31 ms·

Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating

628 points by ephesee 6y ago

siproprio 6y ago
I've started deleting all my maps review and public pictures I posted after google announced that Photos was not going to be unlimited anymore. I think more people should do the same.
- silentsea90 6y ago
  Why should Photos be unlimited forever? Do you expect such largesse from Spotify or Netflix? Or do you prefer Google put ads in photos to monetize?
partingshots 6y ago
Anecdotally, a potential counterpoint: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat And the discussion that came with it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653
- g0ran 6y ago
  It should be noted that this article is from 2017.
  - partingshots 6y ago
    I highly recommend checking out Justin’s blog for more of his posts, the most recent being in December 2020. He’s a passionate cartographer, and has been posting about maps since 2010, 2017 being his rise to popularity not withstanding.
    - applemapsanon 6y ago
      He’s actually not a "cartographer" and has no formal training in cartography. (This misconception comes from a 2017 Verge piece on "Google Maps' Moat" that misstated that he was.) Source/Disclosure: I'm a close friend.
      - partingshots 6y ago
        What would be a better word to describe someone who is passionate about maps? Perhaps I used the word “cartographer” incorrectly. I apologize, my native language is German so English is not always 100% forthcoming to me.
        applemapsanon 6y ago
        A "cartographer" is someone who makes maps for a living. So the word "cartographer" is a job title, similar to how "programmer" is a job title for someone who programs computers. I don't think that there is an English word for someone who likes maps. The best thing to say is what you already said: that they are "passionate about maps".
- captain_price7 6y ago
  If you click on the first link, it says "This essay no longer reflects the current state of Google & Apple Maps".
  - mccaller 6y ago
    I'd love to see his take on the OP's post and if Google still has a moat in mapping.
- fnord123 6y ago
  It's not really a counter point since OP links it and discusses it.
- akudha 6y ago
  This is an insanely good article, thank you for sharing. Must've take a ton of time for the author to put this together.
howlgarnish 6y ago
> They appear, to me, to be acting from a place of fear and conservatism rather than innovation. Bingo. Here's a fun exercise: try to find the last genuinely useful feature added to the Maps API in the release notes. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/releases https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/... To give you a taste, here's the largest change made in 3.42: > InfoWindows now have a default max width of 648px which can be overridden by setting the InfoWindow maxWidth property. The width of an InfoWindow can now exceed 648px but will still be limited by the width of the map. (Previously, Infowindows were always restricted to the lesser of 648px or the map width.) Also note that the minor version (0.x) is incremented quarterly, and we're up to 3.43 now, so over 10 years.
- Causality1 6y ago
  Yeah. Heck, just adding a little "resume previous navigation" button to the Maps screen for when you exit Navigation by mistake would be handy.
- draw_down 6y ago
  What fresh new innovations are we so dearly missing from Google maps? Do you open Google maps and frown when it does the same reliable simple thing it always has? I don’t
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- afavour 6y ago
  I see this as something different: the sign of a mature product. What are competitors doing that Google Maps isn’t? Maybe I’m missing something but I see no significant features. (Not to mention, the Maps API != Google Maps the product)
  - mmaurizi 6y ago
    Google Maps the consumer product is far ahead of any competitors, but the Maps API lacks many features available in Google Maps (vector maps, 3d acceleration, real-time styling). These feature disparities between the API & the consumer product were annoying at first, but now that the competitors to the Maps API all have had them for years they're simply baffling.
akmarinov 6y ago
Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.
- slezyr 6y ago
  In Easter Europe even Google Maps are much worse that OpenStreetMaps.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
    Here maps is good too. I'm always amazed how it consistently gets the speed limit right even in sparsely populated areas and small towns, where the speed limit often changes literally every 50 meters.
    - matkoniecz 6y ago
      If someone is interested in mapping this kind of things in OpenStreetMap (used by mapy.cz outside Czech Republic) - I recommend StreetComplete (max speed quest must be enabled in settings, it is disabled by default)
  - salex89 6y ago
    I'm not sure "much worse", maybe worse, but yet comparable and still useful. Apple Maps, on the other hand... sheesh.
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
    I live in northern Europe (Sweden) at at least in my specific area OpenStreetMap is a lot better than Google maps.
    - dagw 6y ago
      I also live in Sweden and do a lot of GIS analysis with both OSM data and other providers. OSM is great when it comes to the actual road geometry (esp. bike and pedestrian roads), although it often gets the speed limits wrong. For pedestrian travel analysis I'd say it's the best dateset available, since it includes all those 'unofficial' paths that everybody uses, but are often left off official maps. It is however pretty terrible when it comes to buildings and addresses. You don't have to get many km out from major cities before a lot of buildings are missing, and the numbering of buildings is often either missing or wrong.
bobviolier 6y ago
These street maps are becoming insanely precise, probably helped by the competition. I see that Google Maps is now testing "detailed street maps" in some cities: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-testing-detailed-street-maps https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-testing-detailed-street... Just a thought: maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps?
- hobofan 6y ago
  > maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps? I think that sounds plausible. I don't see why else they would resume scanning parts of Germany even though they have to blur out large chunks of it on Streetview.
- sildur 6y ago
  Ah, they now have the same detail OSM had five years ago. Who knows, maybe some day they will be on par.
