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Google Decides to Monetize Maps

330 points by tornadron 7y ago

wortelefant 7y ago
Evil webdesign patterns on this site: After I opted out of all but "required" cookies, the popup kept me waiting for several minutes with "processing preferences", inviting users to cancel the opt-out. Shenanigans like this one has become my main use case for read-it-later-apps like wallabag/pocket these days.
cageface 7y ago
Google is really leaving the door open here for Apple to step in and offer a services bundle with a monthly fee that doesn’t involve stuffing advertising into every nook and cranny of the user experience. I generally prefer Google’s services to Apple’s but there might be a tipping point soon where I’m willing to sacrifice some features in exchange for a generally less creepy product.
- jfoster 7y ago
  People have been speculating that for yonks, though. If it's such a huge opportunity for Apple and so many people want it, where is it?
  - cageface 7y ago
    Apple has been very slow to expand their service offerings beyond Apple devices. Insane hardware revenues have made them complacent up until now. Their recent moves to start offering their video content on non-Apple platforms indicates that they finally understand that cross platform services are the key to their future growth IMO.
- js2 7y ago
  Apple maps still has a ways to go. I say this as someone who tries to use it frequently because I much prefer its UI, especially with Carplay. But it still has much worse traffic data, still sometimes sends me on weird routes through neighborhoods that don't save any time nor distance, and lately has a fun glitch where it sometimes instructs me turn left instead of right or vice/versa because it apparently thinks my vehicle is facing 180° from what it actually is. The turn glitch has now happened to me several times across two different devices. I thought I imagined it the first time.
  - cageface 7y ago
    Apple maps is inferior to Google in almost every respect in Asia. I open it now and again just to see if it’s improved and always switch back immediately to Gmaps. With hardware sales slowing Apple has a lot more incentive to improve it than they did when the iPhone gravy train seemed unstoppable though.
    - maracuja-juice 7y ago
      In China I experienced that it's exactly the other way around.
      - ucaetano 7y ago
        Which isn't surprising as Google is blocked in China. Also, by being blocked, they can't use the Chinese government's service to "correct" the errors that China introduces in the maps: https://geoawesomeness.com/china-messing-gps-coordinates/ https://geoawesomeness.com/china-messing-gps-coordinates/
      - elcomet 7y ago
        Isn't Google maps blocked in China?
        maracuja-juice 7y ago
        It is perfectly accessible, just a not a very good map over there. Once we wanted to go to a bar but it turned out that they moved a few years ago to a completely different part of Shanghai.
    - wtmt 7y ago
      Yes, Apple Maps is inferior in Asia (speaking from India here). But it seems to be improving. I noticed that it uses many sources for maps, including TomTom. [1] I’d read maybe a year or two ago that Apple was working on improving maps in other countries, but that effort was projected to be done or getting done by 2020 or 2021. Still a long way to go, but Apple isn’t ignoring it, like it used to seem a few years ago. [1]: https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution-136.html https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution-136.html
- Tsubasachan 7y ago
  You are assuming people would pay for an ad free GMAPS. Google tried this with YouTube Red. It doesn't work. Apple users may be willing to pay for apps, Android users don't swing that way.
  - cageface 7y ago
    Ad free won’t be enough. I predict there will be some kind of monthly bundle that includes a lot of different services. News, music, video and premium features on top of things like maps. Getting people to pay small amounts for a bunch of individual services is harder than charging them one lump sum per month for everything.
    - throw_away 7y ago
      Heh, following the apple branding, they could call it google+
    - snaky 7y ago
      We can imagine something like 'an iPhone experience' pack for Android, and it's technically feasible - and may attract some attention from the customers. But the question is - if you could get 'a pretty much iPhone' in your $200 Android for a couple of bucks a month, why would you ever buy an actual iPhone for $1000?
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        iPhones don't appeal to me regardless of price point. I would guess that people for whom an iPhone-like experience is appealing would buy an iPhone. You can pick up older used models in the $200 price range right now.
      - pdimitar 7y ago
        - Better battery life (if you disable background app refresh). - Unified and consistent UI (subjective but I like it). - No ads or privacy threats in general unless you try really hard to make them work on your iDevice. - Guaranteed OS updates for 5+ years. I'm probably forgetting some more. An "iPhone experience" on an Android won't be even close to an iPhone. It could be used as a tease to prompt people to switch to an iPhone, though.
- gowld 7y ago
  Apple gets the wealthy high margin market, Google gets the mass market. People buy iPhones to keep up with fashion, but most of them won't pay for maps because they can't show that off to their acquaintances.
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    You don't need to buy a new phone. I have an older model iPhone. It still gets security updates. I had to pay to replace the battery after a few years, but otherwise it works fine. In fact, arguably better, since it has a headphone port ;)
  - hi5eyes 7y ago
    >People buy iPhones to keep up with fashion, but most of them won't pay for maps because they can't show that off to their acquaintances. juvenile take, didnt realize people still went with the apple logo meme argument
    - samirm 7y ago
      Just because it's a meme, doesn't mean it isn't at least somewhat true.
      - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
        There are high-end trend-driven Apple customers who update their hardware constantly, but there are also people who have a general preference for Apple products and update occasionally. I'm still on a 2013 MacBook Pro and an iPhone 6. Personally, hardware-wise I just like things that are a) made out of aluminum and b) have hi-dpi screens, and I appreciate a non-finicky BSD-derived OS.
  - pault 7y ago
    Is that why? I thought I was buying iphones for the high quality, end-to-end user experience design, ecosystem integration, strict standards for third party apps, long-lasting hardware, and high resale value. Now I feel so silly.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  What about HERE Maps? I don't, ahem, hear much about them anymore since they were bought by an auto consortium.
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  "Pay for no ads" has failed with almost every attempt. Even Google has made products to do this that haven't succeeded.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    It sure works well with YouTube.
    - hunter23 7y ago
      Do you have evidence that Youtube Premium is giving a good ROI to Google? I always thought of it as one of their experiments that they will kill off in the not so distant future.
      - nopzor 7y ago
        I very much agree. I think they’ll kill yt premium. Even if google charges you what an average user is “worth” to them it’s a huge net negative to their business model. The users who will pay are worth a hell of a lot more to advertisers than the “average user”.
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        So charge $50/month. Frankly, I'd probably pay it. YouTube without the ads is actually pretty nice. Unfortunately I can't argue with you and the other posters, in that it doesn't matter what they charge. If it's not seen as a positive career move to work on a given product at Google, its future is always going to be iffy. And Google is an advertising company at the end of the day, not a video streaming company. And it's certainly true that the more someone is willing to pay to avoid ads, the more valuable to advertisers that person's attention is going to be.
      - mark_l_watson 7y ago
        My wife and I pay $15/month for a family plan Play Music + ad free YouTube. How can Google not be making money on this, assuming a reasonable number of customers. I would think that Google execs are looking at Apple’s new push for integrated services and that they will compete hard. I am a happy customer of both Apple and Google but if Apple continues to come through with quality integrated services, I can see myself just living in Apple’s ‘walled garden’ in the future if they also keep supporting privacy.
- mncharity 7y ago
  > Google is really leaving the door open here for Apple [...] tipping point It's 202X, and you are offered AR glasses from Apple, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Disney, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. With almost-always-on mics, 180-degree cameras, gaze tracking, centimeter-resolution indoor position, and hybrid local/cloud infrastructure. Who do you trust? What is the net present value of that trust?
  - moftz 7y ago
    As of now, probably Apple if theirs costs a fortune compared to everyone else's glasses. At least then I know that they aren't subsidizing the cost of the glasses by selling off my information.
bscphil 7y ago
I think this is taken word-for-word from this Bloomberg piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/google-flips-the-switch-on-its-next-big-money-maker-maps https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/google-fl...
- robjan 7y ago
  It's a syndicated article
nullc 7y ago
