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How Google Builds Its Maps–and What It Means for the Future of Everything (2012)

56 points by bschne 9y ago

finnn 9y ago
The Atlantics appears to be blocking Firefox private browsing mode. This is a new level of anti-user website. Blocking all JS appears to make it work though.
- brudgers 9y ago
  I just opened the link in a new private window using Firefox and did not experience an issue reading the content.
rokhayakebe 9y ago
Or as my friend and sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan put it to me, "I maintain that this is Google's core asset. In 50 years, Google will be the self-driving car company (powered by this deep map of the world) and, oh, P.S. they still have a search engine somewhere."
mistermann 9y ago
Google should poach some engineers from Bing (and others) to teach them how to write maps that run fast.
- GoToRO 9y ago
  Making this little website [1] was so eye opening. It's not just the fact that the 3 libraries that I used were different because they came from 3 different companies. You could actually feel the difference in philosophy while using them. [1] comparemaps.drona.ro
  - mistermann 9y ago
    VERY COOL! Questions/comments: "Make Firefox get along with Google Maps (check this if you experience lag while dragging Google Map or OSM)" - what does this do? Running this, Google maps seems reasonably comparable to the others, yet when I just load Google maps on its own to look something up, it can easily take 5+ seconds to load.....any idea what might cause this discrepancy? Overlaying a more prominent brand label on each would be an improvement. Well done, I really like it!
    - GoToRO 9y ago
      This is how Chrome pushes out other browsers: first you make a browser that is fast in some aspect. Then you build an app that takes advantage of that aspect. In this case Chrome can handle a lot of events and Google Maps generate a lot of events. So in Chrome it is smooth. In other browsers (I use Firefox) the browser will choke on events and the map will lag. Maybe is just a matter of compiling Firefox with better defaults (more memory allocated, smaller tick rate for events, I don't know, I'm just making suppositions, I have no clue how a browser works) but it feels slower. To prevent this I throttle the events (checkbox checked): I kill the event if it arrived too fast or the change in mouse position is too small. This will make the map more responsive. Please note that I don't say that Chrome does this intentionally. But it happens. I've put more information here at the time: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16645766/google-maps-api-v3-no-smooth-dragging/22030838#22030838 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16645766/google-maps-api...
    - GoToRO 9y ago
      Oh, and thanks for the kind words!
  - lucideer 9y ago
    This is absolutely great, but I have two observations: 1. Google's embedded maps & API are significantly faster than their own maps on https://maps.google.com/ https://maps.google.com/. That particular team seems to have just recently fired or re-assigned every developer with any knowledge or - more likely, interest in - performance 2. I would guess the performance of the openstreetmap.org tileservers are the biggest bottleneck in your example. Their own website says "The tile service comes with no guarantee as to availability or speed", which is why alternative hosts of that dataset are so proliferate. Including a few alternative OSM tile hosts like opencyclemap, Mapbox, Mapzen, &c. could be very interesting.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      Are you saying the maps API (which this demo uses) is fast, but the maps website itself is slow? That 100% matches my experience. But how could that be?
      - GoToRO 9y ago
        The API maps and google.com/maps are different products. Maybe they reuse some code but they do not have the same features. On google.com/maps if you search for a teritory (like a country) you will get a red border arround that teritory. On API maps developers asked for this feature for years and it is still not available.
jonp888 9y ago
This article is somewhat misleading about the exceptional nature of Google Map's road network data, particularly the claim that "I came away convinced that the geographic data Google has assembled is not likely to be matched by any other company." In reality, though it seems the journalist didn't bother to try and find out, all the leading electronic mapping companies(the ones that have been building electronic maps for decades, long before Google got interested) have this level of data too.
- paganel 9y ago
  Google StreetView is unparalleled by any other map-maker that I know of. Yandex is doing something very similar for Russia and some other parts of the world (like Istanbul), I think Microsoft has been doing (is it still doing it?) the same for the Unites States, and probably some Chinese company has been doing the same for China. But Google's effort is the only one that is truly at a global scale. I'm biased because I really do love everything about maps and what they represent, but I think in retrospect Google StreetView will be seen as having the same cultural significance as the Library of Alexandria had back in the day. It has literally made almost the whole physical world accessible from the devices that we carry in our pockets.
  - trevyn 9y ago
    There's a lot of knowledge that is not encoded in the layout of physical buildings. ;) Until they integrate Google Books into VR libraries. ;)
  - jonp888 9y ago
    True, Google StreeView is unique. However, this article is not about Streetview, it is about the polar opposite - the invisible, detailed metadata about lanes, junctions, speed limits and manouveuring restrictions that is neccessary for autonomous driving.
  - tuukkah 9y ago
    Mapillary is global and they keep pushing the boundaries of applications of street-level imagery - including building a semantic model of the world for applications such as robotic cars.