  - dschep 6y ago
    That was my first thought when I just saw "sidewalks" & "crosswalks" too. But AFAIK OSM doesn't have anything remotely like that level of sidewalk shape data. And while stairs on paths are mapped, I don't think outdoor building stairs are mapped.
    - sildur 6y ago
      Here, in OSM, I can see stairs shape, type of pavement, stairs direction, and amount of stairs. Not sure about sidewalks, though. OSM is pretty detailed altogether. It depends on user input, but the tools are there.
    - matkoniecz 6y ago
      > But AFAIK OSM doesn't have anything remotely like that level of sidewalk shape data. Yes, for now only tiny part of sidewalks has area info. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area:highway https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area:highway > I don't think outdoor building stairs are mapped. It can be mapped, also not done in most of places
hliyan 6y ago
This is a familiar refrain I've recently begun to hear about many of Google's products and I'm starting to see the point. Technology has evolved significantly in the last ten years. It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. Maps too, will go that way soon. It took IBM and Intel, who were regarded the same way Google is now, half a century to be dethroned. For Google, this might happen on a more accelerated schedule. I suspect there will be a swarm of startups biting at its heels within the next five years.
- slezyr 6y ago
  > It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. ReCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, CloudFlare definitely don't make it easier to crawl the web than it was ten years ago
  - echelon 6y ago
    Thankfully (1) there just aren't that many useful websites anymore. Most content lives in walled gardens. Negotiate a few deals to get around CloudFlare for those select few and you're set. [1] I'm being sarcastic.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      'Many a true word was said in jest' as the aphorism goes. IME useful information has become somewhat concentrated into nodes, instead of trawling blogs for info it's all on stackoverflow/Twitter/whatever (depending on subject).
      - echelon 6y ago
        For certain populations of data and authors, it's true that centralization aids in discovery, distribution, discourse, maintenance, etc. Unfortunately many of these channels are hooked up to hyper-growth valuation needs and this necessitates volume over quality. Look at Quora, Pinterest, Medium, and LinkedIn. And I haven't even mentioned the biggest offenders. I don't think I'm better served in 2020 than I was in 2008.
saberience 6y ago
I live in London and for commuting around via public transport OR walking I always use Citymapper, which is massively superior than Google Maps for directions. I suspect they are using Googles APIs underneath it all, but their UI is better than Google maps and also their recommended public transport directions are orders of magnitude better than Google Maps. Citymapper will get you between any two locations in London and give you many options based on cost or time or preference for one transport type (e.g. preferring tubes versus buses). Citymapper also gives multi-modal directions: e.g. walking PLUS take an Uber. Or walking, tube, then a cab. Not only this, but it ALSO tells you where you should sit on a train so you have the least walk when you exit the train.
- maest 6y ago
  Citymapper compute their own routes, so that definitely doesn't come from Google. I'm not sure where they get their map data from, though.
  - refurb 6y ago
    I'm curious as well. I was in Asia on business and their navigation is top notch.
- berdario 6y ago
  Citymapper is nice, but I disagree that it's massively superior: 1- When I was living south of London, Citymapper was completely pointless, since it only showed commuting options with SouthWest trains, and not Southern trains (my station was served by both). I suspect Citymapper might've fixed this since. 2- Maps also gives you all different options, and since some time ago they also started to offer mixed ride-hailing and public transport (they appear to offer that only if your public transport station is far enough from you probably > ~15 minutes walk?) 3- The other features are not that useful: since you'd use a monthly travelcard or pay as you go on your oyster/bank card, the cost estimate is not really something that you have to worry about. If you're a cash-strapped student, you're probably just going to always opt for the bus to save one or two pounds compared to the tube... so, just picking Bus as your preferred mode of transport is enough to cover that use case. 4- Citymapper is/was also inferior to Google maps when you need to quickly check/compare a (different) train that you just managed to hop into if it's not shown in the UI (maybe because it was delayed, and so it was not shown among the options). With Google maps you could just amend the start time for your trip. 5- One really nice feature that Citymapper has is the instructions for which tube exit to use when you arrive at the destination. It really helps to diminish the "which side is north?" disorientation. Otoh, you don't get that unless you actually start the trip (if you only use Citymapper to browse the route options, for example). OTOH, Google maps has AR navigation, which covers the same use case (orient yourself when you do the last bit of your trip on foot) 6- Both Maps and Citymapper have alert notifications for when you should get out at your stop. I almost never use the feature though, because I missed my tube stop a couple of times due to Citymapper triggering their notification AFTER the stop was already past) 7- Both Maps and Citymapper have a way to share your trip with other people. Citymapper is nicer though, since you can see all of the people that shared a trip with you on the same map (nice when you're meeting with more than 1 other friend from different parts of London) That said, I dislike monopolies, so when I'll travel around London again (after the end of the pandemic) I'm planning to try to use maps.me (which uses the OSM data) as my first option.
barnacled 6y ago
One thing I have noticed and found really irritating is the degradation of the street view functionality in Google maps. They have got lazy. I used to be able to click or keyboard navigate through a route but now it either stops responding to clicks, transports me onto a nearby motorway randomly,or gets massively unresponsive. I am very glad there is some competition coming, as good as Google maps is they are clearly resting on their laurels and not bothering to fix blatant issues. Competition is good.
- burnthrow 6y ago
  Also, if you drop a pin while zoomed out at all, you are going to look at a user's PhotoSphere, no questions. I've tested this at length, no degree of precision in your pin drop will avoid the PhotoSphere, it owns the pin drop region at most zoom levels.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    ah yes I have encountered this repeatedly myself!
