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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

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.
  - stunt 7y ago
    I think that period was part of their investment and also helped them to improve the product. And like any other investment, they need to make money as well. I can imagine Maps is an expensive product to operate. I also hate ads and I hope they find a different way to make it reasonably profitable.
    - gowld 7y ago
      There is a fine line between "investment to build a product" and "dumping below cost to win consumers over via low prices, then raising prices"
      - newsoul2019 7y ago
        Just charge me already, Google! Present me with a screen that says "Would you like Google Maps ad-free for XX.99 per year?" Sure, of course. GIVE ME THE OPTION!!
    - reciprocity 7y ago
      Google already makes money hand over fist. I am not sure if what you posit holds water.
  - Tsubasachan 7y ago
    There aren't a lot of good alternatives to Maps though. I do find that the service is becoming more and more unusable with all the shitty product placements.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      Depends what you use it for. For driving directions, there are plenty of alternatives. An excellent one is a standalone GPS device like a Garmin nüvi or a TomTom, which works entirely offline (except traffic reports, which are received over FM radio or Bluetooth). The only time I actually use Google Maps is when I'm at my PC, and Bing maps works just as well.
- taurath 7y ago
  What changed over the last 10 years, and why wasn’t it monetized earlier? Maybe because then they wanted to make a useful service and get some data for their search ads, and now they just want more money.
  - bhhaskin 7y ago
    They ran all of their competition out of business.
    - mythz 7y ago
      Google Maps was a revolutionary product that popularized the category, they had no competition when it was released, at least now there's Apple Maps, Open Street Map, Bing Maps, Tencent Maps. I was developing with ESRI ArcGIS at the time, ESRI was a multi-billion dollar GEO company who had no product that even came close to the instant utility Google Maps launched with. The only other product that had a similar "Wow" factor around the same time was Keyhole which we were using before Google acquired them and used it to launch "Google Earth". If anything Google Maps spawned competition in the last decade, the existing competitors like ESRI are still developing their GEO products for Internal/Enterprise use, but now there are a number of competing consumer mapping services that provide the same utility and functionality of Google Maps from large technology companies that didn't have GEO as part of their competency like: Apple Maps, Bing Maps and Tencent Maps.
      - cpeterso 7y ago
        I just finished reading "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality" (https://amzn.com/0062673041 https://amzn.com/0062673041) about the evolution of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Written by one of the founders of Keyhole (the company that built what became Google Earth), the book is mostly about the founding of Keyhole and its mapping technology, but it has some insider info about the political maneuverings between Google's Search and Geo teams over owning the map ads because everyone knew it would be a big deal. The book is pretty interesting, but light on the technical details.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  It's not free and installed by default on every android devices ? You mean, I can buy a subscription and not rent the service with my search history ? Where's the sign-up button ?
  - hedora 7y ago
    There are tons of viable competitors to google maps, even on Android, last time I checked. They all have different monetization strategies, and all provide good enough turn by turn directions. I regularly use Here WeGo for its offline support. Sygic is probably still fine. I think Sygic moved to a freemium model, and I get the impression Here is subsidized by luxury car manufacturers. Yelp crushes google maps on search. I really don’t understand why google maps is so popular. Like search, maps is a capital intensive, commodity product with near-zero switching cost. I guess the same can be said of Coke and Pepsi, and they’re chugging along just fine. It’s a good thing I don’t work in brand management!
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      I don't see the differences between google maps and the alternative you suggest regarding their price or their money making strategies. > I really don’t understand why google maps is so popular. Because it's bundled on billions of devices ? And it's a product that was/is working really well for the vast majority ?
    - brlewis 7y ago
      What competitor would you recommend for public transit directions?
    - notyourday 7y ago
