9 ms·

Google Maps is about to get a lot more ads

105 points by chippy 10y ago

Mendenhall 10y ago
I found myself rarely using google search partly because of paid ads already. Looks like they are making decisions which will push me away from another product I enjoyed.
- jrcii 10y ago
  You should consider installing an ad blocker like uBlock Origin. I haven't seen ads on Google Search for years.
honkhonkpants 10y ago
Google also announced this 6 years ago, FWIW. https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of-your-favorite.html https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of...
studentrob 10y ago
So it's going to get even slower? Awesome! I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else. Honestly, what a sell out. What was once neutral territory for businesses is now available for bidding. Does Google need this revenue? What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving? I see the full keynote is here [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw
- rplnt 10y ago
  Google Maps are practically unusable when not in lite mode (which they turn off on every occasion), so I don't use them. And even when I try, the UX is horrible and features are broken. Luckily, most of my map needs are met by a local competitor (mapy.cz). They are not perfect, but are still much superior, at least for what I want from maps. Coincidentally, their Android app (which supports offline maps) got really slow few months back. I wish I could easily downgrade to an older version (as I did with online Google maps before I gave up).
  - studentrob 10y ago
    That's cool. Maybe Google doesn't want to dominate, which would be cool too.
    - rplnt 10y ago
      Oh, they sure do. Just a few years back the company behind mapy.cz had a majority share in search in Czech Republic. Somewhat of a rarity in Europe, maybe even (latin writing) world. Google ads were everywhere - radio, tv, billboards, etc... not to mention online.
      - studentrob 10y ago
        Well, I'm sure Google Inc would love to dominate but I believe their fall from grace is evidence Google engineers don't want to. Or maybe I'm off base. Nobody dominates forever.
      - Grishnakh 10y ago
        I thought you guys were calling yourselves "Czechia" now.
- IBM 10y ago
  Google is increasing ad sizes and frequency because growth is slowing. http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of-ads-1464105600 http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequenc...
  - studentrob 10y ago
    The solution to Google's dwindling advertising market is to increase the size of ads on content I watch? Noooooooooooooooo =(. Sounds like a good chance for competitors to jump in. Thanks for sharing this though, I didn't know that =)
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    I love how every advertising group thinks: "Oh, growth is slowing, time to inject more of the thing that people don't want! That'll surely make things better!"
- halomru 10y ago
  >I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else At least in Germany Open Streetmaps has vastly better maps than Google Maps. On a global scale Google or Bing maps are very consistent while OSM depends on the local community, but they are well worth checking out. For satellite images Google Earth is hard to beat, but Bing has good images as well
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    OpenStreetMaps is already excellent, but it seems like it could do with impetus in some areas. For what it's worth, these are some gaps that occur to me: * Standardization of the model for mapping on multiple levels, and with 3D, and integration of that with the editors. * Finding standardized ways to test, approve and automate maintenance of data consistency. There seems to be a lot of ad-hoc script editing, like someone writing a script to make a one-off edit of the global dataset to do a spelling correction. If that's going to happen, it should have pre-approval, and probably be integrated into an official, periodic checking and consistency process. Along the same lines, I'm not convinced small malicious or mistaken data edits will be picked up as quickly as they should be. I think most of the tools and structures are there to build the map, but not necessarily to maintain it. * Doing more to link the OpenStreetMap.org site to the projects using the data. i.e. more clearly positioning the site as a data repository, and place to find ways to consume the data, and less as a toe-to-toe competitor to Google Maps. * Pushing forward in links with wikipedia, preferably forming a connection with the structured/geographical data on wikipedia (if it's possible to find a license which is compatible with both projects, and wouldn't lock in either party). Having more eyes on the data should help to prevent bit rot. * Finding hardware to automate data collection for Mapillary (the Streetview equivalent). * Improvement of search/geocoding algorithms - to try to fill in patchy street data information (i.e. detecting sequences in house numbering). Then using those algorithms both to improve the geocoding capability, and to prioritize where data most needs to be collected - a handful of house numbers are vital for a major 5km road through the centre of a city, but they are far less important for a 30m cul-de-sac. * Finding ways to have more area based mapping for pavements, cycleways, shared space roads, pedestrian crossings, public squares etc, as an additional, progressive enhancement to the line and dot model for footways, highways, etc. Something which can be used to provide additional information in city areas where that sort of low-level mapping is useful/necessary, but isn't necessary elsewhere (clearly the whole world will never be mapped in the detail that you'd like to map central London, or one particular central railway station) In general, trying to develop policies to encourage the database to be maintained, and data collection to be managed, in a way which makes it easy to consume the data in a structured way. Glad to be corrected if I'm wrong, or ignorant of progress.