Maps has been awful and getting worse for a long time. If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names. Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.
- devoply 7y ago
  You already have other mapping options like Garmin. And you don't have to pay much for them either. They are 100-300 bucks. They work pretty well... and could really use a boost in what seemed like a dying market.
  - canada_dry 7y ago
    > mapping options like Garmin Except Garmin - having been decimated by Google and Apple maps - is getting pretty bad too. I've been using them for >15 years with multiple devices and every update lately seems to make their routing worse AND for some unfathomable reason makes the GPS reception less reliable (if I were a sceptic I'd suggest they are trying to force you to go for a new model via slowly crippling the device with every update).
- puzzle 7y ago
  Do you mean rerouting? Google Maps is tuned differently than Waze, which caters to drivers looking to shave off minutes or even seconds. It tries to keep directions simple and easier to follow (e.g. not making a large number of turns), even if that means a slightly slower route. That was a deliberate product decision, at least until a few years ago. What kind of incomprehensible directions and business names are you referring to?
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    Waze feels more like the R&D app for maps. It doesn't shave seconds or minutes off my time, but what it does do is constant A/B testing to see if another route could be faster. I know the area fairly well and I routinely ignore the route Waze wants to send me unless there is a clearly identified problem on the normal route, and when it re-routes to the path I chose, it's a minute or two shorter. Why did it try to send me down the slower route in the first place? Waze pulls this crap routinely.
brianpgordon 7y ago
> Before the changes, Owczarek’s startup got 750,000 free map views a month and then was charged 50 cents for every 1,000 views on top of that. Then Google started charging after 30,000 views and the cost was $7 per 1,000 views. His costs jumped from nothing to $5,000 a month. Ouch. How could that possibly be worth it? Are they just trying to squeeze money out of businesses that are already locked into the Maps API? It seems hard to believe that your average startup that needs a map widget (like, for food or pharmacy delivery) would go with Maps instead of OpenStreetMap at that price level.
- tssva 7y ago
  Although I appreciate the effort that has gone into and continues to go into OpenStreetMap the reality is that their data set is still pretty poor in comparison to Google Maps. I would not want to create a delivery business that depended upon it for success. Just last month I found myself in need of a source of map data for a personal use application and thought of OpenStreetMap which led me to looking up my home address. Unfortunately I couldn't find my address by searching, so I zoomed in on my neighborhood. About 50% of the street names in my neighborhood were incorrect, so I spent time correcting them. The last time I had visited OpenStreetMap was about 4 years prior. On that visit about 1/3rd of the streets in my then neighborhood didn't appear.
  - Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
    Guessing you're American? OSM is very often better than Google in Europe and other parts of the world. It's spottier in the US.
    - BubuIIC 7y ago
      Agreed on that. Although in Canada the OSM data seemed really, really good when it came to national parks and trails. Not so much inside Vancouver. (Still enough for navigation by car and on foot, but finding addresses was a major PITA.)
  - JohnFen 7y ago
decebalus1 7y ago
Great. I stopped using Google Maps the moment I bought my IPhone. Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority when I say I get a better experience with Apple Maps. Apple Maps with carplay for the past year have been miles ahead of Google maps with Android Auto on all accounts for my trips. I was skeptical at first but I was never rerouted on weird residential neighborhoods / state highways or switch 3 freeways to shave off a minute of my trip, very accurate estimating traffic and transit time, etc... Keep in mind, I was also a huge fan of the Zune.
- gumby 7y ago
  Apple’s coverage is spotty; quite good in many major cities and certain less urban environments, but there are vast areas where its coverage is pretty sketchy. Like you I mostly use it in areas of good coverage and think it’s great. But some places I’m SOL and have to switch to google as a fallback.
  - decebalus1 7y ago
    That may be the case. My trips have mostly been around the west coast high density areas.
mch82 7y ago
Meanwhile... MapKit.js has “a free daily limit of 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls” https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/ https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  If I can't use it on the desktop, though, it's not much good to me. Edited to answer daveidol's question due to ridiculous HN rate-limiting: Apple doesn't license Apple Maps for anything other than their own mobile platforms as far as I can tell. It can't be used as a general-purpose Google Maps replacement.
  - daveidol 7y ago
    What do you mean you can't use it on the desktop?
  - Uupis 7y ago
    DuckDuckGo have switched to Apple Maps as their mapping solution.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      I only see Bing Maps, Google Maps, HERE, and OSM...?
JohnFen 7y ago
I stopped using Google Maps a few years back. I received a notification on my phone that a store I was near was having a sale. It was clear that something was leaking my location, and that was being used to push ads to me through Android itself. A little investigation revealed that the culprit was Google Maps. I uninstalled it at that point and never looked back.
- sabareesh 7y ago
  So what do you use now
  - Skunkleton 7y ago
    Not OP, but I waffle between apple maps and google maps. I leave google maps due to the privacy concerns, switch to apple maps, then get mislead a few times, then end back up on google maps. Rinse repeat.
  - Depooty 7y ago
    A sextant
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    It depends on where I am. Where I live, OSM is quite good and I use that. In areas where OSM is not so good, I just download map images and refer to those by hand.
  - Spearchucker 7y ago
    Not OP, but been using Here maps and super happy. It's been said before but I'll say it again - amazing offline support.
  - xemoka 7y ago
    Check out maps.me for iOS and Android -> Open source, uses OpenStreetMap data (you can fix it!), offline maps with regular updates.
    - BubuIIC 7y ago
joshfraser 7y ago
Google tracks your exact location every few seconds. They know which stores you visit, which restaurants you frequent, which friends you spend the most time with, how often you go to the gym, who you're sleeping with and much more. The targeted advertising and surveillance capabilities that are possible as a result of this level of data collection are absolutely terrifying.
- samirm 7y ago
  Is this assuming you have GPS on all the time or are you saying they're actively tracking everyone's locations using other means as well?
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Google does not rely solely (or even primarily) on GPS for its location tracking. It also uses methods like triangulating based on what WiFi APs your device can see.
    - samirm 7y ago
      source please?
      - magicalhippo 7y ago
        Any Android phone with semi-recent Android version. Here's the disclaimer from my phone: "Location may use sources like GPS, Wi-Fi, mobile networks, and sensors to help estimate your device's location. Google may collection location data periodically and use this data in an anonymous way to improve location accuracy and location-based services." They have had similar-worded ones for a while now. IIRC basically if the phone has GPS enabled it'll upload the list of visible APs from that location, so they can use that as an estimate for when a phone without GPS is nearby.
        JohnFen 7y ago
        Yes. They publish that online, too, as part of their privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy https://policies.google.com/privacy
dontbenebby 7y ago
I guess that explains why Google started nudging people to log in when using the iOS maps app. They made it really hard to click through and use it without an account recently. Between that and that story about giving map data to LEAs[1] I removed it from my phone entirely. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorvault-location-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorv...
ketcomp 7y ago
I only have Google Maps on my phone because I am location sharing with my family. Is there an alternative? I will gladly uninstall it then.
- julkali 7y ago
  There are always alternatives. For Maps, check out .) OsmAnd (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand) .) MAPS.ME (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme.maps.pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme...) For other alternatives to avoid getting your habits turned into money by big companies, check out https://ethical.net/ https://ethical.net/
  - aw3c2 7y ago
    I am not aware of a live location sharing function in OsmAnd.
    - BubuIIC 7y ago
      There's this: https://osmand.net/blog/osmand-telegram-released https://osmand.net/blog/osmand-telegram-released But I guess at that point you can just use Telegram for location sharing.
- kentosi 7y ago
  I've been using Google Maps for years and didn't even notice this feature. Wow. If you're on an iPhone there's Find My Friends that I use often.
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  If you already use it, Snapchat has a location sharing feature. You can also share your location on Facebook's Messenger.
- Sylos 7y ago