Joe8Bit 6y ago
Great article, but I think the conclusion about Google Maps languishing because it’s a low margin product is wrong. While Google Maps as a distinct product has a bottom and top line I think the author underestimates the value that the underlying places data has for Google’s core search product. The local place data is _massivley_ important to search. I don’t see any foreseeable way Google let’s the product that generates it languish. It’s far too strategic for them. Not to mention the amount of brand value maps has for them as an ecosystem. My view is that as Google’s Maps advantage dwindles, they’ll do more and more strategic acquisitions of places data sources. Tying more data into their closed ecosystem. Whether the new tech anti-trust landscape in the US and EU allows this is another question.
- cdubzzz 6y ago
  Yep. This. I use a couple of different services (primarily Apple Maps and HERE maps) interchangeably _when I know where I am going_. But when I don’t know where I am going (e.g. looking for a type of store or restaurant or whatever) I use Google Maps. Their places data is just still so much better.
- joejoebags 6y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful response! I don’t have anything interesting to add. I suspect you’re right!
- nr2x 6y ago
  I hope the days of big tech treating startups as lego pieces to be snapped into their empires will be stopped by regulators. I imagine a lot of new ideas, not bound by ad tech revenue, may take root.
- Pxtl 6y ago
  Yup. When I switch to DDG, the quality of local results is a huge discriminating factor that pushes me back to Google. Google Maps adds great value to the "one stop search" of Google Search.
max_ 6y ago
Google's bigger moat over Mapping software is the fact that they own android.
growt 6y ago
Can someone explain the sentence about him being only six years old? Some kind of inside joke?
- franciscop 6y ago
  Ah I see I asked the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25569058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25569058
- chippy 6y ago
  I = the blog
latch 6y ago
We spend enough on Google Maps API that I've been looking at alternative. We're more interested in fuzzy searching, addresses and points of interest. Street numbers seems like a pretty big weakness for open source datasets. If all you have is the name of a 1km street, you only get 1km precision. The APIs from other commercial providers (e.g. TomTom) have better data, but noticeably worse search. I don't think they make their raw data available except for very large deals.
draw_down 6y ago
I’ll take the author’s word for it, I still just use Google maps on my phone. Obviously it sucks that Google jacked up their prices, but I’m kinda thinking they did that because their mapping solution is the best. That makes sense to me even if, agin, I don’t necessarily like it.
IshKebab 6y ago
Not while everyone uses Google Maps reviews it isn't.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I've avoided using Google Maps API for Apple devices. The main reason, was that I knew someone that used it, and got the "Google $urpri$e," where, all of a sudden, they owe four-to-five figures a month, for a narrow-demographic $0.99 app. They switched over to MapBox. MapBox doesn't have quite the feature set and quality that GM does, but it's a great library, and won't give you sticker shock. Google has a lot of money for a reason. I have found that Apple Maps is fine for my purposes. I don't really need some of the fancier stuff that GM and MapBox gives you. If I needed the fancier stuff, I'd probably go with MapBox.
franciscop 6y ago
Meta: could someone explain/clarify the sentence "Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old)." please? I highly doubt a 6-years-old wrote this article, so is it a joke? Or is it alluding to some mapping alternative being 6 years old?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  It is a joke.
  - aikinai 6y ago
    An simple outlandish claim doesn't make constitute a joke unless it's referencing something. I think that reference is what GP is asking about.
    - htfu 6y ago
      As bizarre as this may sound to your generation there are, in fact, such things as standalone jokes.
      - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        Could you give an example? Even puns stand on aspects of language to acquire their potency.
      - aikinai 6y ago
        I honestly don’t even know what generation you’re assuming I’m from and referring to. Is this supposed to be something old people don’t understand? Or young people? Of course you can have standalone jokes, but “I’m six years old” is not one.
weeboid 6y ago
Lol, Facebook is going to be _such_ a better actor once Mapillary takes off! $GOOG better start quaking boots now.
robk 6y ago
It’s becoming nearly impossible to fix map problems with google. I have a bunch of weird one way and foot only pathways near me in London and the routing is always awful for delivery drivers. Telling them to come the wrong way down a street etc. despite having a very good history of submissions nothing is ever fixed in the routing despite opening dozens of reports.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Most commerical delivery drivers will use an OpenStreetMap based routing application, so make sure to see if these things are in OSM and if you can fix them.
macintux 6y ago
A recent, complementary piece by the same author: OpenStreetMap is Having a Moment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137235
sub7 6y ago
Can't think of a product they've fucked up more with every iteration than Maps. Could argue Search here but Maps has been absurd. It started around the time they were pushing Material design and hasn't stopped since then.
- tracker1 6y ago
  Google assistant, especially in concert with maps/directions is pretty F'd up the past couple months... it's nearly unusable, and definitely not something you can use in a car with voice commands anymore.
thijsvandien 6y ago
My biggest frustration with Google Maps is that no matter how often I report my address to be in the wrong location, nothing ever changes. Another example of the “customer service” Google is famous for.
colesantiago 6y ago
Sure, but do the challengers have real time traffic prediction? [0] [0] https://deepmind.com/blog/article/traffic-prediction-with-advanced-graph-neural-networks https://deepmind.com/blog/article/traffic-prediction-with-ad...