- snikeris 10y ago
  > Does Google need this revenue? Yes, of course. > What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving? It's not generating enough revenue.
executesorder66 10y ago
Things like this instantly piss me off. Then I remember I use an adblocker and I calm down again.
- greenbast 10y ago
  But what about on the mobile apps? I need a content blocker for apps.
  - tapiwa 10y ago
    Use Adaway .. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway It blocks at the Hosts file level.
    - coldpie 10y ago
      Sadly requires root, which is a higher bar than I'm willing to clear.
      - hobs 10y ago
        As the phone manufacturers are the same as the danguses adding ads everywhere, the only other option I can think of is to proxy your traffic through another service that does server side ad blocking, and that seems like quite a headache if you want to, for instance, unblock certain content.
        majewsky 10y ago
        At least at home, I do DNS-level adblocking, which should be good enough for all devices that use the DNS resolver advertised by DHCP. (Source code is at https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master/holodeck-damogran.pkg.toml#L289-L407 https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... if you want to copy this.)
      - hackney 10y ago
reustle 10y ago
I already see plenty of logos on google maps here in Japan (mostly convenience stores), even without searching anything. I guess this news is only regarding results? http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png
- ma2rten 10y ago
  Those are icons, the post is talking about sponsored company logos.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    That image does show a 7-11 company logo, though.
    - jpatokal 10y ago
      Japan has had those for quite some time. I presume it's because convenience stores are a really big thing in Japan and there isn't really anything like a universally recognizable generic convenience store sign.
zkhalique 10y ago
What about the Google Maps api? Will companies be able to use the maps to display things, unmolested by google-sponsored ads?
- studentrob 10y ago
  Who knows. If Google's revenue slips, investors get upset and make leadership changes. It sounds like leadership is out of ideas if their only ones are to increase the size and frequency of ads on existing apps. That's a bit sad considering the talent they have there.
  - GantzGraf 10y ago
    Increased ads will bring in more revenue. They're not doing this for the sake of it.
    - studentrob 10y ago
      Right. I'm saying, they've run out of other ideas. Ads have always been Google's major source of revenue. Now, their to answer to dwindling revenue is to add larger ads to existing apps [1] Bigger and more ads is not very innovative for a tech company. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of-ads-1464105600 http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequenc...
- jpatokal 10y ago
  The Premium plans are (and have always been) "guaranteed ad-free": https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-plans/ https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-plans/ Google Maps has had ads for quite some time, (AFAIK) all that's new here is option to use custom logos instead of the old purple pin: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en Disclaimer: Used to work on Google Maps, but I don't anymore, and I know no more about this launch than what the blog post says.
heavymark 10y ago
Google was great because it surfaces the most relevant results, but more ads infiltrate everything it surfaces results with the largest wallets who rarely are the most relevant. On the bright side it's good news for Apple whose business model isn't reliant on ads. While Apple can't yet beat Google's mapping technologies, I think instead it's hoping in the long run Google will ruin itself that people will prefer an inferior technology but one that values their privacy and relevancy.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  Good news for OpenStreetMap, as well. And a good illustration of why it is an important project.
  - patrickdavey 10y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I'm just back from 6 months travel around South America. The OSMAnd+ app for Android was invaluable. Complete offline maps (and Wikipedia content) for every country. The information was usually up to date. It was extremely simple to create an account and start contributing back. So yes, love OSM, will probably hardly use Google Maps from now on.
  - neverminder 10y ago