  I have actually never shared my location, so no idea what features one might want for that, but this one is open-source, so relatively trustworthy: https://f-droid.org/app/ca.cmetcalfe.locationshare https://f-droid.org/app/ca.cmetcalfe.locationshare
Causality1 7y ago
I'd be happy to do a one time purchase for a permanently ad-free maps experience but I doubt Google would offer that. I stayed on an old version of maps for years after Google crippled functionality by combining Navigation and Maps into a single app, I'll be happy to do it again to avoid ads.
tibyat 7y ago
if only we could have seen this coming!
blunte 7y ago
The cookie popup for this site... Which selection means No and which means Yes? Also, after submitting my "preferences", I actually got to watch a custom progress meter creep thru the %s until I gave up around 80. What a fucking disaster our modern internet is.
- coldpie 7y ago
  Install NoScript. The web gets 100x more usable.
tinus_hn 7y ago
This article is rather confused about the Google Maps service for users and for developers/webmasters. They aren’t starting to show ads in Google Maps because they have been doing that for a long time. They just started limiting the free service for developers a few months ago.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
It was a mistake to let so many basic reference sources become ad-supported. The goals of hosting ads and hosting trustworthy reference information are diametrically opposed.
ff_ 7y ago
I think this is pretty ok news: if Maps gets too annoying to use an increasing amount of people will start using alternatives, which will get better because of this, and in the end it will make it easier to live a Google-free life.
ericol 7y ago
The problem I have with Maps is not the eventual monetization (By ads?), but how much Google sucks at doing that in a non disruptive way; not to mention I'm constantly arguing with the app as what is the best path, but I digress. If they are to monetize it, they should take a hint from Waze (That, funnily enough, was bought by Google few tears ago) as to how do in map advertizing right. They also have a lot of missed oportunities: The very few times I had to search something when using the app (Be it having to rush to a gas station, or in desperately need of an ATM) Maps has failed miserably. Finaly, these apps are optimized for "First World" environments, and they also fail just as miserably in other places (Or other dimensions, as the one my country, Argentina, seems to be in)
- moftz 7y ago
  Waze has the dumbest ads. Like I'm not going to stop at a KFC or grocery store in the middle of a roadtrip. Why would I buy groceries now and how in the world would I eat fried chicken and drive?
User23 7y ago
I stopped using google maps when they tried to force me to turn history on to update my home address.
blueski 7y ago
Our Google Maps bill went from ~$100k per year to $380k per year as a result of these changes. Needless to say, we're moving over to Mapbox. What Google seems to miss is how this will affect customers' receptiveness to other Google products in the long-term. Having pulled the rug from under us once, there's no way we could consider e.g. a migration to Cloud in case the same happened again (where moving to a different provider would be far more painful).
- blantonl 7y ago
  I agree. I get that when you build your business around someone else's API that you are responsible for any changes and you should be prepared when business models change, but this would be analogous to milk prices going from $1/pint to $3.80/pint. A 280% increase in pricing after you've gained dominance in market share is a tough pill to swallow and left a really bad taste in developer's mouths. I too have moved on to Mapbox, and I suspect the OSM group was thrilled at the changes since now their mapping efforts probably increased tremendously. We're probably going to roll our own map tile servers based on OSM since Mapbox as well is pricey, but not Google Maps pricey.
  - 43920 7y ago
    Mapbox actually fired the majority of the people they were paying to work on OSM a few months ago [1]. I don't really know why, and it seems like a really odd decision (unless maybe they're developing their own non OSM-based map), but if anyone knows why I'd love to find out. [1] Compare https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Mapbox&diff=prev&oldid=1638241#Current_Data_Team_members https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Mapbox&diff... to the current list: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapbox#Mapbox_Data_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapbox#Mapbox_Data_Team
- PerfectElement 7y ago
  I'm using their search with autocomplete as a convenience feature in our app. My bill will go from $0 to $3,000 per month. I'd be happy to pay them a reasonable price, but this costs more than our whole infrastructure, so we are moving to a vendor who offers a more realistic pricing for us.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Suddenly I’m fine with Apple Maps.
npsimons 7y ago
Hey Google recruiters, in case you're wondering why I don't respond to your emails asking for interviews, you should know that things like this don't really make me want to work for you.
davidmott 7y ago
Gosh, this could be risky for Google. But it was always going to be inevitable.
techmortal 7y ago
This will have a detrimental effect on smaller businesses. Those with small teams of developers that have worked tirelessly to build their software around Google's maps APIs. This will damage long term relationships with Google and this mid size firms.
_bxg1 7y ago
One of my absolute favorite things about switching to iOS is how minimalist Apple Maps is. No more nagging "suggested businesses" (ads), no more promoted locations, no more prompts to rate or tag things. Just a map, a search field, and sometimes a subtle prompt for directions to a location I actually go to on a regular basis. I love apps that aren't constantly trying to sell me things. Unfortunately they feel almost alien in today's world.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Oh, what a surprise, not. It is pretty hard not to see this coming with Google's falling margins on search advertising. Let's review how things have gone for Google over the last 10 years. 2009 the big mortgage recession hits and Google, like everyone else, sees businesses suddenly cut back on what they are willing to spend on internet advertising. As Google's CPC metric begins to free fall after years of growing or holding steady, Google sees the core metric of the only business they have that makes money at the margins they need to exist, well its dying. In response they start by buying more traffic. This means they start paying third parties to send traffic that includes a search to Google so that Google can put ads on it. Sometimes that means paying a browser company to send search your way, sometimes it means paying a competitor with a smart phone offering to send the search traffic it generates to Google rather than an upstart. Importantly, that upstart (Bing) is reporting increases in their CPC as more advertisers start seeing them as a credible alternative to the big G. Bing is also buying traffic from EVERYONE and kind of "psuedo" buying it by offering access to their search for free through the old Yahoo! BOSS API. This works for a short period of time, but not for very long so the next thing Google does is to reduce what they paid "other sites" for using their Advertising engine. That let them put more of the money on their own bottom line. This was collectively experienced by millions of web sites that found their AdSense for content ads went from paying $1K a month to paying $100 a month. It was exacerbated by the falling CPC as well. Spammy ad sites proliferated at people who used to make good money with these Ads were desperate to hold onto that revenue stream. This fix was limited though because, well you can't save yourself out of bankruptcy. You have to grow the top line to keep ahead. So Google began a campaign of adding more and more advertising (some overt, some not so much) to all of their own properties (reported as Google Sites in their earnings). More and more search results were actually ads rather than organic results. And for things that indicated a "commercial intent", ie that the data cow on the other end was looking to spend money, well those queries result in a veritable cornucopia of paid spots, with payments to be in the 'shopping windows' or payments to be on the page, or payments to be higher in the results. White or black hat SEO be damned, there just isn't room on a search result page with commercial intent for an organic result. Meanwhile Google, now as Alphabet, was pouring cash into bet after bet, and unwilling (or unable) to find a way to nurture even modest successes began a series of project that consumed cash, never were profitable, and then were killed. And things which one might expect to be profitable like a worlds largest video service, or "Google class" cloud computation, struggled. Service after service foundered on a fundamental challenges like having a human being the paying customer could call to get answers to problems. Combining that legendary non-customer service with the propensity to yank services has put tremendous headwinds on any Google offering that asks its customer to rely on it for anything other than a peripheral capability. Year after year, as the money from ads was harder and harder to get, they have stayed ahead of that decline by killing projects, reducing the amount of money they share with the people who create the content, and trimming back on the "perqs" they used to so freely lavish on their employees. They can't get robots right, they haven't been able to get self driving cars right, they can't make money with services when their customer service is non-existent, they haven't been able to make money with videos, or books, or much of any other of the worlds information. There are really only two things that people consider "indispensable" and even those are becoming less so, their search engine and their maps. One makes (to a reasonable approximation) all of the money, and one just costs money. So yeah, they are now stuck trying to squeeze money out of maps because they can't improve the core value of advertising with them. Especially not with all the new restrictions on selling the data cows data milk to third parties. What I find most interesting is that Google has decimated Garmin's market. Garmin would make anywhere from $30 to $75 per sale on their "navigator" products, which people used for their turn by turn directions and ready maps. Google gave away their maps for free on phones that Google made little money on. That used to be okay, but now it appears that trying to get some revenue out of this product is the only way to avoid the dreaded "year of year decline" in top line revenue. That has so many ill effects from taking the stock price down to creating a competitive opening. Apple is uniquely positioned here, they have maps and they have devices to show them. Sort of the 21st century version of Garmin where their maps are just a feature of a bigger device. If Apple invested in a privacy first search engine with organic results and limited their advertising aspirations to a modest net income for the group I think they would seriously wound Google. Interesting times ahead.