56 points by bschne 9y ago

The Atlantics appears to be blocking Firefox private browsing mode. This is a new level of anti-user website. Blocking all JS appears to make it work though.

brudgers 9y ago
I just opened the link in a new private window using Firefox and did not experience an issue reading the content.

rokhayakebe 9y ago

Or as my friend and sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan put it to me, "I maintain that this is Google's core asset. In 50 years, Google will be the self-driving car company (powered by this deep map of the world) and, oh, P.S. they still have a search engine somewhere."

mistermann 9y ago

Google should poach some engineers from Bing (and others) to teach them how to write maps that run fast.

GoToRO 9y ago
Making this little website [1] was so eye opening. It's not just the fact that the 3 libraries that I used were different because they came from 3 different companies. You could actually feel the difference in philosophy while using them. [1] comparemaps.drona.ro
- mistermann 9y ago
  VERY COOL! Questions/comments: "Make Firefox get along with Google Maps (check this if you experience lag while dragging Google Map or OSM)" - what does this do? Running this, Google maps seems reasonably comparable to the others, yet when I just load Google maps on its own to look something up, it can easily take 5+ seconds to load.....any idea what might cause this discrepancy? Overlaying a more prominent brand label on each would be an improvement. Well done, I really like it!
  - GoToRO 9y ago
    This is how Chrome pushes out other browsers: first you make a browser that is fast in some aspect. Then you build an app that takes advantage of that aspect. In this case Chrome can handle a lot of events and Google Maps generate a lot of events. So in Chrome it is smooth. In other browsers (I use Firefox) the browser will choke on events and the map will lag. Maybe is just a matter of compiling Firefox with better defaults (more memory allocated, smaller tick rate for events, I don't know, I'm just making suppositions, I have no clue how a browser works) but it feels slower. To prevent this I throttle the events (checkbox checked): I kill the event if it arrived too fast or the change in mouse position is too small. This will make the map more responsive. Please note that I don't say that Chrome does this intentionally. But it happens. I've put more information here at the time: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16645766/google-maps-api-v3-no-smooth-dragging/22030838#22030838 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16645766/google-maps-api...
  - GoToRO 9y ago
    Oh, and thanks for the kind words!
- lucideer 9y ago
  This is absolutely great, but I have two observations: 1. Google's embedded maps & API are significantly faster than their own maps on https://maps.google.com/ https://maps.google.com/. That particular team seems to have just recently fired or re-assigned every developer with any knowledge or - more likely, interest in - performance 2. I would guess the performance of the openstreetmap.org tileservers are the biggest bottleneck in your example. Their own website says "The tile service comes with no guarantee as to availability or speed", which is why alternative hosts of that dataset are so proliferate. Including a few alternative OSM tile hosts like opencyclemap, Mapbox, Mapzen, &c. could be very interesting.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Are you saying the maps API (which this demo uses) is fast, but the maps website itself is slow? That 100% matches my experience. But how could that be?
    - GoToRO 9y ago
      The API maps and google.com/maps are different products. Maybe they reuse some code but they do not have the same features. On google.com/maps if you search for a teritory (like a country) you will get a red border arround that teritory. On API maps developers asked for this feature for years and it is still not available.

jonp888 9y ago

This article is somewhat misleading about the exceptional nature of Google Map's road network data, particularly the claim that "I came away convinced that the geographic data Google has assembled is not likely to be matched by any other company." In reality, though it seems the journalist didn't bother to try and find out, all the leading electronic mapping companies(the ones that have been building electronic maps for decades, long before Google got interested) have this level of data too.

paganel 9y ago
Google StreetView is unparalleled by any other map-maker that I know of. Yandex is doing something very similar for Russia and some other parts of the world (like Istanbul), I think Microsoft has been doing (is it still doing it?) the same for the Unites States, and probably some Chinese company has been doing the same for China. But Google's effort is the only one that is truly at a global scale. I'm biased because I really do love everything about maps and what they represent, but I think in retrospect Google StreetView will be seen as having the same cultural significance as the Library of Alexandria had back in the day. It has literally made almost the whole physical world accessible from the devices that we carry in our pockets.
- trevyn 9y ago
  There's a lot of knowledge that is not encoded in the layout of physical buildings. ;) Until they integrate Google Books into VR libraries. ;)
- jonp888 9y ago
  True, Google StreeView is unique. However, this article is not about Streetview, it is about the polar opposite - the invisible, detailed metadata about lanes, junctions, speed limits and manouveuring restrictions that is neccessary for autonomous driving.
- tuukkah 9y ago
  Mapillary is global and they keep pushing the boundaries of applications of street-level imagery - including building a semantic model of the world for applications such as robotic cars.