    OpenStreetMap is great, but it's a bit like Linux among OSes - one source of data, but many implementations and not a single one to be dominant enough to be a real threat to google, hence no street view and the search is lousy just to name a few significant drawbacks.
    - Brakenshire 10y ago
      Another analogy might be ARM vs. Intel? Lots of small players don't have to go toe-to-toe with a giant in order to be effective competition. I agree though that it needs to keep up momentum to be competitive, a lot is still missing.
    - twshoopboop 10y ago
Aoyagi 10y ago
Man, I wish HERE and/or OSM had an equivalent of StreetView. That's the only thing which makes me use Google Maps at all.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Mapillary is a company that is building crowd sourced street imagery. They have a reasonably open license (https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html) and allow OSM to extract information from the photos. Telenav is rolling out something similar. They don't really come close to StreetView as far as coverage.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    Mapillary needs some sort of camera you can buy for $50-150, put on the top of your car, and take decent resolution 360 degree photos. Then the coverage in major city areas would get completed in a few years.
- skykooler 10y ago
  HERE used to have something like that - it was called Nokia CityScene. I don't know whether that's still around, though.
typetypetype 10y ago
It feels that ad space is in a downward spiral. The more space these companies convert to ads, the less the ads are worth and the more space they need to convert. Instagram in particular seems to really be falling into this cycle.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Plus the more obnoxious ads get, the more people [1] will go to adblockers. [1] Or businesses, e.g. Opera has an integrated adblocker now, and Firefox blocks tracking while in privacy mode (and they plan to expand this to the normal mode, IIRC).
dovdov 10y ago
You never thought Apple Maps will be tempting.
- milesokeefe 10y ago
  Apple Maps' exclusive access to use the lockscreen, along with (IMO) a better UI when following directions, make it my go-to when driving despite the bad reputation it has on the internet.
makecheck 10y ago
Between this and the total redesigns that keep making things harder to use for no reason, Google seems to have no interest in people actually using their products. I’ve never seen a single company with more cases of “geez this stuff is all great if you’d just leave it the hell alone…”. For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky they’re even in this business.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  > For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky they’re even in this business. huh?
- GantzGraf 10y ago
  How did Steve Jobs connect the dots for Google?
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  Wat? Google Maps was available on BlackBerry (and other platforms) when Steve Jobs was still selling flower-print iMacs.
sveme 10y ago
If it weren't for the traffic conditions and satellite images, I would not be using Google Maps anymore - it's been incredibly slow on both the Android app and the web. Takes about 30 secs of loading until I can finally switch on satellite images. Is it change for change's sake that bloats so many company offerings after a while?
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I think it is the marketing belief that unless they show change over time, people will think the product abandoned. You see this in the FOSS world as well. I think there was a presentation posted recently by a former project lead that had his project co-opted and forked because he refused to release a new update until he deemed it "ready".
- hackney 10y ago
  In osmand you can add either/ or both, an underlay or overlay map. MS earth works as a good google sat imagery replacement. I like osmand because it can be totally offline if you choose.
cromwellian 10y ago
Waze already has had these promoted pin icons for a while I think.
kentosi 10y ago
Just a thought, seeing as these ads are undoubtedly pissing everyone off: Why not have a paid alternative (like Youtube red)?
Agustus 10y ago
Google is on track, albeit slowly, to the AltaVista destination. When in 1999, before the first collapse, the competitors to Google were inundating users with in-result ads, crazy load times and odd results. This was pushed by the stock's need to show constant revenue growth. Google now is adding more ads, configuring the ads in-line to increase clicks (yes, they are 65% relevant), integrating an obtuse implementation within Maps, and so forth. DuckDuckGo becomes more viable each day as an alternative.
- rudolf0 10y ago
  I can't deny any of that, and DDG has a better UX, but Google is still by far superior when it comes to returning relevant results. I do a lot of Googling for my job (and life), and nothing I've tried seems to compare to Google's results yet.
  - Agustus 10y ago
    Absolutely. Google is far and away what I fall back to when I need to really find something. That being said, I use Bing and DDG as my defaults to see if I get good enough results.
    - hackney 10y ago