pkaye 7y ago
Maybe they are trying to move away from advertising supported "freeware" model. Charge directly for things at point of use.
Malic 7y ago
> “...You don’t expect them to pull the carpet from beneath you...” Ah, yes, yes I do. I work in an agency doing client website development and Google's recent price change for map services caused us to look elsewhere - abruptly. We're all about MapBox now - Google Maps has become too expensive.
Zigurd 7y ago
Google already extracts a lot of hard, quantifiable value from Maps, partly in the form of valuable data, but also including ads and other promotions. This article is about developer pricing for the Maps API. The article doesn't really delve into why Google is squeezing more money out of small app developers. The only plausible thing I can think of is to prevent losing ad revenue to apps that don't include promotions, but that seems like a stretch.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Does this apply to users who are logged in with a G Suite account? I pay Google $12/month for services and although I am happy enough with their combined product right now, I have an easy migration path away from G Suite if that changes.
bassman9000 7y ago
More?
growlist 7y ago
A good reason to look at alternatives.
pojntfx 7y ago
May OpenStreetMap prevail!
- jfoster 7y ago
  OSM has impressive geographical data now, but in the meantime Google Maps has gone well beyond "we can help you find that street address." Their places data, reviews, photos, navigation, and street view are all adding a massive amount of value. They have shifted the goal posts.
  - sapphire_tomb 7y ago
    I find most of the things you list add no value to me. Photos and reviews are of no interest to me in a navigation aid. In my home town at least (London), I frequently find their places data wrong with marked locations being several streets away from where they actually are. Finally, Street view, which previously I've found super useful, is being ruined in London, as the contractors who are providing the latest updates are phoning it in by submitting reams of data with the pictures taken at night, so you can't see anything in them (flash cameras being a super bad idea for mounting to a car). Edit: I submitted two reports of bad StreetMap pictures a couple of months ago on the issue of the pictures being taken at night. In both cases the bot which handles those reports rejected my categorising them as "of poor quality", and I heard no more about it. But prompted by writing this post, I've just been back to the two locations I reported (on opposite sides of central London, one in Hackney, one in Mayfair), and now find that the StreetMap data is once more pictures taken in daylight. So thanks Google - thanks for telling me I was full of shit, but actually fixing the problem.
  - cf 7y ago
    I think there is a good argument to be made for crowdsourcing some of those as well.
    - jfoster 7y ago
      Absolutely. There could be some amazing projects and businesses built on top of this data if it were in OSM.
dininski 7y ago
I can't stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. I was stunned when a few days ago I was looking up something on Google Maps and started seeing advertised locations/suggestions. Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning. Don't know what really is going on at Google at the higher levels, but from an outsider's perspective is seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price? But to invest in what? Maybe to compete with Apple and Amazon? I can't be the only one who thinks it all seems odd - going from "don't be evil" to shutting down a massive number of projects with a lot of potential (e.g. Inbox, Fiber)... Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but looking at the bigger picture, it looks like Google's strategy is going through some changes and I'm not convinced this would play out well for them in the end.
- technotony 7y ago
  Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - sametmax 7y ago
    They already make money with it by the data it collect and the users it retains.
  - Svip 7y ago
    OP is not saying they cannot monetise their product as they see fit (it's their product). No one is saying that. But when you have been offering something for free for years, people get used to that being the way of things, users are not going to respond well to the increase in advertisement. Had Google done this from the beginning, people would have been more accepting of it. Generally speaking, if you change a service for the worse, people are generally going to view it less favourably than had it started out how it will now become.
ashishmalik 7y ago
Think about those who wish to start new business? Why? Because of money! Google is doing the same thing, growing Growing, utilizing every small space that Google occupies, earning money from it. Why Not!
- goda90 7y ago
  I'd say the problem arises in market share. Google almost has a monopoly on digital map data. With any monopoly, there should be limitations on their ability to profit, as there can be lots of pricing abuse due to lack of competition.
  - ucaetano 7y ago
    > Google almost has a monopoly on digital map data Where did you get that from? There are plenty of other map data providers. Just look at this thread.
- ebg13 7y ago
  Some businesses make the world better. Some businesses make the world worse. Let's not pretend that the two are the same.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Are you trying to imply that Google and/or Google Maps have made the world worse?
    - ebg13 7y ago
      Are you trying to imply that adtech has made the world better? Are you trying to erase the difference between mapmaking and tracked advertising? My eyes are about to fall out the back of my head, I'm rolling them so hard. Google's core business is tracking you and shoveling ads at you. Every time they pollute one of their side hobbies with their core business, it makes that side hobby worse and worse for the world. Search, mail, news, I can go on.
kgwxd 7y ago
A few months ago, I noticed navigaton saying thing like "take the next right, after Key Bank". Clearly an ad, as there is nothing ambiguous about the turn. Haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else, am I the only one?
- m463 7y ago
  I have seen this behavior with my garmin (offline) gps. I don't know if this is a marketing tie-in or a sincere attempt to use landmarks as a legitimate navigation technique.
- puzzle 7y ago
  It's not an ad¹. A lot of humans navigate that way, for many reasons. Google has done research on that through the years. Landmarks might be easier to spot and are an useful confirmation that you got the turn right. Do you never ask yourself if you just made a mistake? Perhaps you got distracted by a passenger, another vehicle or a pedestrian. The street name you are turning onto might be not as visible because the sign is small, covered by a large truck or not well lit at night. Key Bank is probably harder to miss. Or there might be no street name at all, which is often the case in places like India, where Google has been testing this for many years. In that case you have no choice but to use landmarks. ¹Or, at least, one that you can purchase now. It might happen in the future, but of course they'd have to be careful when rolling this out. Imagine if they used a business that is not very distinguishable and thus not a real landmark. That would diminish Maps' utility.
  - flukus 7y ago
    I remember reading a pop-sci article many years ago about a study that found women were better at navigating by landmark and men were better at more abstract directions like maps and compass directions, with gay men being good at both. So while this is annoying for me it could be great for the other 50% of the population, would be nice if it was optional.
    - puzzle 7y ago
      I found in my own amateur UX studies that there are drivers who hear "in a quarter mile, turn right" and don't know how far that is, even after having heard that prompt thousands of times. You'd think that after a while they'd build a mental model of the distance. Instead, they seem to just tune out the "in a quarter mile". This is one of the classes of users for which products need to be designed. (I have similar problems with people's heights.) Also, as a passenger it's fairly easy to say "turn in five blocks" and track how many blocks are left, maybe even while holding a conversation. For drivers, that seems more difficult, probably due to cognitive overload, unless it's just a couple of blocks. And I've noticed that some drivers react to that kind of direction by scanning the view and quickly translating the number of blocks to a landmark.