- acdha 6y ago
  Does Google? They've been publishing cool papers for many years but the experience while using Google Maps has been consistently highly-unrealistc ETAs with things like unprotected left turns across 4 lanes of traffic “saving” time (in areas like DC, NYC, BOS, etc. where they have tons of data, too). Maybe this is the iteration where the results will actually match the publications but it's been years since Apple Maps wasn't consistently more accurate on actual arrival time for me.
  - seszett 6y ago
    In my experience it is very reliable in France and Belgium. Whether on my 800-km, 8-hour trip to go to my parents across countries, or on my 150 km weekly commute (across countries as well actually) the traffic is consistently accurate and the ETA is almost always correct to a few minutes. In the worst case, maybe Google will expect 20 minutes extra time entering France or entering Antwerp when it's actually 30 minutes this particular day. But that's a very acceptable error on a 2-hour trip. Of course, this was true in 2019 but I didn't have the occasion to keep doing these trips in 2020. Also, I can't compare with Apple Maps which isn't available on my smartphone.
justinzollars 6y ago
I traveled to Beijing and Shanghai and Google maps was effectively worthless. Apple Maps on the other hand was accurate and included accurate mass transit directions.
- dade_ 6y ago
  Google Maps is useless in Shenzhen and horrid in Hong Kong (satellite view and street view don't line up at all). I didn't have an iPhone, so I resorted baidu maps in China and memorizing the Chinese characters for the subway stations. I wasn't there for long, but it was very accurate. I guess I'll bring an iPhone next time.
  - scanny 6y ago
    There is a legitimate reason for the difference: https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/141542/what-causes-the-gps-offset-shift-in-china https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/141542/what-causes-t... Geographic data is mostly off limits in China; state owned enterprises / native Chinese apps likely get a pass on this though.
- silentsea90 6y ago
  Perhaps has to do with Google not really being a thing in China coz ethics.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    China forbids crowdsourced or foreign-corporate mapping. It is considered a national security risk. There are local approved sources of cartographic data. Apple presumably could buy them, but Google either could not or chose not to.
  - justinzollars 6y ago
    for my benefit I'm Glad apple maps worked!
joejoebags 6y ago
What’s up HN?! Always fun to find an article of mine on here. What I’ve learned so far: I’ve underestimated the important of their place data to the rest of the search apparatus, and likely underestimated the relevance of Maps to their autonomous vehicle strategy. What I remain curious about that I’d love your speculation on: why do they bother with the Google Maps Platform at all? They have plenty of ways to monetize with ad targeting, so why go through the headache of opening it up to other businesses?
- runako 6y ago
  > why go through the headache of opening it up to other businesses? Such a platform is obviously necessary for the Internet; Google exposing Maps (& related APIs) makes it less likely that another company will build the default platform for map APIs on the Internet.
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    commoditize your complement
- gr__or 6y ago
  I so so much appreciate this article. Google's maps dominance has been frustrating me, both as a user who wants innovation, and as a developer who wants affordable access. Very excited to read about these combined efforts (and, like you said, anti-tragedies-of-the-commons) Thank you!
- treis 6y ago
  Google wants to control all the ways people search the web so that they don't have to share profits and so that a competitor can't emerge. That's why we have Maps (location), Android (mobile), Home & Assistant (voice), and Chrome (URL bar).
  - dleslie 6y ago
    GMail and whatever their chat is called this week (social), Daydream (VR/AR).
wayne 6y ago
> Meanwhile at an office down the hall, Azure Maps has been humming along quietly since 2018, beating AWS to the punch by over two years. Microsoft's actually been in the geo API game for significantly longer, pre-Google Maps. MapPoint started as a desktop GIS product in 2000 that let businesses create desktop maps, and they've had an online API since 2002... it started as a SOAP API: https://news.microsoft.com/2002/04/10/microsoft-announces-mappoint-net-version-2-0/ https://news.microsoft.com/2002/04/10/microsoft-announces-ma... But it was pre-AJAX so Google Maps stole much of their mindshare. And it's been renamed so many times that no one can keep track of it (MapPoint, Bing Maps/Live Maps/MSN Maps, Azure Maps). Though the pricing and documentation has consistently been reasonable.
- oflannabhra 6y ago
  I also remember Microsoft being involved in TerraServer pre-2000. Loading up satellite photos of my house on dial-up is an early internet memory that will stick with me forever.
  - xeromal 6y ago
    I remember being about 8-10 years old and showing my parents a pic of our house from the sky. They freaked out and thought I was "hacking". haha. I can't remember what I used but it was a little before 2000
swiley 6y ago
Good, there needs to be more competition. All the maps apps (both web and mobile) seem to think the actual map is just a background decoration for something else and don't do basic things like render road labels accept at particular zoom levels. The more difficult it is for the end user to modify the GUI the faster the GUI deteriorates into something totally unusable.
larrymyers 6y ago
I really want to use Apple Maps full time on my iPhone, just because of how much clutter Google Maps has accumulated on the screen. If anything tells me Google is losing the ability to innovate it's the newly added pill buttons for pre-set searches and branded POIs on the map. I remember when this was added to MapQuest circa 2010, and was the transition from trying to have an excellent mapping experience to just adding revenue focused features. Google is still operating from an extremely strong position, by nature of having nearly infinite budget and owning their mapping and search dataset. It's concerning that the iOS app seems to be suffering from the same issues that preceded the gradual downfall of MapQuest from a product perspective.