      Even though I have the latest version of Maps installed I never use it and it is disabled and blocked from the net. Osmand works great, aside from when it tells you to get on a freeway; it doesn't, and will say something like "veer right", which has caused some headaches. Searching within osmand for an exact address also sucks. I have to enter Los Angeles for cities such as say, Reseda, when it should know better. Thankfully the fdroid apk AddressToGps fixes the search perfectly, allowing you to enter an exact address which then uses a google api to pull up the exact coordinates which is then seamlessly handed off to Osmand. All you do after is tell it to map the route. Without addressTogps, osmand is practically unuseable. GEO Bookmark, fdroid repo, is also an excellent companion ap to osmand.
dbcurtis 10y ago
There is a lot of hate here for something we haven't even seen yet. While I aknowledge that they could screw this up badly, my first reaction was positive. I've done a couple of road trips recently where a pin for every Peet's, Starbucks, IHOP, and Chipotle all along the route would have been welcome.
- xviia 10y ago
  I have a good response to this, but first: Are you interested in a home-cooked meal? Perhaps a Golden Corral(R) "Awesome Pot Roast" could get your stomach rumbling like no other dumpster food could! Choose from one of our great buffet options! Green beans, carrots, chicken, we've got it all! OK, joking aside, here's my issue with intrusive advertising: sure, they justify the advertising by saying it's to pay for the service, even if you'd be willing to pay for a subscription service that would remove the ads. But instead, you get ads for Golden Corral while you're really looking for the "Oreo Madness" now at TGI Friday's! Today's special includes hot wings with a creamy Ranch dressing, an ultra hot spicy sauce, and fresh celery sticks! Choose from one of our new Bacon Burgers, like the All-American Jack Daniel's Burger. Thirsty? Try our handcrafted cocktails like fresh Peach Sangria!
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    That's a great idea. I'm going to disrupt the ad industry by making a startup that injects ads into commenting platforms like disqus!
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  No thanks. I hate all those places, so why would I want to be spammed about them while I drive? If I could configure it for my personal favorite places like Panera, then sure, that'd be a useful feature. But I don't want to be spammed about a bunch of crappy businesses that I have no interest in visiting. And I have zero faith that a company that makes money by advertising would allow me to configure their app to only show places I'm interested in, rather than places who pay to put their logo on my map screen.
killerdhmo 10y ago
The irony of having to scroll past three ads to read this four paragraph article about Google serving "a lot more" ads
swozey 10y ago
I get absolutely livid when I'm using Waze as my navigation and an ad pops up and takes up the entire screen WHILE I'm navigating. Awful implementation, I immediately X them, don't read them or anything.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I tried out Waze for some trips in the last few months after hearing all the hoopla about it, and honestly I don't see why people like it. It's kinda cutesy, I'll admit, but the only useful feature it has is that users can inform each other about speed traps. Aside from that, it's really kind of a PITA to use, and also it doesn't seem to do any kind of re-routing for slow traffic or have any indication that you can take alternate routes and how that will affect your travel time. On Google Maps, there's frequently places where it'll show you alternate routes in gray, and how they'll affect your time ("3 minutes slower"). Waze doesn't have that at all. I was really disappointed, so I just went back to Google Maps.
djaychela 10y ago
I think that Google Maps is becoming more and more advert-based regardless of this; Once a year I run a little "banger rally" thing for friends of mine and do most of the planning of the route using G-maps. It's impossible now to search for something such as a landmark, instead you get redirected to businesses with either the word landmark in their title, or businesses that will make a landmark for you (funeral directors, etc). It wasn't like this a few years ago. I know, I know, it's business- and advertising-driven, but I can't help but feel that we're starting to get both ends of the stick here - we're the product and our whereabouts are tracked all the time, but on top of that we get advertised to constantly as well. Problem is I've not found a solution that is as smooth or useful on Android?
gdulli 10y ago
Sometimes I'm glad that I'm old enough (38) to have lived a significant amount before the conveniences of the modern internet. The idea of getting around without online maps isn't strange to me and I have the skill from back when it was the only option. So when google maps starts getting too bullshitty it's easy for me to do without it. One time a few years ago a (younger) friend laughed at me for writing down directions on a piece of paper. But the piece of paper didn't have to be mounted, I didn't have to turn on a screen to use it, navigate to the right app, worry about the screen going off after not using it for a minute, etc. The piece of paper was the most usable option by far.
BooneJS 10y ago
I do enjoy ignoring the KFC pin in Waze.
riprowan 10y ago
Google, stop being evil, shut up, and take my money. Why can't I just pay to opt out of all this crap I don't want, and instead incentivize the businesses they actually get right?