      > Yelp crushes google maps on search. Not even in the same ball park. Yelp's search for example does not understand that there's a RIVER between Brooklyn and Manhattan. So when I'm in Greenpoint it says there's something right there, in Manhattan when I want something local.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
  It isn't free. They're already monetizing your location data.
  - ddalex 7y ago
    They have altered the monetization. Pray they don't alter it further.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  They are responsible, but I don't see how shoving ads into their end-users face is going to be seen positively. There are other ways to monetize a product, for example B2B.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  I don't think the issue is monetization. I think the issue is the method of monetization. Doing something like offering paid enhancements, or even an option to pay in exchange for being omitted from the ad network, would be more acceptable.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Have you tried Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      It's hard to tell for certain from that site, but it looks like that doesn't do what I want. What I want is to stop the data collection that is used for advertising. Does Contributer do that? Also, this looks like it's about web sites that carry Google ads (and only those sites that have decided to participate -- none of which look to be sites I use anyway), not Google's own services.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Why should they offer a free maps service? The shouldn't. They should be forced to close, and Maps and Search should be provided by a non-profit, internationally controlled (UN etc), organization, not a for-profit company. That's my opinion of what would be best. Some services (like "indexing the world's knowledge") are too important to be left to private interests and be monetized via ads...
  - greiskul 7y ago
    Some services like "indexing the world's knowledge" are too important to have a government (UN?) enforced monopoly on. Doing this would be one of the best way of killing any innovation in the area.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Some things are too important to be left to completely ineffective quasi-governmental organizations.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Well, they only took us to the moon, deliver our mail, handle invasions, wars, and other emergency situations, and so on. Oh, and they also gave us this internet thing. In fact, before the web era, they also made the best maps (e.g. the British military maps).
      - manigandham 7y ago
        And today we have the ISS supplied by private space companies, UPS and Fedex and Amazon handling logistics around the world, and most aerospace and defense innovation and manufacturing handled by private contractors. Government vs private is not mutually exclusive. Like another commenter said, the US Geological Survey already has mapping data available. Adding in traffic from local agencies and weather from the National Weather Service is relatively simple so we can definitely have a neutral public maps service. None of that requires forcing Google Maps to close though.
  - ddingus 7y ago
- twothamendment 7y ago
  You are correct. The reverse is true too, why should contribute data to their maps service for free? I've done lot of work to add and correct roads, update business info and addresses in my area. If they want to fill the map with ads they have that right - but when they drive me (and people like me) away, their product will suffer.
  - openbasic 7y ago
    Why didn't you contribute to OpenStreetMap?
    - twothamendment 7y ago
      It has been years since I gave them a try. Their interface was horrible, but this is a good reason to try them again.
      - openbasic 7y ago
        Almost all free and open-source alternative have terrible UIs and crappy UX. And some have shitty content too. However, that content is done by volunteers just like you, and if you refuse to contribute because something puts you off, then the project dies. Imagine people with the same mindset as you: Oh, I don't bother contributing my design skills because the content sucks. And you don't contribute because design sucks. In the end, no one contributes and the project, as a whole, suffers. But if the project suffers, you and everyone else, lose to corporate offerings like Google. And that is fine, if you like that. But don't expect them to respect you. I hate to say this, but change has to come from within, not from laws, market forces or anything else. So, if you want LIBRE maps, and you really care about that, just go on and do it. Gather people, make noise and work hard. There's thousands of highly successful projects to get inspired by.
      - Vinnl 7y ago