330 points by tornadron 7y ago

Evil webdesign patterns on this site: After I opted out of all but "required" cookies, the popup kept me waiting for several minutes with "processing preferences", inviting users to cancel the opt-out. Shenanigans like this one has become my main use case for read-it-later-apps like wallabag/pocket these days.

cageface 7y ago

Google is really leaving the door open here for Apple to step in and offer a services bundle with a monthly fee that doesn’t involve stuffing advertising into every nook and cranny of the user experience. I generally prefer Google’s services to Apple’s but there might be a tipping point soon where I’m willing to sacrifice some features in exchange for a generally less creepy product.

jfoster 7y ago
People have been speculating that for yonks, though. If it's such a huge opportunity for Apple and so many people want it, where is it?
- cageface 7y ago
  Apple has been very slow to expand their service offerings beyond Apple devices. Insane hardware revenues have made them complacent up until now. Their recent moves to start offering their video content on non-Apple platforms indicates that they finally understand that cross platform services are the key to their future growth IMO.
js2 7y ago
Apple maps still has a ways to go. I say this as someone who tries to use it frequently because I much prefer its UI, especially with Carplay. But it still has much worse traffic data, still sometimes sends me on weird routes through neighborhoods that don't save any time nor distance, and lately has a fun glitch where it sometimes instructs me turn left instead of right or vice/versa because it apparently thinks my vehicle is facing 180° from what it actually is. The turn glitch has now happened to me several times across two different devices. I thought I imagined it the first time.
- cageface 7y ago
  Apple maps is inferior to Google in almost every respect in Asia. I open it now and again just to see if it’s improved and always switch back immediately to Gmaps. With hardware sales slowing Apple has a lot more incentive to improve it than they did when the iPhone gravy train seemed unstoppable though.
  - maracuja-juice 7y ago
    In China I experienced that it's exactly the other way around.
    - ucaetano 7y ago
      Which isn't surprising as Google is blocked in China. Also, by being blocked, they can't use the Chinese government's service to "correct" the errors that China introduces in the maps: https://geoawesomeness.com/china-messing-gps-coordinates/ https://geoawesomeness.com/china-messing-gps-coordinates/
    - elcomet 7y ago
      Isn't Google maps blocked in China?
      - maracuja-juice 7y ago
        It is perfectly accessible, just a not a very good map over there. Once we wanted to go to a bar but it turned out that they moved a few years ago to a completely different part of Shanghai.
  - wtmt 7y ago
    Yes, Apple Maps is inferior in Asia (speaking from India here). But it seems to be improving. I noticed that it uses many sources for maps, including TomTom. [1] I’d read maybe a year or two ago that Apple was working on improving maps in other countries, but that effort was projected to be done or getting done by 2020 or 2021. Still a long way to go, but Apple isn’t ignoring it, like it used to seem a few years ago. [1]: https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution-136.html https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution-136.html
Tsubasachan 7y ago
You are assuming people would pay for an ad free GMAPS. Google tried this with YouTube Red. It doesn't work. Apple users may be willing to pay for apps, Android users don't swing that way.
- cageface 7y ago
  Ad free won’t be enough. I predict there will be some kind of monthly bundle that includes a lot of different services. News, music, video and premium features on top of things like maps. Getting people to pay small amounts for a bunch of individual services is harder than charging them one lump sum per month for everything.
  - throw_away 7y ago
    Heh, following the apple branding, they could call it google+
  - snaky 7y ago
    We can imagine something like 'an iPhone experience' pack for Android, and it's technically feasible - and may attract some attention from the customers. But the question is - if you could get 'a pretty much iPhone' in your $200 Android for a couple of bucks a month, why would you ever buy an actual iPhone for $1000?
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      iPhones don't appeal to me regardless of price point. I would guess that people for whom an iPhone-like experience is appealing would buy an iPhone. You can pick up older used models in the $200 price range right now.
    - pdimitar 7y ago
      - Better battery life (if you disable background app refresh). - Unified and consistent UI (subjective but I like it). - No ads or privacy threats in general unless you try really hard to make them work on your iDevice. - Guaranteed OS updates for 5+ years. I'm probably forgetting some more. An "iPhone experience" on an Android won't be even close to an iPhone. It could be used as a tease to prompt people to switch to an iPhone, though.
gowld 7y ago
Apple gets the wealthy high margin market, Google gets the mass market. People buy iPhones to keep up with fashion, but most of them won't pay for maps because they can't show that off to their acquaintances.
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  You don't need to buy a new phone. I have an older model iPhone. It still gets security updates. I had to pay to replace the battery after a few years, but otherwise it works fine. In fact, arguably better, since it has a headphone port ;)
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  >People buy iPhones to keep up with fashion, but most of them won't pay for maps because they can't show that off to their acquaintances. juvenile take, didnt realize people still went with the apple logo meme argument
  - samirm 7y ago
    Just because it's a meme, doesn't mean it isn't at least somewhat true.
    - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
      There are high-end trend-driven Apple customers who update their hardware constantly, but there are also people who have a general preference for Apple products and update occasionally. I'm still on a 2013 MacBook Pro and an iPhone 6. Personally, hardware-wise I just like things that are a) made out of aluminum and b) have hi-dpi screens, and I appreciate a non-finicky BSD-derived OS.
- pault 7y ago
  Is that why? I thought I was buying iphones for the high quality, end-to-end user experience design, ecosystem integration, strict standards for third party apps, long-lasting hardware, and high resale value. Now I feel so silly.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
What about HERE Maps? I don't, ahem, hear much about them anymore since they were bought by an auto consortium.
UncleMeat 7y ago
"Pay for no ads" has failed with almost every attempt. Even Google has made products to do this that haven't succeeded.
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  It sure works well with YouTube.
  - hunter23 7y ago
    Do you have evidence that Youtube Premium is giving a good ROI to Google? I always thought of it as one of their experiments that they will kill off in the not so distant future.
    - nopzor 7y ago
      I very much agree. I think they’ll kill yt premium. Even if google charges you what an average user is “worth” to them it’s a huge net negative to their business model. The users who will pay are worth a hell of a lot more to advertisers than the “average user”.
      - CamperBob2 7y ago
        So charge $50/month. Frankly, I'd probably pay it. YouTube without the ads is actually pretty nice. Unfortunately I can't argue with you and the other posters, in that it doesn't matter what they charge. If it's not seen as a positive career move to work on a given product at Google, its future is always going to be iffy. And Google is an advertising company at the end of the day, not a video streaming company. And it's certainly true that the more someone is willing to pay to avoid ads, the more valuable to advertisers that person's attention is going to be.
    - mark_l_watson 7y ago
      My wife and I pay $15/month for a family plan Play Music + ad free YouTube. How can Google not be making money on this, assuming a reasonable number of customers. I would think that Google execs are looking at Apple’s new push for integrated services and that they will compete hard. I am a happy customer of both Apple and Google but if Apple continues to come through with quality integrated services, I can see myself just living in Apple’s ‘walled garden’ in the future if they also keep supporting privacy.
mncharity 7y ago
> Google is really leaving the door open here for Apple [...] tipping point It's 202X, and you are offered AR glasses from Apple, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Disney, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. With almost-always-on mics, 180-degree cameras, gaze tracking, centimeter-resolution indoor position, and hybrid local/cloud infrastructure. Who do you trust? What is the net present value of that trust?
- moftz 7y ago
  As of now, probably Apple if theirs costs a fortune compared to everyone else's glasses. At least then I know that they aren't subsidizing the cost of the glasses by selling off my information.

bscphil 7y ago

I think this is taken word-for-word from this Bloomberg piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/google-flips-the-switch-on-its-next-big-money-maker-maps https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/google-fl...