105 points by chippy 10y ago

I found myself rarely using google search partly because of paid ads already. Looks like they are making decisions which will push me away from another product I enjoyed.

jrcii 10y ago
You should consider installing an ad blocker like uBlock Origin. I haven't seen ads on Google Search for years.

honkhonkpants 10y ago

Google also announced this 6 years ago, FWIW. https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of-your-favorite.html https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of...

studentrob 10y ago

So it's going to get even slower? Awesome! I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else. Honestly, what a sell out. What was once neutral territory for businesses is now available for bidding. Does Google need this revenue? What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving? I see the full keynote is here [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw

rplnt 10y ago
Google Maps are practically unusable when not in lite mode (which they turn off on every occasion), so I don't use them. And even when I try, the UX is horrible and features are broken. Luckily, most of my map needs are met by a local competitor (mapy.cz). They are not perfect, but are still much superior, at least for what I want from maps. Coincidentally, their Android app (which supports offline maps) got really slow few months back. I wish I could easily downgrade to an older version (as I did with online Google maps before I gave up).
- studentrob 10y ago
  That's cool. Maybe Google doesn't want to dominate, which would be cool too.
  - rplnt 10y ago
    Oh, they sure do. Just a few years back the company behind mapy.cz had a majority share in search in Czech Republic. Somewhat of a rarity in Europe, maybe even (latin writing) world. Google ads were everywhere - radio, tv, billboards, etc... not to mention online.
    - studentrob 10y ago
      Well, I'm sure Google Inc would love to dominate but I believe their fall from grace is evidence Google engineers don't want to. Or maybe I'm off base. Nobody dominates forever.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      I thought you guys were calling yourselves "Czechia" now.
IBM 10y ago
Google is increasing ad sizes and frequency because growth is slowing. http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of-ads-1464105600 http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequenc...
- studentrob 10y ago
  The solution to Google's dwindling advertising market is to increase the size of ads on content I watch? Noooooooooooooooo =(. Sounds like a good chance for competitors to jump in. Thanks for sharing this though, I didn't know that =)
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I love how every advertising group thinks: "Oh, growth is slowing, time to inject more of the thing that people don't want! That'll surely make things better!"
halomru 10y ago
>I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else At least in Germany Open Streetmaps has vastly better maps than Google Maps. On a global scale Google or Bing maps are very consistent while OSM depends on the local community, but they are well worth checking out. For satellite images Google Earth is hard to beat, but Bing has good images as well
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  OpenStreetMaps is already excellent, but it seems like it could do with impetus in some areas. For what it's worth, these are some gaps that occur to me: * Standardization of the model for mapping on multiple levels, and with 3D, and integration of that with the editors. * Finding standardized ways to test, approve and automate maintenance of data consistency. There seems to be a lot of ad-hoc script editing, like someone writing a script to make a one-off edit of the global dataset to do a spelling correction. If that's going to happen, it should have pre-approval, and probably be integrated into an official, periodic checking and consistency process. Along the same lines, I'm not convinced small malicious or mistaken data edits will be picked up as quickly as they should be. I think most of the tools and structures are there to build the map, but not necessarily to maintain it. * Doing more to link the OpenStreetMap.org site to the projects using the data. i.e. more clearly positioning the site as a data repository, and place to find ways to consume the data, and less as a toe-to-toe competitor to Google Maps. * Pushing forward in links with wikipedia, preferably forming a connection with the structured/geographical data on wikipedia (if it's possible to find a license which is compatible with both projects, and wouldn't lock in either party). Having more eyes on the data should help to prevent bit rot. * Finding hardware to automate data collection for Mapillary (the Streetview equivalent). * Improvement of search/geocoding algorithms - to try to fill in patchy street data information (i.e. detecting sequences in house numbering). Then using those algorithms both to improve the geocoding capability, and to prioritize where data most needs to be collected - a handful of house numbers are vital for a major 5km road through the centre of a city, but they are far less important for a 30m cul-de-sac. * Finding ways to have more area based mapping for pavements, cycleways, shared space roads, pedestrian crossings, public squares etc, as an additional, progressive enhancement to the line and dot model for footways, highways, etc. Something which can be used to provide additional information in city areas where that sort of low-level mapping is useful/necessary, but isn't necessary elsewhere (clearly the whole world will never be mapped in the detail that you'd like to map central London, or one particular central railway station) In general, trying to develop policies to encourage the database to be maintained, and data collection to be managed, in a way which makes it easy to consume the data in a structured way. Glad to be corrected if I'm wrong, or ignorant of progress.
snikeris 10y ago
> Does Google need this revenue? Yes, of course. > What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving? It's not generating enough revenue.