        Regardless of what the sibling comment says, the editing UX is really good now. Their editor has a beautiful walkthrough and easy-to-use tools, at least on desktop: https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  >Why should they offer a free maps service? Have you heard of a "loss leader"[1]? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader Users are unlikely to use Google for maps and say, Bing for their searches. Maps drives traffic to search. Conversely, making maps overly commercial will drive traffic away from search.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    >Users are unlikely to use Google for maps and say, Bing for their searches. I don't know, I see very little tying the two together. I currently use DDG exclusively for search except for localized searching and maps, for which I use Google. There isn't really much friction to switch between the two. Especially since most of my map usage is on mobile, where it is a separate app.
    - thfuran 7y ago
      >I currently use DDG exclusively for search except for localized searching and maps So you're way out in the long tail.
  - marssaxman 7y ago
    I started using Bing maps for its own sake, after Google redesigned their maps site a few years back and made it far less useful; I've never bothered to use Bing search. The two functions have not been related in my experience.
- false-mirror 7y ago
  True, but that highlights the very reason monopolies must be broken up. They will only do what is profitable, not what is best for the users.
- moosey 7y ago
  I would say because it will backfire. Huge swaths of humanity using google maps to track their daily lives is beyond valuable. I would argue that maps is probably already monetized, as it probably improves ad targeting in all of their other apps.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  It's a surprisingly sizeable mistake to think this way. Google was loved because they gave things that were better than the era state of the art. Hotmail users moved away to gmail because it was dead obvious. Maps used to cost a lot and were clumsy.. now you can fly over them in a browser. Google's business was to answer query. The rest was philanthropy. If they start to operate like any other crap stock they'll go the way of the loo.
- uvesten 7y ago
  It was never free. Every time you use it, you offer up your current location and/or place(s) you’re interested in visiting, all of which is very valuable for targeted advertising.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Interestingly enough, Google like an increasing number of companies is a "public" company. Brin and Page own the majority of the voting power meaning Google, is for all intents and purposes, their company. The same is true of Facebook and Zuckerberg which makes all the calls to try to replace him rather bemusing. Literally every person who owns Facebook stock could vote to replace him and it'd be irrelevant since he has the majority of voting power. The point of this is that the direction Google has been taking lately has been very much the arbitrary choice and direction chosen by Larry and Sergey, and consequently highly reflective of their own personal ideologies and worldviews.
- return0 7y ago
  If you go down that road, why offer our content for free to google to index? Maps and other google services help the web grow, which helps them sell more ads. It 's a synergy until it is no longer one. I suppose they will not be dumb enough to monetize recaptcha next.
- pfortuny 7y ago
  OK. Why should they start offering it?
- eridius 7y ago
  Operating Maps gives Google a ton of information about where people go, where they work, live, what businesses they patronize, etc. Data they can turn around and use for advertising purposes. It's not like they've been running Maps out of the goodness of their hearts.
orev 7y ago
Wall St only cares about growth. If you make $100B profit two quarters in a row, that’s 0% growth and you’re dead to them. The approach makes sense with smaller companies, but it seems to kill those who reach global dominance.
- est31 7y ago
  Obligatory Peter Thiel statement on this (2012): https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ?t=195 https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ?t=195 > Google is no longer a technology company, and [...] it's basically [...] a search engine. The search technology was developed a decade ago, it's a bet that [...] no one else will come up with a better search technology so you invest in Google because you're betting against technological innovation in search, and it's like [...] a bank that generates enormous cash flows every year but you can't issue a dividend because the day you take that 30 billion and send it back to people you're admitting that you're no longer a technology company. Still relevant today.
  - kmonsen 7y ago
    It's also not true, Apple is paying dividends and still valued as a technology company (and both Google and Apple clearly are in tech, dividends or not).
    - microtherion 7y ago
      As Marc Andreessen memorably put it, Apple is valued "like a steel mill going out of business", with a PE massively lower than Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
shostack 7y ago