- nr2x 6y ago
  I wanted Apple Maps to succeed so I’ve been using it from day one. It’s gotten much, much better. That said, if I’m going on a long trip where a non-optimal route is a big deal, I’ll double check with google maps and often (but not always) find a better route.
  - antipaul 6y ago
    I also _want_ to like Apple Maps. But I always need to double check business hours using Google.
    - jimktrains2 6y ago
      I usually check the store's site or call. I've had enough entries on Google be wrong to blindly trusy it either.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - dasil003 6y ago
        Store sites tend to be less reliable than Google. Just last night I was searching one and the website had been out of date for months and yet Google had it right.
qalmakka 6y ago
I tried opening Apple Maps, and they are still way behind Google in almost everything where I live in (EU, Italy). For instance, Apple Maps correctly pins my parent's house but they show it as being several hundred metres away from the street (it's not). Look around also isn't available in my area, and as far as I could see it's not even available in Milan (there's 3D available, though). The only areas I saw the binoculars icon turning on was while hovering over London and Dublin, which puts it firmly at least 10 years behind what Google's been offering in Europe, which has close to complete coverage of rural areas, including in certain parts even roads not fully paved. I think that outside the USA (and China, where Google maps isn't available) it will be a while before people will actually consider switching. The only thing I'm sure of is that I haven't seen any iPhone user using Apple Maps in my area since, I don't know, ever.
- joseph_grobbles 6y ago
  Maybe you lumped Canada in with the US, but Apple Maps is superb here, and I always default to it with few complaints [1]. It already was brilliant for navigation, but their recent detail update makes it much more usable for map porn. The fun thing about maps is that there is little lock-in. If I go to someplace where Apple Maps is poor, I'll open Google Maps. Heck, if a particular city or country had a superior option ("ItalyMapper" where the citizens and government of Italy put group effort into making an excellent product) I'd use that for the trip. There is absolutely nothing saying that it's all or nothing (you aren't saying this, but some other comments are arguing as if this is a holistic binary choice that we all have to make. But we don't). My son sends me Google Maps links when he's at friends and needs a pickup because that's what he uses. Whatever. I use GM for that trip, but revert back to AM when I am setting directions myself. [1] - I enjoy the app more, don't like Google tracking, and it's simply better at navigating. GM does a lot of weird stuff. On major city streets with two lanes in each direction, but with an extra left turning lane that appears near the intersection, it will say "stay right to continue straight" as I approach. It is confusing -- do I need to move to the right lane? (no) -- and when the actual instructions are just "keep going straight" it's needlessly intrusive because of course that is what I was going to do regardless. Weird little quirks like that abound.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
awinter-py 6y ago
I'll believe spatial computing is here when I can successfully search for an open restaurant with usable outdoor dining sorted by proximity to a point shocking that businesses who are investing $10k+ in greenhouses can't list that data on G maps for search general extension of G's failure to support faceted search of any kind
- MayeulC 6y ago
  Well, you can get pretty close with overpass, but I don't think "outdoor dining" is a tag in OSM? I don't often edit restaurants. https://overpass-turbo.eu/ https://overpass-turbo.eu/ OSM is primarily a database, it's a shame mostt frontends aren't extremely user-friendly, it could easily capture a lot of users. Brouter, OSMand, overpass are gems built on OSM data.
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    whoa very cool
strogonoff 6y ago
The more competition the better, though article’s take might be somewhat rosy-eyed. In the end-user apps domain, alternatives including Apple Maps lose to Google Maps miserably in all regions I have been to in the past 2–3 years with the exception of mainland China. If I need to get somewhere and accurately estimate arrival time, I am not happy feeding Google my movement data but I will since it’ll be the most reliable option available no matter where I am. As far as developer-oriented solutions, I know that Algolia Places shut down earlier this year citing insufficient quality of OSM data[0]. If Mapbox is indeed getting there and we’re about to have some proper competition in this space, I’m all for it. [0] https://www.algolia.com/blog/sunseting-our-places-feature/ https://www.algolia.com/blog/sunseting-our-places-feature/
greggturkington 6y ago
Please change your inline footnote references to be links (<a>) to the footnote itself, with the link wrapped in superscript (<sup>). Please wrap the citations themselves in <cite> elements. (great article, thanks for sharing)
heavymark 6y ago
Apple Maps is for from parity with Google Maps. I use both extensively. I tend to use Apple Maps more since I like how the Apple Watch integration works, and prefer the UI on CarPlay, among some other benefits. Though I usually always and going to places I know that are not far, and use it more so I now if say their is unexpected traffic and I should take a different route, and well as gentle reminder that a turn is coming up when the kids are distracting me. I'm in New England we have the 'new' maps, though when going some where new I more often than not still always run into issues with Apple Maps, where the place I'm going the location on the map isn't correct, or directions stop prematurely when there is a small road your suppsoe to take or who knows what else, where is I almost never have those issues with Google Maps/Waze. Also anytime say I store closes and moves, or a new store opens, Google Maps shows it within a day or so, where is Apple Maps most often can go weeks or months, and often I am the one submitting the issue to Apple Maps (Which they then correct but takes a while vs Google Maps where I submit an issue and its fixed very quickly). So while Apple Maps is getting much better, there reporting feature is far behind Google Maps and until that changes I don't see how they will be able to be as good. And for many of us Waze is preferred over Google Maps or Apple Maps, when on the highway, since knowing when police are ahead, or a road hazard in real time is invaluable. Though for me, like many Apple Maps is usually good enough, and when it shows the wrong end result, I simply quickly open up Waze or Google Maps to get me the last mile.