robjan 7y ago
It's a syndicated article

nullc 7y ago

Maps has been awful and getting worse for a long time. If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names. Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.

devoply 7y ago
You already have other mapping options like Garmin. And you don't have to pay much for them either. They are 100-300 bucks. They work pretty well... and could really use a boost in what seemed like a dying market.
- canada_dry 7y ago
  > mapping options like Garmin Except Garmin - having been decimated by Google and Apple maps - is getting pretty bad too. I've been using them for >15 years with multiple devices and every update lately seems to make their routing worse AND for some unfathomable reason makes the GPS reception less reliable (if I were a sceptic I'd suggest they are trying to force you to go for a new model via slowly crippling the device with every update).
puzzle 7y ago
Do you mean rerouting? Google Maps is tuned differently than Waze, which caters to drivers looking to shave off minutes or even seconds. It tries to keep directions simple and easier to follow (e.g. not making a large number of turns), even if that means a slightly slower route. That was a deliberate product decision, at least until a few years ago. What kind of incomprehensible directions and business names are you referring to?
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  Waze feels more like the R&D app for maps. It doesn't shave seconds or minutes off my time, but what it does do is constant A/B testing to see if another route could be faster. I know the area fairly well and I routinely ignore the route Waze wants to send me unless there is a clearly identified problem on the normal route, and when it re-routes to the path I chose, it's a minute or two shorter. Why did it try to send me down the slower route in the first place? Waze pulls this crap routinely.

brianpgordon 7y ago

> Before the changes, Owczarek’s startup got 750,000 free map views a month and then was charged 50 cents for every 1,000 views on top of that. Then Google started charging after 30,000 views and the cost was $7 per 1,000 views. His costs jumped from nothing to $5,000 a month. Ouch. How could that possibly be worth it? Are they just trying to squeeze money out of businesses that are already locked into the Maps API? It seems hard to believe that your average startup that needs a map widget (like, for food or pharmacy delivery) would go with Maps instead of OpenStreetMap at that price level.

tssva 7y ago
Although I appreciate the effort that has gone into and continues to go into OpenStreetMap the reality is that their data set is still pretty poor in comparison to Google Maps. I would not want to create a delivery business that depended upon it for success. Just last month I found myself in need of a source of map data for a personal use application and thought of OpenStreetMap which led me to looking up my home address. Unfortunately I couldn't find my address by searching, so I zoomed in on my neighborhood. About 50% of the street names in my neighborhood were incorrect, so I spent time correcting them. The last time I had visited OpenStreetMap was about 4 years prior. On that visit about 1/3rd of the streets in my then neighborhood didn't appear.
- Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
  Guessing you're American? OSM is very often better than Google in Europe and other parts of the world. It's spottier in the US.
  - BubuIIC 7y ago
    Agreed on that. Although in Canada the OSM data seemed really, really good when it came to national parks and trails. Not so much inside Vancouver. (Still enough for navigation by car and on foot, but finding addresses was a major PITA.)
- JohnFen 7y ago

decebalus1 7y ago

Great. I stopped using Google Maps the moment I bought my IPhone. Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority when I say I get a better experience with Apple Maps. Apple Maps with carplay for the past year have been miles ahead of Google maps with Android Auto on all accounts for my trips. I was skeptical at first but I was never rerouted on weird residential neighborhoods / state highways or switch 3 freeways to shave off a minute of my trip, very accurate estimating traffic and transit time, etc... Keep in mind, I was also a huge fan of the Zune.

gumby 7y ago
Apple’s coverage is spotty; quite good in many major cities and certain less urban environments, but there are vast areas where its coverage is pretty sketchy. Like you I mostly use it in areas of good coverage and think it’s great. But some places I’m SOL and have to switch to google as a fallback.
- decebalus1 7y ago
  That may be the case. My trips have mostly been around the west coast high density areas.

mch82 7y ago

Meanwhile... MapKit.js has “a free daily limit of 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls” https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/ https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/

CamperBob2 7y ago
If I can't use it on the desktop, though, it's not much good to me. Edited to answer daveidol's question due to ridiculous HN rate-limiting: Apple doesn't license Apple Maps for anything other than their own mobile platforms as far as I can tell. It can't be used as a general-purpose Google Maps replacement.
- daveidol 7y ago
  What do you mean you can't use it on the desktop?
- Uupis 7y ago
  DuckDuckGo have switched to Apple Maps as their mapping solution.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    I only see Bing Maps, Google Maps, HERE, and OSM...?

JohnFen 7y ago

I stopped using Google Maps a few years back. I received a notification on my phone that a store I was near was having a sale. It was clear that something was leaking my location, and that was being used to push ads to me through Android itself. A little investigation revealed that the culprit was Google Maps. I uninstalled it at that point and never looked back.

sabareesh 7y ago
So what do you use now
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  Not OP, but I waffle between apple maps and google maps. I leave google maps due to the privacy concerns, switch to apple maps, then get mislead a few times, then end back up on google maps. Rinse repeat.
- Depooty 7y ago
  A sextant
- JohnFen 7y ago
  It depends on where I am. Where I live, OSM is quite good and I use that. In areas where OSM is not so good, I just download map images and refer to those by hand.
- Spearchucker 7y ago
  Not OP, but been using Here maps and super happy. It's been said before but I'll say it again - amazing offline support.
- xemoka 7y ago
  Check out maps.me for iOS and Android -> Open source, uses OpenStreetMap data (you can fix it!), offline maps with regular updates.
  - BubuIIC 7y ago

joshfraser 7y ago

Google tracks your exact location every few seconds. They know which stores you visit, which restaurants you frequent, which friends you spend the most time with, how often you go to the gym, who you're sleeping with and much more. The targeted advertising and surveillance capabilities that are possible as a result of this level of data collection are absolutely terrifying.

samirm 7y ago
Is this assuming you have GPS on all the time or are you saying they're actively tracking everyone's locations using other means as well?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Google does not rely solely (or even primarily) on GPS for its location tracking. It also uses methods like triangulating based on what WiFi APs your device can see.
  - samirm 7y ago
    source please?
    - magicalhippo 7y ago
      Any Android phone with semi-recent Android version. Here's the disclaimer from my phone: "Location may use sources like GPS, Wi-Fi, mobile networks, and sensors to help estimate your device's location. Google may collection location data periodically and use this data in an anonymous way to improve location accuracy and location-based services." They have had similar-worded ones for a while now. IIRC basically if the phone has GPS enabled it'll upload the list of visible APs from that location, so they can use that as an estimate for when a phone without GPS is nearby.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        Yes. They publish that online, too, as part of their privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy https://policies.google.com/privacy

dontbenebby 7y ago

I guess that explains why Google started nudging people to log in when using the iOS maps app. They made it really hard to click through and use it without an account recently. Between that and that story about giving map data to LEAs[1] I removed it from my phone entirely. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorvault-location-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorv...

ketcomp 7y ago

I only have Google Maps on my phone because I am location sharing with my family. Is there an alternative? I will gladly uninstall it then.

julkali 7y ago
There are always alternatives. For Maps, check out .) OsmAnd (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand) .) MAPS.ME (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme.maps.pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme...) For other alternatives to avoid getting your habits turned into money by big companies, check out https://ethical.net/ https://ethical.net/
- aw3c2 7y ago
  I am not aware of a live location sharing function in OsmAnd.
  - BubuIIC 7y ago
    There's this: https://osmand.net/blog/osmand-telegram-released https://osmand.net/blog/osmand-telegram-released But I guess at that point you can just use Telegram for location sharing.
kentosi 7y ago
I've been using Google Maps for years and didn't even notice this feature. Wow. If you're on an iPhone there's Find My Friends that I use often.
Raphmedia 7y ago
If you already use it, Snapchat has a location sharing feature. You can also share your location on Facebook's Messenger.
Sylos 7y ago
I have actually never shared my location, so no idea what features one might want for that, but this one is open-source, so relatively trustworthy: https://f-droid.org/app/ca.cmetcalfe.locationshare https://f-droid.org/app/ca.cmetcalfe.locationshare