executesorder66 10y ago

Things like this instantly piss me off. Then I remember I use an adblocker and I calm down again.

greenbast 10y ago
But what about on the mobile apps? I need a content blocker for apps.
- tapiwa 10y ago
  Use Adaway .. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway It blocks at the Hosts file level.
  - coldpie 10y ago
    Sadly requires root, which is a higher bar than I'm willing to clear.
    - hobs 10y ago
      As the phone manufacturers are the same as the danguses adding ads everywhere, the only other option I can think of is to proxy your traffic through another service that does server side ad blocking, and that seems like quite a headache if you want to, for instance, unblock certain content.
      - majewsky 10y ago
        At least at home, I do DNS-level adblocking, which should be good enough for all devices that use the DNS resolver advertised by DHCP. (Source code is at https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master/holodeck-damogran.pkg.toml#L289-L407 https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... if you want to copy this.)
    - hackney 10y ago

reustle 10y ago

I already see plenty of logos on google maps here in Japan (mostly convenience stores), even without searching anything. I guess this news is only regarding results? http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png

ma2rten 10y ago
Those are icons, the post is talking about sponsored company logos.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  That image does show a 7-11 company logo, though.
  - jpatokal 10y ago
    Japan has had those for quite some time. I presume it's because convenience stores are a really big thing in Japan and there isn't really anything like a universally recognizable generic convenience store sign.

zkhalique 10y ago

What about the Google Maps api? Will companies be able to use the maps to display things, unmolested by google-sponsored ads?

studentrob 10y ago
Who knows. If Google's revenue slips, investors get upset and make leadership changes. It sounds like leadership is out of ideas if their only ones are to increase the size and frequency of ads on existing apps. That's a bit sad considering the talent they have there.
- GantzGraf 10y ago
  Increased ads will bring in more revenue. They're not doing this for the sake of it.
  - studentrob 10y ago
    Right. I'm saying, they've run out of other ideas. Ads have always been Google's major source of revenue. Now, their to answer to dwindling revenue is to add larger ads to existing apps [1] Bigger and more ads is not very innovative for a tech company. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of-ads-1464105600 http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequenc...
jpatokal 10y ago
The Premium plans are (and have always been) "guaranteed ad-free": https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-plans/ https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-plans/ Google Maps has had ads for quite some time, (AFAIK) all that's new here is option to use custom logos instead of the old purple pin: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en Disclaimer: Used to work on Google Maps, but I don't anymore, and I know no more about this launch than what the blog post says.

heavymark 10y ago

Google was great because it surfaces the most relevant results, but more ads infiltrate everything it surfaces results with the largest wallets who rarely are the most relevant. On the bright side it's good news for Apple whose business model isn't reliant on ads. While Apple can't yet beat Google's mapping technologies, I think instead it's hoping in the long run Google will ruin itself that people will prefer an inferior technology but one that values their privacy and relevancy.

Brakenshire 10y ago
Good news for OpenStreetMap, as well. And a good illustration of why it is an important project.
- patrickdavey 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I'm just back from 6 months travel around South America. The OSMAnd+ app for Android was invaluable. Complete offline maps (and Wikipedia content) for every country. The information was usually up to date. It was extremely simple to create an account and start contributing back. So yes, love OSM, will probably hardly use Google Maps from now on.
- neverminder 10y ago
  OpenStreetMap is great, but it's a bit like Linux among OSes - one source of data, but many implementations and not a single one to be dominant enough to be a real threat to google, hence no street view and the search is lousy just to name a few significant drawbacks.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    Another analogy might be ARM vs. Intel? Lots of small players don't have to go toe-to-toe with a giant in order to be effective competition. I agree though that it needs to keep up momentum to be competitive, a lot is still missing.
  - twshoopboop 10y ago