moron4hire 6y ago
Google Maps Platform's Terms of Service are really quite onerous. You're not allowed to combine their data with any other data, so you're pretty much stuck with exercising just the features the API provides without any room for creativity. But you're also not allowed to create anything that competes with Google's own app offerings[0]. So it is very unclear just what exactly you're expected to do with these APIs. [0] Of course, not that they provide enough features through the APIs that you could. Things like StreetView photospheres are only available through a black box viewer widget or small, rectangular snapshots at configurable view angles. You can recreate the photosphere by combining several dozen of these shots, but each of them will have a very visible copyright watermark that you are contractually obligated to retain. You also don't get any access to their LIDAR depth data, so you can't do any sort of stereo reproduction. This all boils down to making the data source essentially useless for VR. Which would probably be considered as "competing with Google Earth" anyway.
eightysixfour 6y ago
Only tangentially related, but has anyone noticed that the Google Maps app for iOS has become significantly worse in the last few years? They have crammed so many touchpoints on to the map that it is impossible to touch anything of value - I can't tell you how many times I have somehow managed to select an entire county (something I don't think I've ever intentionally done) on my iPhone instead of a POI, which then zooms out to show me the whole county and removes all of the POIs I was looking at in the first place! Is this a problem for others as well?
- jimktrains2 6y ago
  I dont have iOS, but I have similar, and more, complaints with the android and web versions.
tylerrobinson 6y ago
I would switch to Apple Maps if they adjusted your estimated position while driving. When you're following directions on Google Maps, the app seems to estimate your location based on your current speed and the road you're on. Apple Maps doesn't do this (or doesn't do it as much) so it causes me to miss turns.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  I'm so happy I'm not the only one. This drives me crazy, and seems like such a simple feature to implement.
sonotmyname 6y ago
I switched to Apple Maps long before it was believed to be good enough for 2 features that Google Maps will never (likely) implement - random identifiers and location fuzzing. These privacy-first features are important to me. Now that Apple Maps has had many years to get a lot better, I genuinely prefer it to Google Maps - even setting aside the privacy issues. I love in California, so I understand there may be locale based differences, but it’s never really steered me wrong (pun intended), and always does a good job of picking a logical route.
- bikingbismuth 6y ago
  I've used Apple maps in Phoenix for a while and prefer it over Google maps as well. Google doesn't always update their maps in a timely fashion and will display closures that have since cleared up, especially on rural sections of highways.
norswap 6y ago
Personally, what I find mind-boggling is the inability of Google to capitalize on Map's potential. If improved, it could concurrence at least TripAdvisor and Yelp easily (and maybe Booking too, if they were willing to invest in customer service - which I doubt). Maps has the potential to be integrated (or better integrated) everywhere in Google's digital estate (search, GMail, Android, even YouTube). Simarly, simplifying the creation, sharing, and most of all, discovery of user-made maps could boost it enormously. Instead, it languishes. The UX is incredibly frustrating. Just sharing a location on a map can be non-trivial. Making it more difficult to build on top of maps was an incredibly bone-headed move as well.
aerovistae 6y ago
> Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old). Can anyone explain this? Comment seems very random, total non-sequitur
- pueblito 6y ago
  The author is being funny
dleslie 6y ago
Google Maps lost its luster for me when they made it difficult to plot arbitrary routes and draw regions. Once upon a time, I would use google maps to plot hiking routes and draw regions to describe destination areas. Ie, "in this neighbourhood one can find good street-level shoppes". You can still do these things, but it's cumbersome and buried in the menus; whereas I recall this behaviour being first-class.
vxNsr 6y ago
Isn't the whole moat of google maps that it's part of google? when I search I don't want to have to use different websites for each type of search, right now google is the leader but even if they become only mediocre at maps but stay at no. 1 at search they're very safe. I don't see any future where google creates a special modal box for apple maps on it's search results page no matter who is deemed "the best map"
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Isn't the whole moat of google maps that it's part of google? No, that's only for the very lazy :-) Especially for something like Maps, that doesn't get some huge benefit from the integration.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    The lazy being all the people who don't go to different search engines for different topics or who don't care about privacy hoopla and just want to find their thing... so basically 96% of people.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Well, people switch all the time when it offers some real benefit. The don't stick with Google search out of lazyness, but because all alternatives suck llamas balls (Bing, DDG, etc.) But consider how fast, and how many times, people switched browsers, first leaving behind the de-facto market leader (Netscape to IE), then leaving behind the OS-bundled one (IE to Firefox), then again leaving behind the current leader to a new faster engine (Firefox to Chrome). With Google Maps deteriorating and the discomfort of change much smaller than changing than changing browsers, it's all too easy to switch to another map website. Heck, that has happened in the past, Google Maps wasn't the first always. As recorded in this classic piece of folk lore: (well let's hit up yahoo maps to find the dopest route!) I prefer mapquest (that's a good one too) Google maps is the best (true dat) double true!
chooseaname 6y ago
I like Here We Go, except for the name. It isn’t as polished as others but I find it good enough to trust it. It has great support for offline as well.
gerash 6y ago
Google maps also has this visual localization without using GPS which the competitors don't have. It helps to quickly localize in a dense urban area
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
alasdair_ 6y ago
I worked at a company that heavily used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn't just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude. Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google's entire stack, and quickly, or we'd be in a terrible bargaining position later. This one choice by the maps team likely cost Google significantly in the medium to long term, if any other companies realized the same things we did.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Mapbox responded to Google raising prices by raising their prices. Is it likely that Azure and Amazon would do similar if they raised prices on GCP?