There are two main ways an ad business grows. Create more inventory to sell, and increase the value of that inventory. Maps data had presumably been doing the latter behind the scenes. Now it appears to also be doing the former. Would you be ok with them using the data to improve their targeting models as long as they didn't include the placements in the Maps experience itself?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Would you be ok with them using the data to improve their targeting models as long as they didn't include the placements in the Maps experience itself? There was a day when I would have been OK with that, but for me, those days are long gone. I would not be OK with that now.
- ergothus 7y ago
  i'd be okay if they charged me to get rid of the ads (though that brings in all sorts of privacy issues for that to work across the many places I encounter Maps)...but ads are a serious detriment to life.
rkagerer 7y ago
Well said. Thanks Google for cluttering my life with more unwanted spam. I used to think of the Google brand very highly. Lately my subconscious associates it with the expectation of a sub-par user experience and some slightly creepy tendencies.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  and filtering your life from more wanted pages.. the side effect of classification is not 100% positive
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  Couldnt agree more. In starting my quest to deGooglify my life, i switched to a new LG phone off my pixel 2 and i have to say, its worse. Am I going to switch back? Sure wont. Google has lost my business. On an article related note, i wonder if/when this will affect waze
  - neetdeth 7y ago
    deGooglifying by moving from a Google Google phone to an LG Google phone. Of course, the only viable alternative at this point is Apple. That's the choice I made and I feel they've earned higher consumer trust... for the moment. I really think that, with smartphone technological improvements flattening out and the oligopoly starting to squeeze their customer base, there's never been a better time for open smartphone projects to get a foothold.
  - TheOperator 7y ago
    I hate what Google has become but some iOS design decisions like tying it to iTunes make me want to gouge my eyes out. The time is ripe for another phone OS. I really can't stop using their search engine without making my life worse and yes I've tried DDG and bing etc.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  It’s interesting how this changes. I recently found my phone from 5 years ago and realized that at that time I implicitly trusted Google with everything. It’s such a different perspective from today that it came as a bit of a shock.
newsoul2019 7y ago
Don't worry, it's about time for Maps to enter the Google Graveyard....
lconstable613 7y ago
Do you think they could avoid these concerns by avoiding an ad model? E.g. what if they had a version of EB5 maps for investors (https://eb5affiliatenetwork.com/eb-5-tea-map/ https://eb5affiliatenetwork.com/eb-5-tea-map/) or integrated route planning to optimize ambulance trips (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982752/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982752/)?
will_brown 7y ago
>But to invest in what? Maybe now that they changed OpenAI from a non-profit, to what they dub a new type of legal entity: a non-profit that pays out “profits” to investors - and they further claim this will be the most valuable company in history by orders of magnitude - maybe they want to milk google users which they can write off by investing in the non-profit they control effectively own (even though legally non profits don’t have owners).
- areyousure 7y ago
  Who is "they" in your comment? What relationship does OpenAI have to Google?
_bxg1 7y ago
There's no conspiracy, just unrestrained capitalism. This is what big business does; it's entirely unsurprising. Growth becomes an end unto itself. Google was "not being evil" while doing so served their purposes; they benefitted hugely from virtuously investing in open technologies like the web, RSS, email, and early Android. But now that they've become more powerful they don't need that stuff any more, and they stand to benefit more from building barriers and consolidating control.
clairity 7y ago
> "seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price?" it's interesting to note that google is tacitly admitting that their tentacular data ingestion products (like maps) and their vast machine-learning infrastructure by themselves can't generate the value they're expecting, so they're resorting to direct monetization. otherwise they wouldn't take another PR hit like this.
jpalomaki 7y ago
Article from February [1] says their profit margin is sliding as costs rise. These moves might be an attempt to balance the situation. 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/alphabet-profit-margins-slide-as-google-costs-march-upwards https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/alphabet-...