Causality1 7y ago

I'd be happy to do a one time purchase for a permanently ad-free maps experience but I doubt Google would offer that. I stayed on an old version of maps for years after Google crippled functionality by combining Navigation and Maps into a single app, I'll be happy to do it again to avoid ads.

tibyat 7y ago

if only we could have seen this coming!

blunte 7y ago

The cookie popup for this site... Which selection means No and which means Yes? Also, after submitting my "preferences", I actually got to watch a custom progress meter creep thru the %s until I gave up around 80. What a fucking disaster our modern internet is.

coldpie 7y ago
Install NoScript. The web gets 100x more usable.

tinus_hn 7y ago

This article is rather confused about the Google Maps service for users and for developers/webmasters. They aren’t starting to show ads in Google Maps because they have been doing that for a long time. They just started limiting the free service for developers a few months ago.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

It was a mistake to let so many basic reference sources become ad-supported. The goals of hosting ads and hosting trustworthy reference information are diametrically opposed.

ff_ 7y ago

I think this is pretty ok news: if Maps gets too annoying to use an increasing amount of people will start using alternatives, which will get better because of this, and in the end it will make it easier to live a Google-free life.

ericol 7y ago

The problem I have with Maps is not the eventual monetization (By ads?), but how much Google sucks at doing that in a non disruptive way; not to mention I'm constantly arguing with the app as what is the best path, but I digress. If they are to monetize it, they should take a hint from Waze (That, funnily enough, was bought by Google few tears ago) as to how do in map advertizing right. They also have a lot of missed oportunities: The very few times I had to search something when using the app (Be it having to rush to a gas station, or in desperately need of an ATM) Maps has failed miserably. Finaly, these apps are optimized for "First World" environments, and they also fail just as miserably in other places (Or other dimensions, as the one my country, Argentina, seems to be in)

moftz 7y ago
Waze has the dumbest ads. Like I'm not going to stop at a KFC or grocery store in the middle of a roadtrip. Why would I buy groceries now and how in the world would I eat fried chicken and drive?

User23 7y ago

I stopped using google maps when they tried to force me to turn history on to update my home address.

blueski 7y ago

Our Google Maps bill went from ~$100k per year to $380k per year as a result of these changes. Needless to say, we're moving over to Mapbox. What Google seems to miss is how this will affect customers' receptiveness to other Google products in the long-term. Having pulled the rug from under us once, there's no way we could consider e.g. a migration to Cloud in case the same happened again (where moving to a different provider would be far more painful).

blantonl 7y ago
I agree. I get that when you build your business around someone else's API that you are responsible for any changes and you should be prepared when business models change, but this would be analogous to milk prices going from $1/pint to $3.80/pint. A 280% increase in pricing after you've gained dominance in market share is a tough pill to swallow and left a really bad taste in developer's mouths. I too have moved on to Mapbox, and I suspect the OSM group was thrilled at the changes since now their mapping efforts probably increased tremendously. We're probably going to roll our own map tile servers based on OSM since Mapbox as well is pricey, but not Google Maps pricey.
- 43920 7y ago
  Mapbox actually fired the majority of the people they were paying to work on OSM a few months ago [1]. I don't really know why, and it seems like a really odd decision (unless maybe they're developing their own non OSM-based map), but if anyone knows why I'd love to find out. [1] Compare https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Mapbox&diff=prev&oldid=1638241#Current_Data_Team_members https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Mapbox&diff... to the current list: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapbox#Mapbox_Data_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapbox#Mapbox_Data_Team
PerfectElement 7y ago
I'm using their search with autocomplete as a convenience feature in our app. My bill will go from $0 to $3,000 per month. I'd be happy to pay them a reasonable price, but this costs more than our whole infrastructure, so we are moving to a vendor who offers a more realistic pricing for us.

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago

Suddenly I’m fine with Apple Maps.

npsimons 7y ago

Hey Google recruiters, in case you're wondering why I don't respond to your emails asking for interviews, you should know that things like this don't really make me want to work for you.

davidmott 7y ago

Gosh, this could be risky for Google. But it was always going to be inevitable.

techmortal 7y ago

This will have a detrimental effect on smaller businesses. Those with small teams of developers that have worked tirelessly to build their software around Google's maps APIs. This will damage long term relationships with Google and this mid size firms.

_bxg1 7y ago

One of my absolute favorite things about switching to iOS is how minimalist Apple Maps is. No more nagging "suggested businesses" (ads), no more promoted locations, no more prompts to rate or tag things. Just a map, a search field, and sometimes a subtle prompt for directions to a location I actually go to on a regular basis. I love apps that aren't constantly trying to sell me things. Unfortunately they feel almost alien in today's world.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

Oh, what a surprise, not. It is pretty hard not to see this coming with Google's falling margins on search advertising. Let's review how things have gone for Google over the last 10 years. 2009 the big mortgage recession hits and Google, like everyone else, sees businesses suddenly cut back on what they are willing to spend on internet advertising. As Google's CPC metric begins to free fall after years of growing or holding steady, Google sees the core metric of the only business they have that makes money at the margins they need to exist, well its dying. In response they start by buying more traffic. This means they start paying third parties to send traffic that includes a search to Google so that Google can put ads on it. Sometimes that means paying a browser company to send search your way, sometimes it means paying a competitor with a smart phone offering to send the search traffic it generates to Google rather than an upstart. Importantly, that upstart (Bing) is reporting increases in their CPC as more advertisers start seeing them as a credible alternative to the big G. Bing is also buying traffic from EVERYONE and kind of "psuedo" buying it by offering access to their search for free through the old Yahoo! BOSS API. This works for a short period of time, but not for very long so the next thing Google does is to reduce what they paid "other sites" for using their Advertising engine. That let them put more of the money on their own bottom line. This was collectively experienced by millions of web sites that found their AdSense for content ads went from paying $1K a month to paying $100 a month. It was exacerbated by the falling CPC as well. Spammy ad sites proliferated at people who used to make good money with these Ads were desperate to hold onto that revenue stream. This fix was limited though because, well you can't save yourself out of bankruptcy. You have to grow the top line to keep ahead. So Google began a campaign of adding more and more advertising (some overt, some not so much) to all of their own properties (reported as Google Sites in their earnings). More and more search results were actually ads rather than organic results. And for things that indicated a "commercial intent", ie that the data cow on the other end was looking to spend money, well those queries result in a veritable cornucopia of paid spots, with payments to be in the 'shopping windows' or payments to be on the page, or payments to be higher in the results. White or black hat SEO be damned, there just isn't room on a search result page with commercial intent for an organic result. Meanwhile Google, now as Alphabet, was pouring cash into bet after bet, and unwilling (or unable) to find a way to nurture even modest successes began a series of project that consumed cash, never were profitable, and then were killed. And things which one might expect to be profitable like a worlds largest video service, or "Google class" cloud computation, struggled. Service after service foundered on a fundamental challenges like having a human being the paying customer could call to get answers to problems. Combining that legendary non-customer service with the propensity to yank services has put tremendous headwinds on any Google offering that asks its customer to rely on it for anything other than a peripheral capability. Year after year, as the money from ads was harder and harder to get, they have stayed ahead of that decline by killing projects, reducing the amount of money they share with the people who create the content, and trimming back on the "perqs" they used to so freely lavish on their employees. They can't get robots right, they haven't been able to get self driving cars right, they can't make money with services when their customer service is non-existent, they haven't been able to make money with videos, or books, or much of any other of the worlds information. There are really only two things that people consider "indispensable" and even those are becoming less so, their search engine and their maps. One makes (to a reasonable approximation) all of the money, and one just costs money. So yeah, they are now stuck trying to squeeze money out of maps because they can't improve the core value of advertising with them. Especially not with all the new restrictions on selling the data cows data milk to third parties. What I find most interesting is that Google has decimated Garmin's market. Garmin would make anywhere from $30 to $75 per sale on their "navigator" products, which people used for their turn by turn directions and ready maps. Google gave away their maps for free on phones that Google made little money on. That used to be okay, but now it appears that trying to get some revenue out of this product is the only way to avoid the dreaded "year of year decline" in top line revenue. That has so many ill effects from taking the stock price down to creating a competitive opening. Apple is uniquely positioned here, they have maps and they have devices to show them. Sort of the 21st century version of Garmin where their maps are just a feature of a bigger device. If Apple invested in a privacy first search engine with organic results and limited their advertising aspirations to a modest net income for the group I think they would seriously wound Google. Interesting times ahead.