  - MichaelZuo 6y ago
    Did all of the major providers raise their prices after?
  - arafsheikh 6y ago
    Curious to know if AWS has ever hiked the price of any of its services.
    - cldellow 6y ago
      In 11 years of using it, I've never seen AWS increase the price for a service whose cost inputs they controlled entirely. It can happen, though. They increased AWS Pinpoint costs because their cost to send SMSes in India increased by 25% due to a regulatory action that increased the price for all SMS traffic in India. Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it ensures your early adopters are those who get the most value, and it gives you a big buffer when discovering how much it actually costs to operate. This usually guarantees that prices have only one way to go. For example, AWS IoT Device Management had a 90% price cut after it was introduced.
johnny_reilly 6y ago
> Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old). But I am a student of history. So good. So very good
tracker1 6y ago
Related... when I'm in the car, and not, I often use the google assistant to search... for at least a couple months, it's gotten to be almost worse than useless as the bottom 1/3 is covered by google buttons over the stuff I'm searching for, and the mini map view at the top doesn't easily expand to the screen for pan/zoom. The assistant should be much easier to use, and while not the best, I admit I have tried to use it driving, and now I pretty much have to pull over and use it, because "OK Google give me directions to X on Y st in City" no longer does what it should.
- aduitsis 6y ago
  Google maps started from a position of being better and snappier than (then) Nokia maps. Today, it's almost impossible to use google maps while driving, the UI is simply unusable unless you can devote your 100% attention to it, and even then the results may vary. On the other hand, Here maps (former Nokia maps) has gotten better. Oh, and my favourite google maps feature, announce the instruction to turn left or right while YOU STILL HAVEN'T PASSED the previous street intersection!
  - tracker1 6y ago
    Reminds me... one thing I don't like is that you don't know which side of the street you should be on far enough ahead after a turn... "Turn right, then navigate to the left lane" if the next turn is less than a mile away.
brian_herman 6y ago
Don’t know I used Apple Maps and it still gave me highways when I had tolls and highways turned off. Waze got bought by google... Anyone have any recommendations for anything else than google maps?
rootusrootus 6y ago
I'm glad. They need a kick in the pants. They haven't updated street view in my area in eight years.
z77dj3kl 6y ago
This is a great article. One mapping product that's rarely mentioned but seems to run on an entirely different/unique stack is 2GIS (https://2gis.ru https://2gis.ru). It's incredibly detailed and ubiquitous in Russia among other places.
monksy 6y ago
Some clarification needs to be mentioned. Also, this is an issue with the industry. There are more companies out there than MFANG. Our industry should acknowledge other players out there. Bing Maps and Facebook uses HERE maps under the covers. That's a company that has had the people to really knock mapping out of the park. However, you have some major mismanagement there and lack luster direction that made google maps continue to exist. (They have lead the way in offline mapping.. no joke in 2010 you could install it on your phone, fly from Europe to the US and drive to Canada and back without having data or having to micromanage your "offline data storage") Also, to add insult to injury.. you used to get here.com to point to your customer facing maps, now you have to go "wego.here.com" if you even want to use the consumer maps anymore.
Demiurge 6y ago
> You know Google Maps? What I do is, like, build little pieces of Google Maps over and over for people who need them but can’t just use Google Maps because they’re not allowed to for some reason, or another. I've been working with web mapping for 15 years and I've never thought of saying it because it's never been true for hundreds of applications. Google Maps has always been the worst map client to integrate with. OpenLayers, leaflet, MapBox and myriads of alternative data sources, layers, behaviors and widgets are more suitable for custom applications. Some people seem to love a particular Google layer, like parcels or businesses, but it never seemed vital unless they were trying replicate some Google Maps experience, in which case I would just advise to send a route or street view request directly to the Google Maps website or app, and be done with it. The latest fad seems to be 3D terrain and 3D buildings. It's so amazing in the product demso, but the real world usefulness?
nojs 6y ago
As another point of comparison Apple Maps works very well in China whereas Google Maps is completely broken (even if you have the data offline the GPS location is usually wrong). Apple have obviously put a lot of focus on making it work there.
- kccqzy 6y ago
  That's a stupid Chinese restriction because Chinese mapping data uses GCJ-2 instead of the standard WGS 84 datum. If the Chinese government were to give Google the license to use their datum, Google's map location issue would be gone. (Though POI would still be a problem.)
jedberg 6y ago
> Today, I would argue the three pillars of its comparative advantage are Places, Street View, and 3D data. And TRAFFIC data. The main reason I still use GMaps/Waze is because they give better arrival estimates than anyone else, because they have more traffic data, because of network effects. I think the winner of the maps wars will be the one who gets the best traffic estimates, and I think Google/Waze are still way ahead on that front. I just wish the GMaps UI and Waze UI would be combined. I love the cop, traffic camera, and hazard notifications of Waze, I love the lane markers in GMaps, as well as their navigating by landmark (I was once told "turn in the driveway after the Chipotle" by GMaps). I also love Apple's "turn at the second stop sign". So if I could get a UI with all those things and Google's traffic data, that would be peachy.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  That seems like a solvable problem with money. Get car manufacturers on board. A lot of people use their car’s built in navigation.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    > A lot of people use their car’s built in navigation. I don't think that's true anymore. We were looking for cars back in February, and one thing I noticed is that many of the new cars did not come with navigation. When I asked why the dealer told me everyone just wants CarPlay because they use Google Maps on their phone. That made sense to me, since I too did not want to pay for navigation since I just use Google Maps via CarPlay.