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.
- stunt 7y ago
  I think that period was part of their investment and also helped them to improve the product. And like any other investment, they need to make money as well. I can imagine Maps is an expensive product to operate. I also hate ads and I hope they find a different way to make it reasonably profitable.
  - gowld 7y ago
    There is a fine line between "investment to build a product" and "dumping below cost to win consumers over via low prices, then raising prices"
    - newsoul2019 7y ago
      Just charge me already, Google! Present me with a screen that says "Would you like Google Maps ad-free for XX.99 per year?" Sure, of course. GIVE ME THE OPTION!!
  - reciprocity 7y ago
    Google already makes money hand over fist. I am not sure if what you posit holds water.
- Tsubasachan 7y ago
  There aren't a lot of good alternatives to Maps though. I do find that the service is becoming more and more unusable with all the shitty product placements.
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    Depends what you use it for. For driving directions, there are plenty of alternatives. An excellent one is a standalone GPS device like a Garmin nüvi or a TomTom, which works entirely offline (except traffic reports, which are received over FM radio or Bluetooth). The only time I actually use Google Maps is when I'm at my PC, and Bing maps works just as well.
taurath 7y ago
What changed over the last 10 years, and why wasn’t it monetized earlier? Maybe because then they wanted to make a useful service and get some data for their search ads, and now they just want more money.
- bhhaskin 7y ago
  They ran all of their competition out of business.
  - mythz 7y ago
    Google Maps was a revolutionary product that popularized the category, they had no competition when it was released, at least now there's Apple Maps, Open Street Map, Bing Maps, Tencent Maps. I was developing with ESRI ArcGIS at the time, ESRI was a multi-billion dollar GEO company who had no product that even came close to the instant utility Google Maps launched with. The only other product that had a similar "Wow" factor around the same time was Keyhole which we were using before Google acquired them and used it to launch "Google Earth". If anything Google Maps spawned competition in the last decade, the existing competitors like ESRI are still developing their GEO products for Internal/Enterprise use, but now there are a number of competing consumer mapping services that provide the same utility and functionality of Google Maps from large technology companies that didn't have GEO as part of their competency like: Apple Maps, Bing Maps and Tencent Maps.
    - cpeterso 7y ago
      I just finished reading "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality" (https://amzn.com/0062673041 https://amzn.com/0062673041) about the evolution of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Written by one of the founders of Keyhole (the company that built what became Google Earth), the book is mostly about the founding of Keyhole and its mapping technology, but it has some insider info about the political maneuverings between Google's Search and Geo teams over owning the map ads because everyone knew it would be a big deal. The book is pretty interesting, but light on the technical details.
johnchristopher 7y ago
It's not free and installed by default on every android devices ? You mean, I can buy a subscription and not rent the service with my search history ? Where's the sign-up button ?
- hedora 7y ago
  There are tons of viable competitors to google maps, even on Android, last time I checked. They all have different monetization strategies, and all provide good enough turn by turn directions. I regularly use Here WeGo for its offline support. Sygic is probably still fine. I think Sygic moved to a freemium model, and I get the impression Here is subsidized by luxury car manufacturers. Yelp crushes google maps on search. I really don’t understand why google maps is so popular. Like search, maps is a capital intensive, commodity product with near-zero switching cost. I guess the same can be said of Coke and Pepsi, and they’re chugging along just fine. It’s a good thing I don’t work in brand management!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    I don't see the differences between google maps and the alternative you suggest regarding their price or their money making strategies. > I really don’t understand why google maps is so popular. Because it's bundled on billions of devices ? And it's a product that was/is working really well for the vast majority ?
  - brlewis 7y ago
    What competitor would you recommend for public transit directions?
  - notyourday 7y ago
    > Yelp crushes google maps on search. Not even in the same ball park. Yelp's search for example does not understand that there's a RIVER between Brooklyn and Manhattan. So when I'm in Greenpoint it says there's something right there, in Manhattan when I want something local.
Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
It isn't free. They're already monetizing your location data.
- ddalex 7y ago
  They have altered the monetization. Pray they don't alter it further.
m-p-3 7y ago
They are responsible, but I don't see how shoving ads into their end-users face is going to be seen positively. There are other ways to monetize a product, for example B2B.
JohnFen 7y ago
I don't think the issue is monetization. I think the issue is the method of monetization. Doing something like offering paid enhancements, or even an option to pay in exchange for being omitted from the ad network, would be more acceptable.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Have you tried Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    It's hard to tell for certain from that site, but it looks like that doesn't do what I want. What I want is to stop the data collection that is used for advertising. Does Contributer do that? Also, this looks like it's about web sites that carry Google ads (and only those sites that have decided to participate -- none of which look to be sites I use anyway), not Google's own services.
coldtea 7y ago
>Why should they offer a free maps service? The shouldn't. They should be forced to close, and Maps and Search should be provided by a non-profit, internationally controlled (UN etc), organization, not a for-profit company. That's my opinion of what would be best. Some services (like "indexing the world's knowledge") are too important to be left to private interests and be monetized via ads...
- greiskul 7y ago