pkaye 7y ago

Maybe they are trying to move away from advertising supported "freeware" model. Charge directly for things at point of use.

Malic 7y ago

> “...You don’t expect them to pull the carpet from beneath you...” Ah, yes, yes I do. I work in an agency doing client website development and Google's recent price change for map services caused us to look elsewhere - abruptly. We're all about MapBox now - Google Maps has become too expensive.

Zigurd 7y ago

Google already extracts a lot of hard, quantifiable value from Maps, partly in the form of valuable data, but also including ads and other promotions. This article is about developer pricing for the Maps API. The article doesn't really delve into why Google is squeezing more money out of small app developers. The only plausible thing I can think of is to prevent losing ad revenue to apps that don't include promotions, but that seems like a stretch.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Does this apply to users who are logged in with a G Suite account? I pay Google $12/month for services and although I am happy enough with their combined product right now, I have an easy migration path away from G Suite if that changes.

bassman9000 7y ago

More?

growlist 7y ago

A good reason to look at alternatives.

pojntfx 7y ago

May OpenStreetMap prevail!

jfoster 7y ago
OSM has impressive geographical data now, but in the meantime Google Maps has gone well beyond "we can help you find that street address." Their places data, reviews, photos, navigation, and street view are all adding a massive amount of value. They have shifted the goal posts.
- sapphire_tomb 7y ago
  I find most of the things you list add no value to me. Photos and reviews are of no interest to me in a navigation aid. In my home town at least (London), I frequently find their places data wrong with marked locations being several streets away from where they actually are. Finally, Street view, which previously I've found super useful, is being ruined in London, as the contractors who are providing the latest updates are phoning it in by submitting reams of data with the pictures taken at night, so you can't see anything in them (flash cameras being a super bad idea for mounting to a car). Edit: I submitted two reports of bad StreetMap pictures a couple of months ago on the issue of the pictures being taken at night. In both cases the bot which handles those reports rejected my categorising them as "of poor quality", and I heard no more about it. But prompted by writing this post, I've just been back to the two locations I reported (on opposite sides of central London, one in Hackney, one in Mayfair), and now find that the StreetMap data is once more pictures taken in daylight. So thanks Google - thanks for telling me I was full of shit, but actually fixing the problem.
- cf 7y ago
  I think there is a good argument to be made for crowdsourcing some of those as well.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Absolutely. There could be some amazing projects and businesses built on top of this data if it were in OSM.

dininski 7y ago

I can't stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. I was stunned when a few days ago I was looking up something on Google Maps and started seeing advertised locations/suggestions. Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning. Don't know what really is going on at Google at the higher levels, but from an outsider's perspective is seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price? But to invest in what? Maybe to compete with Apple and Amazon? I can't be the only one who thinks it all seems odd - going from "don't be evil" to shutting down a massive number of projects with a lot of potential (e.g. Inbox, Fiber)... Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but looking at the bigger picture, it looks like Google's strategy is going through some changes and I'm not convinced this would play out well for them in the end.

technotony 7y ago
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sametmax 7y ago
  They already make money with it by the data it collect and the users it retains.
- Svip 7y ago
  OP is not saying they cannot monetise their product as they see fit (it's their product). No one is saying that. But when you have been offering something for free for years, people get used to that being the way of things, users are not going to respond well to the increase in advertisement. Had Google done this from the beginning, people would have been more accepting of it. Generally speaking, if you change a service for the worse, people are generally going to view it less favourably than had it started out how it will now become.

ashishmalik 7y ago

Think about those who wish to start new business? Why? Because of money! Google is doing the same thing, growing Growing, utilizing every small space that Google occupies, earning money from it. Why Not!

goda90 7y ago
I'd say the problem arises in market share. Google almost has a monopoly on digital map data. With any monopoly, there should be limitations on their ability to profit, as there can be lots of pricing abuse due to lack of competition.
- ucaetano 7y ago
  > Google almost has a monopoly on digital map data Where did you get that from? There are plenty of other map data providers. Just look at this thread.
ebg13 7y ago
Some businesses make the world better. Some businesses make the world worse. Let's not pretend that the two are the same.
- jfoster 7y ago
  Are you trying to imply that Google and/or Google Maps have made the world worse?
  - ebg13 7y ago
    Are you trying to imply that adtech has made the world better? Are you trying to erase the difference between mapmaking and tracked advertising? My eyes are about to fall out the back of my head, I'm rolling them so hard. Google's core business is tracking you and shoveling ads at you. Every time they pollute one of their side hobbies with their core business, it makes that side hobby worse and worse for the world. Search, mail, news, I can go on.

kgwxd 7y ago

A few months ago, I noticed navigaton saying thing like "take the next right, after Key Bank". Clearly an ad, as there is nothing ambiguous about the turn. Haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else, am I the only one?

m463 7y ago
I have seen this behavior with my garmin (offline) gps. I don't know if this is a marketing tie-in or a sincere attempt to use landmarks as a legitimate navigation technique.
puzzle 7y ago
It's not an ad¹. A lot of humans navigate that way, for many reasons. Google has done research on that through the years. Landmarks might be easier to spot and are an useful confirmation that you got the turn right. Do you never ask yourself if you just made a mistake? Perhaps you got distracted by a passenger, another vehicle or a pedestrian. The street name you are turning onto might be not as visible because the sign is small, covered by a large truck or not well lit at night. Key Bank is probably harder to miss. Or there might be no street name at all, which is often the case in places like India, where Google has been testing this for many years. In that case you have no choice but to use landmarks. ¹Or, at least, one that you can purchase now. It might happen in the future, but of course they'd have to be careful when rolling this out. Imagine if they used a business that is not very distinguishable and thus not a real landmark. That would diminish Maps' utility.
- flukus 7y ago
  I remember reading a pop-sci article many years ago about a study that found women were better at navigating by landmark and men were better at more abstract directions like maps and compass directions, with gay men being good at both. So while this is annoying for me it could be great for the other 50% of the population, would be nice if it was optional.
  - puzzle 7y ago
    I found in my own amateur UX studies that there are drivers who hear "in a quarter mile, turn right" and don't know how far that is, even after having heard that prompt thousands of times. You'd think that after a while they'd build a mental model of the distance. Instead, they seem to just tune out the "in a quarter mile". This is one of the classes of users for which products need to be designed. (I have similar problems with people's heights.) Also, as a passenger it's fairly easy to say "turn in five blocks" and track how many blocks are left, maybe even while holding a conversation. For drivers, that seems more difficult, probably due to cognitive overload, unless it's just a couple of blocks. And I've noticed that some drivers react to that kind of direction by scanning the view and quickly translating the number of blocks to a landmark.