Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 232 posts

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#71

Post by leemcalilly »

Pacabel wrote: post #35
chrisrhoden wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in other words, kids these days?

No, not at all. It isn't really about age. I've dealt with "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s who've come up with very bad UI designs. Likewise, many of the managers or executives advocating for these redesigns are in their 30s, 40s or even 50s. While it may be more of an issue with younger people due to a greater lack of experience and intuition, it's a phenomenon that's quite independent of age.

Your class action ad hominem attack is not constructive.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#72

Post by judk »

Pacabel wrote: post #35
chrisrhoden wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in other words, kids these days?

No, not at all. It isn't really about age. I've dealt with "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s who've come up with very bad UI designs. Likewise, many of the managers or executives advocating for these redesigns are in their 30s, 40s or even 50s. While it may be more of an issue with younger people due to a greater lack of experience and intuition, it's a phenomenon that's quite independent of age.

> These people are often relatively young, often have limited experience

> "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s

These statements cancel each other out, so there's no reason to state either as supposedly providing information content.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#73

Post by baldeagle »

Pacabel wrote: post #27
joel_perl_prog wrote: post #6

Is this where we get to complain about how horrible Google Maps suddenly is? Because wow. I can speak about this. It's terrible. First and foremost, and they have their "reasons" of course, but my Samsung Rant (yeah just a feature phone) always had great maps. Just a simple Java app, built on the maps API. Well that doesn't work anymore. Like, nothing. Google basically says "Get an Android phone, sucker." F U Google.…

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable. As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters". Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has…

I was with you until you went on about GNOME 3... oh wait, I was still with you..

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#74

Post by Shish2k »

joel_perl_prog wrote: post #33
Pacabel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable. As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters". Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has…

Yeah I hear ya. Whoever guided this Titanic into the iceberg...well he ain't no Steve Jobs. That's for sure. It's hard to overstate how just plain awful Google Maps is now. It's amazing, in a way. I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. Manifestly obviously just shit awful. To observe this one only needs a few seconds with Google Maps. A few minutes cemen…

> I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious.

It doesn't matter how many smart engineers and ux designers can see the obvious, if one person from upper management can't :( (See also: G+ real names policy)

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#75

Post by DanBC »

jsnell wrote: post #55

This is a bad article. It tries to draw some kind of causality link between the new maps UI and a couple of bad search results that the author received. (And then tries to blame it on some completely random academic paper written by Googlers, which as far as I can tell doesn't even have a hint of being from a geo-context, and doesn't look particularly applicable to geocoding or local searches). Of course blaming the…

So they had a project with usable interface and sub optimal searching, and they decided to "fix" the UI but not the searching?

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#76

Post by silverbax88 »

runn1ng wrote: post #34
Pacabel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable. As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters". Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has…

I was with you until you started to hate on Chrome GUI. In my opinion, Chrome's GUI is the best thing that could happen to browsers.

It was until it starting generating errors on the backend when they break compatibility with auto updates. Or the fact that it doesn't render Java correctly in some cases. Or the fact that it auto places the cursor in certain places for you despite you attempting to click in a specific textbox. Or the fact that it no longer allows you to set the target page of new tabs.

I was once in love with Chrome, but over the past few months I've started looking back at FireFox.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#77

Post by judk »

SeanDav wrote: post #31
buro9 wrote: post #15

In the example given it's the word "forest" that is the problem. "Sambisa" would have found it. "Sambisa Reserve" would have found it. "Sambisa Forest Reserve" would have found it. But my guess is that something attempts to understand keywords and context and when you end with "forest" it looks within the set of forests that are called Sambisa, and actually there isn't a forest called Sambisa, there's a nature reserv…

or it could, I don't know, maybe search on closest matches to locations containing the words "Sambisa" and "forest" with priority to those areas containing the words in the correct order - like maybe "Sambisa Forest Reserve". Oooh maybe they can take out a patent on that idea first... (Sorry OP, not having a go at you - just getting incredibly frustrated with companies I used to love and respect - like Google and Ama…

Amazing they hadn't thought of that, or believed it caused too many false positives. You should go in for Director of Search to straighten them out.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#78

Post by Pacabel »

leemcalilly wrote: post #67
Pacabel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable. As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters". Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has…

I agree with your argument, but there's no need to go in with the "hipsters" or "looking trendy" thing. I immediately get turned off when someone uses "hipster" pejoratively. You might as well have just used "millenials" or "kids these day." It ruins a perfectly cogent argument.

Like I said in an earlier comment, age has very little to do with this. "Hipsters" can pretty much be any age.

It's more the "hipster" mindset and attitude that's the problem. This attitude involves fashion and trends trumping all other considerations. Maybe that's okay when it comes to something like clothing. It isn't acceptable, however, when it comes to tools that are supposed to be productive, including software.

If you've got a better term than "hipster", I'm willing to consider using it. I'm just not aware of any other term that better describes the particular attitude that puts vanity, arrogance, ego, smugness and focus on appearance over everything else.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#79

Post by meritt »

pgrote wrote: post #57
meritt wrote: post #25

You can still switch back to Classic Maps via the question-mark icon in the bottom right. Classic for life.

I am having trouble locating it. Am I looking in the right place? http://i.imgur.com/QJxKMMc.png

Your screenshot looks like you're already in classic maps, this is the bottom right of the new version: http://i.imgur.com/K9PJI5V.png

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#80

Post by ForHackernews »

mtarnovan wrote: post #44
buro9 wrote: post #15

In the example given it's the word "forest" that is the problem. "Sambisa" would have found it. "Sambisa Reserve" would have found it. "Sambisa Forest Reserve" would have found it. But my guess is that something attempts to understand keywords and context and when you end with "forest" it looks within the set of forests that are called Sambisa, and actually there isn't a forest called Sambisa, there's a nature reserv…

"Sambisa Forest" works just fine for me... http://imgur.com/MQF5s8D

No, you've only entered "Sambisa Fo" which presumably doesn't trigger special category handling for the word "forest".
Post reply on HN