  Some services like "indexing the world's knowledge" are too important to have a government (UN?) enforced monopoly on. Doing this would be one of the best way of killing any innovation in the area.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Some things are too important to be left to completely ineffective quasi-governmental organizations.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Well, they only took us to the moon, deliver our mail, handle invasions, wars, and other emergency situations, and so on. Oh, and they also gave us this internet thing. In fact, before the web era, they also made the best maps (e.g. the British military maps).
    - manigandham 7y ago
      And today we have the ISS supplied by private space companies, UPS and Fedex and Amazon handling logistics around the world, and most aerospace and defense innovation and manufacturing handled by private contractors. Government vs private is not mutually exclusive. Like another commenter said, the US Geological Survey already has mapping data available. Adding in traffic from local agencies and weather from the National Weather Service is relatively simple so we can definitely have a neutral public maps service. None of that requires forcing Google Maps to close though.
- ddingus 7y ago
twothamendment 7y ago
You are correct. The reverse is true too, why should contribute data to their maps service for free? I've done lot of work to add and correct roads, update business info and addresses in my area. If they want to fill the map with ads they have that right - but when they drive me (and people like me) away, their product will suffer.
- openbasic 7y ago
  Why didn't you contribute to OpenStreetMap?
  - twothamendment 7y ago
    It has been years since I gave them a try. Their interface was horrible, but this is a good reason to try them again.
    - openbasic 7y ago
      Almost all free and open-source alternative have terrible UIs and crappy UX. And some have shitty content too. However, that content is done by volunteers just like you, and if you refuse to contribute because something puts you off, then the project dies. Imagine people with the same mindset as you: Oh, I don't bother contributing my design skills because the content sucks. And you don't contribute because design sucks. In the end, no one contributes and the project, as a whole, suffers. But if the project suffers, you and everyone else, lose to corporate offerings like Google. And that is fine, if you like that. But don't expect them to respect you. I hate to say this, but change has to come from within, not from laws, market forces or anything else. So, if you want LIBRE maps, and you really care about that, just go on and do it. Gather people, make noise and work hard. There's thousands of highly successful projects to get inspired by.
    - Vinnl 7y ago
      Regardless of what the sibling comment says, the editing UX is really good now. Their editor has a beautiful walkthrough and easy-to-use tools, at least on desktop: https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit
dontbenebby 7y ago
>Why should they offer a free maps service? Have you heard of a "loss leader"[1]? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader Users are unlikely to use Google for maps and say, Bing for their searches. Maps drives traffic to search. Conversely, making maps overly commercial will drive traffic away from search.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  >Users are unlikely to use Google for maps and say, Bing for their searches. I don't know, I see very little tying the two together. I currently use DDG exclusively for search except for localized searching and maps, for which I use Google. There isn't really much friction to switch between the two. Especially since most of my map usage is on mobile, where it is a separate app.
  - thfuran 7y ago
    >I currently use DDG exclusively for search except for localized searching and maps So you're way out in the long tail.
- marssaxman 7y ago
  I started using Bing maps for its own sake, after Google redesigned their maps site a few years back and made it far less useful; I've never bothered to use Bing search. The two functions have not been related in my experience.
false-mirror 7y ago
True, but that highlights the very reason monopolies must be broken up. They will only do what is profitable, not what is best for the users.
moosey 7y ago
I would say because it will backfire. Huge swaths of humanity using google maps to track their daily lives is beyond valuable. I would argue that maps is probably already monetized, as it probably improves ad targeting in all of their other apps.
agumonkey 7y ago
It's a surprisingly sizeable mistake to think this way. Google was loved because they gave things that were better than the era state of the art. Hotmail users moved away to gmail because it was dead obvious. Maps used to cost a lot and were clumsy.. now you can fly over them in a browser. Google's business was to answer query. The rest was philanthropy. If they start to operate like any other crap stock they'll go the way of the loo.
uvesten 7y ago
It was never free. Every time you use it, you offer up your current location and/or place(s) you’re interested in visiting, all of which is very valuable for targeted advertising.
rjf72 7y ago
Interestingly enough, Google like an increasing number of companies is a "public" company. Brin and Page own the majority of the voting power meaning Google, is for all intents and purposes, their company. The same is true of Facebook and Zuckerberg which makes all the calls to try to replace him rather bemusing. Literally every person who owns Facebook stock could vote to replace him and it'd be irrelevant since he has the majority of voting power. The point of this is that the direction Google has been taking lately has been very much the arbitrary choice and direction chosen by Larry and Sergey, and consequently highly reflective of their own personal ideologies and worldviews.
return0 7y ago
If you go down that road, why offer our content for free to google to index? Maps and other google services help the web grow, which helps them sell more ads. It 's a synergy until it is no longer one. I suppose they will not be dumb enough to monetize recaptcha next.
pfortuny 7y ago
OK. Why should they start offering it?
eridius 7y ago
Operating Maps gives Google a ton of information about where people go, where they work, live, what businesses they patronize, etc. Data they can turn around and use for advertising purposes. It's not like they've been running Maps out of the goodness of their hearts.