Aoyagi 10y ago

Man, I wish HERE and/or OSM had an equivalent of StreetView. That's the only thing which makes me use Google Maps at all.

maxerickson 10y ago
Mapillary is a company that is building crowd sourced street imagery. They have a reasonably open license (https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html) and allow OSM to extract information from the photos. Telenav is rolling out something similar. They don't really come close to StreetView as far as coverage.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  Mapillary needs some sort of camera you can buy for $50-150, put on the top of your car, and take decent resolution 360 degree photos. Then the coverage in major city areas would get completed in a few years.
skykooler 10y ago
HERE used to have something like that - it was called Nokia CityScene. I don't know whether that's still around, though.

typetypetype 10y ago

It feels that ad space is in a downward spiral. The more space these companies convert to ads, the less the ads are worth and the more space they need to convert. Instagram in particular seems to really be falling into this cycle.

majewsky 10y ago
Plus the more obnoxious ads get, the more people [1] will go to adblockers. [1] Or businesses, e.g. Opera has an integrated adblocker now, and Firefox blocks tracking while in privacy mode (and they plan to expand this to the normal mode, IIRC).

dovdov 10y ago

You never thought Apple Maps will be tempting.

milesokeefe 10y ago
Apple Maps' exclusive access to use the lockscreen, along with (IMO) a better UI when following directions, make it my go-to when driving despite the bad reputation it has on the internet.

makecheck 10y ago

Between this and the total redesigns that keep making things harder to use for no reason, Google seems to have no interest in people actually using their products. I’ve never seen a single company with more cases of “geez this stuff is all great if you’d just leave it the hell alone…”. For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky they’re even in this business.

digi_owl 10y ago
> For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky they’re even in this business. huh?
GantzGraf 10y ago
How did Steve Jobs connect the dots for Google?
honkhonkpants 10y ago
Wat? Google Maps was available on BlackBerry (and other platforms) when Steve Jobs was still selling flower-print iMacs.

sveme 10y ago

If it weren't for the traffic conditions and satellite images, I would not be using Google Maps anymore - it's been incredibly slow on both the Android app and the web. Takes about 30 secs of loading until I can finally switch on satellite images. Is it change for change's sake that bloats so many company offerings after a while?

digi_owl 10y ago
I think it is the marketing belief that unless they show change over time, people will think the product abandoned. You see this in the FOSS world as well. I think there was a presentation posted recently by a former project lead that had his project co-opted and forked because he refused to release a new update until he deemed it "ready".
hackney 10y ago
In osmand you can add either/ or both, an underlay or overlay map. MS earth works as a good google sat imagery replacement. I like osmand because it can be totally offline if you choose.

cromwellian 10y ago

Waze already has had these promoted pin icons for a while I think.

kentosi 10y ago

Just a thought, seeing as these ads are undoubtedly pissing everyone off: Why not have a paid alternative (like Youtube red)?

Agustus 10y ago

Google is on track, albeit slowly, to the AltaVista destination. When in 1999, before the first collapse, the competitors to Google were inundating users with in-result ads, crazy load times and odd results. This was pushed by the stock's need to show constant revenue growth. Google now is adding more ads, configuring the ads in-line to increase clicks (yes, they are 65% relevant), integrating an obtuse implementation within Maps, and so forth. DuckDuckGo becomes more viable each day as an alternative.

rudolf0 10y ago
I can't deny any of that, and DDG has a better UX, but Google is still by far superior when it comes to returning relevant results. I do a lot of Googling for my job (and life), and nothing I've tried seems to compare to Google's results yet.
- Agustus 10y ago
  Absolutely. Google is far and away what I fall back to when I need to really find something. That being said, I use Bing and DDG as my defaults to see if I get good enough results.
  - hackney 10y ago
    Even though I have the latest version of Maps installed I never use it and it is disabled and blocked from the net. Osmand works great, aside from when it tells you to get on a freeway; it doesn't, and will say something like "veer right", which has caused some headaches. Searching within osmand for an exact address also sucks. I have to enter Los Angeles for cities such as say, Reseda, when it should know better. Thankfully the fdroid apk AddressToGps fixes the search perfectly, allowing you to enter an exact address which then uses a google api to pull up the exact coordinates which is then seamlessly handed off to Osmand. All you do after is tell it to map the route. Without addressTogps, osmand is practically unuseable. GEO Bookmark, fdroid repo, is also an excellent companion ap to osmand.

