit. In the last few decades, the US government hasn't been doing as much of that as they used to. Once in the suit, then you have to argue about the "relevant market" to determine which other companies count as competitors. This question probably consumes more time in an antitrust case than any other. Then you have to argue about how much of that market the defendant controls.

At least in the US, I know of no legislation forbidding a dominant OS maker from preferring some browser. Microsoft was put under some rules like that after their antitrust suit, but that's very different from legislation forbidding all companies from having such preferences.

Europe is different. I've not studied their antitrust law as I have that of the US, but I believe they're more aggressive on both the enforcement and legislation sides. I think the average American would be better off if US antitrust policy were more aggressive than it is now.