orev 7y ago

Wall St only cares about growth. If you make $100B profit two quarters in a row, that’s 0% growth and you’re dead to them. The approach makes sense with smaller companies, but it seems to kill those who reach global dominance.

est31 7y ago
Obligatory Peter Thiel statement on this (2012): https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ?t=195 https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ?t=195 > Google is no longer a technology company, and [...] it's basically [...] a search engine. The search technology was developed a decade ago, it's a bet that [...] no one else will come up with a better search technology so you invest in Google because you're betting against technological innovation in search, and it's like [...] a bank that generates enormous cash flows every year but you can't issue a dividend because the day you take that 30 billion and send it back to people you're admitting that you're no longer a technology company. Still relevant today.
- kmonsen 7y ago
  It's also not true, Apple is paying dividends and still valued as a technology company (and both Google and Apple clearly are in tech, dividends or not).
  - microtherion 7y ago
    As Marc Andreessen memorably put it, Apple is valued "like a steel mill going out of business", with a PE massively lower than Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.

shostack 7y ago

There are two main ways an ad business grows. Create more inventory to sell, and increase the value of that inventory. Maps data had presumably been doing the latter behind the scenes. Now it appears to also be doing the former. Would you be ok with them using the data to improve their targeting models as long as they didn't include the placements in the Maps experience itself?

JohnFen 7y ago
> Would you be ok with them using the data to improve their targeting models as long as they didn't include the placements in the Maps experience itself? There was a day when I would have been OK with that, but for me, those days are long gone. I would not be OK with that now.
ergothus 7y ago
i'd be okay if they charged me to get rid of the ads (though that brings in all sorts of privacy issues for that to work across the many places I encounter Maps)...but ads are a serious detriment to life.

rkagerer 7y ago

Well said. Thanks Google for cluttering my life with more unwanted spam. I used to think of the Google brand very highly. Lately my subconscious associates it with the expectation of a sub-par user experience and some slightly creepy tendencies.

agumonkey 7y ago
and filtering your life from more wanted pages.. the side effect of classification is not 100% positive
kryogen1c 7y ago
Couldnt agree more. In starting my quest to deGooglify my life, i switched to a new LG phone off my pixel 2 and i have to say, its worse. Am I going to switch back? Sure wont. Google has lost my business. On an article related note, i wonder if/when this will affect waze
- neetdeth 7y ago
  deGooglifying by moving from a Google Google phone to an LG Google phone. Of course, the only viable alternative at this point is Apple. That's the choice I made and I feel they've earned higher consumer trust... for the moment. I really think that, with smartphone technological improvements flattening out and the oligopoly starting to squeeze their customer base, there's never been a better time for open smartphone projects to get a foothold.
- TheOperator 7y ago
  I hate what Google has become but some iOS design decisions like tying it to iTunes make me want to gouge my eyes out. The time is ripe for another phone OS. I really can't stop using their search engine without making my life worse and yes I've tried DDG and bing etc.
Aeolun 7y ago
It’s interesting how this changes. I recently found my phone from 5 years ago and realized that at that time I implicitly trusted Google with everything. It’s such a different perspective from today that it came as a bit of a shock.

newsoul2019 7y ago

Don't worry, it's about time for Maps to enter the Google Graveyard....

lconstable613 7y ago

Do you think they could avoid these concerns by avoiding an ad model? E.g. what if they had a version of EB5 maps for investors (https://eb5affiliatenetwork.com/eb-5-tea-map/ https://eb5affiliatenetwork.com/eb-5-tea-map/) or integrated route planning to optimize ambulance trips (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982752/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982752/)?

will_brown 7y ago

>But to invest in what? Maybe now that they changed OpenAI from a non-profit, to what they dub a new type of legal entity: a non-profit that pays out “profits” to investors - and they further claim this will be the most valuable company in history by orders of magnitude - maybe they want to milk google users which they can write off by investing in the non-profit they control effectively own (even though legally non profits don’t have owners).

areyousure 7y ago
Who is "they" in your comment? What relationship does OpenAI have to Google?

_bxg1 7y ago

There's no conspiracy, just unrestrained capitalism. This is what big business does; it's entirely unsurprising. Growth becomes an end unto itself. Google was "not being evil" while doing so served their purposes; they benefitted hugely from virtuously investing in open technologies like the web, RSS, email, and early Android. But now that they've become more powerful they don't need that stuff any more, and they stand to benefit more from building barriers and consolidating control.

clairity 7y ago

> "seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price?" it's interesting to note that google is tacitly admitting that their tentacular data ingestion products (like maps) and their vast machine-learning infrastructure by themselves can't generate the value they're expecting, so they're resorting to direct monetization. otherwise they wouldn't take another PR hit like this.

jpalomaki 7y ago

Article from February [1] says their profit margin is sliding as costs rise. These moves might be an attempt to balance the situation. 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/alphabet-profit-margins-slide-as-google-costs-march-upwards https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/alphabet-...