dbcurtis 10y ago

There is a lot of hate here for something we haven't even seen yet. While I aknowledge that they could screw this up badly, my first reaction was positive. I've done a couple of road trips recently where a pin for every Peet's, Starbucks, IHOP, and Chipotle all along the route would have been welcome.

xviia 10y ago
I have a good response to this, but first: Are you interested in a home-cooked meal? Perhaps a Golden Corral(R) "Awesome Pot Roast" could get your stomach rumbling like no other dumpster food could! Choose from one of our great buffet options! Green beans, carrots, chicken, we've got it all! OK, joking aside, here's my issue with intrusive advertising: sure, they justify the advertising by saying it's to pay for the service, even if you'd be willing to pay for a subscription service that would remove the ads. But instead, you get ads for Golden Corral while you're really looking for the "Oreo Madness" now at TGI Friday's! Today's special includes hot wings with a creamy Ranch dressing, an ultra hot spicy sauce, and fresh celery sticks! Choose from one of our new Bacon Burgers, like the All-American Jack Daniel's Burger. Thirsty? Try our handcrafted cocktails like fresh Peach Sangria!
- antisthenes 10y ago
  That's a great idea. I'm going to disrupt the ad industry by making a startup that injects ads into commenting platforms like disqus!
Grishnakh 10y ago
No thanks. I hate all those places, so why would I want to be spammed about them while I drive? If I could configure it for my personal favorite places like Panera, then sure, that'd be a useful feature. But I don't want to be spammed about a bunch of crappy businesses that I have no interest in visiting. And I have zero faith that a company that makes money by advertising would allow me to configure their app to only show places I'm interested in, rather than places who pay to put their logo on my map screen.

killerdhmo 10y ago

The irony of having to scroll past three ads to read this four paragraph article about Google serving "a lot more" ads

swozey 10y ago

I get absolutely livid when I'm using Waze as my navigation and an ad pops up and takes up the entire screen WHILE I'm navigating. Awful implementation, I immediately X them, don't read them or anything.

Grishnakh 10y ago
I tried out Waze for some trips in the last few months after hearing all the hoopla about it, and honestly I don't see why people like it. It's kinda cutesy, I'll admit, but the only useful feature it has is that users can inform each other about speed traps. Aside from that, it's really kind of a PITA to use, and also it doesn't seem to do any kind of re-routing for slow traffic or have any indication that you can take alternate routes and how that will affect your travel time. On Google Maps, there's frequently places where it'll show you alternate routes in gray, and how they'll affect your time ("3 minutes slower"). Waze doesn't have that at all. I was really disappointed, so I just went back to Google Maps.

djaychela 10y ago

I think that Google Maps is becoming more and more advert-based regardless of this; Once a year I run a little "banger rally" thing for friends of mine and do most of the planning of the route using G-maps. It's impossible now to search for something such as a landmark, instead you get redirected to businesses with either the word landmark in their title, or businesses that will make a landmark for you (funeral directors, etc). It wasn't like this a few years ago. I know, I know, it's business- and advertising-driven, but I can't help but feel that we're starting to get both ends of the stick here - we're the product and our whereabouts are tracked all the time, but on top of that we get advertised to constantly as well. Problem is I've not found a solution that is as smooth or useful on Android?

gdulli 10y ago

Sometimes I'm glad that I'm old enough (38) to have lived a significant amount before the conveniences of the modern internet. The idea of getting around without online maps isn't strange to me and I have the skill from back when it was the only option. So when google maps starts getting too bullshitty it's easy for me to do without it. One time a few years ago a (younger) friend laughed at me for writing down directions on a piece of paper. But the piece of paper didn't have to be mounted, I didn't have to turn on a screen to use it, navigate to the right app, worry about the screen going off after not using it for a minute, etc. The piece of paper was the most usable option by far.

BooneJS 10y ago

I do enjoy ignoring the KFC pin in Waze.

riprowan 10y ago

Google, stop being evil, shut up, and take my money. Why can't I just pay to opt out of all this crap I don't want, and instead incentivize the businesses they actually get right?