rhacker 6y ago
It's a bit hand-wavy except for street view catching up. I'm pretty much completely migrated to Firefox/DDG for most browser stuff, except for maps. I still use Google Maps on my phone because there's so damn much information packed in there. Including ways to search for companies open til 11pm. I can instantly see which restaurants are doing curbside. It's also on my phone (although I do plan on switching to iOS next year when my android gets a bit too old). We'll see how my maps changes with that.
dmje 6y ago
Here's a little story: I run a tiny digital agency. Our clients are all non technical. They all want maps of some form. Until Google did their infamous pricing thing, all was well: we could set up as many nice embedded maps on websites as needed, clients all happy. Then the price / key requirement thing happened. Turns out you have to navigate through the absolute hell hole that is Google Cloud Console or whatever they call it this week. It involves permissions, and users and keys and all manner of layers that only a hardcore Dev can cope with. Google don't let us do it on client's behalf - I certainly can't ask client to do it for themselves. Stalemate. So, yeh, MapBox here we come.
- zyang 6y ago
  Have you tried Mapkit JS?
  - dmje 6y ago
    I have not, but I'll check it out - thanks :-)
- jawartak 6y ago
  Have you tried Stadia Maps? It sounds like precisely what you're looking for.
pedalpete 6y ago
Maps as a tool for finding your way is just the starting point. In the last month we've seen MapBox release their 3D API and Microsoft show off what they are able to do with Project Anywhere. Re-creating the world in 3D and making that a valuable product is next on the horizon, and though Google had the upper hand with Google Earth, they never opened up an API to it, and I think they'll be kicking themselves that this didn't get more attention in the future. I have a horse in this race as the founder of 3D mapping for outdoor sports start-up https://ayvri.com https://ayvri.com
thrower123 6y ago
I can't think of a Google product that is actually better now than it was a decade ago; in fact they've almost universally become less useful, less powerful, slower, and less ergonomic. Or they've been destroyed and either not replaced, or replaced with one or more increasingly half-baked successors. It's astounding how difficult it is to use Google Maps these days, and how much less data is available.
makecheck 6y ago
Generally agree, except for this doozy at the end: “...Google could reduce its cost basis moving forward and free up resources for competing at what they’re really great at: building great software.” Oh NO, they are definitely NOT great at software. All of my problems with Google Maps, Google Search, admin panels, etc. boil down to mind-numbingly bad software design decisions, that have become worse every year. Google essentially sabotages its own products at this point, regardless of what competitors may do. (They’re not alone, of course...)
winrid 6y ago
Fun tidbit. I recently started working on my own 3D map renderer, without any 3D programming experience, it wasn't actually that hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XIFC2SawY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XIFC2SawY It looks much better nowadays, but you get the idea...
shp0ngle 6y ago
From my experience, OpenStreetMap is getting significantly better in the "long tail", as big companies (Grab, Uber, Apple) are using it and then contributing the issues back and reusing it in their proprietary maps. Still, they are no match for Google Maps.
telltruth 6y ago
As the story goes Marissa Mayer was "demoted" to take charge of Maps/Places group that till that point no one much cared. To keep her into "leash", she got the budgets she wanted and she truly threw herself at Maps. She went out and bought enormous amount of expensive data and eventually setup the team with more than thousand people. Until that time still no one much cared. It wasn't unlike iPhone came out and everyone woke up to maps and Mayer's efforts paid off. After Mayer left, Google Maps has stagnated. There is not much of next horizon chase, big bets any more. Budget growth had been slowing down as well. However, I'm doubtful Apple will ever leap from Google Maps. You don't see hundreds of cars mapping the alleys all over the world. OSM gets better but last 1-3% is unattainable for them. More importantly, Apple significantly lacks in AI/ML skill sets. Siri is still shit show precisely for same reason.
huntedsnark 6y ago
Missing the issue by a mile: It's the place data not the maps, and you're required in the ToS to use Google's maps if you want to display their data geospatially. When Factual/Foursquare/Facebook/Apple (who all use a blend of each other's place data) overtake Google's data quality there then we can talk about the decline of maps.
ugjka 6y ago
Google API's? Never again. You are not a customer but cattle
sunstone 6y ago
Many large corporations including Apple are pouring millions of dollars annually into OpenStreetMaps so they have access to a decent map system.
Liamjohn 6y ago
Well I have several zozo water tanks filled to the brim with clean rain water. Just give me a shout.
867-5309 6y ago
what an oddly annoying manner of writing
hamandcheese 6y ago
> These are the actions of an organization that is annoyed they ever let people become their customers. Well put. This is the essence of Google’s (non-advertising) business practices.
jessriedel 6y ago
To me, the killer maps app would be the ability to type a consumer product into the maps search bar and have it display on the map all businesses (likely) selling that product. There are still lots of items that are not on Amazon or that I cannot wait two days for. Every time I try this now, I'm amazed by how bad the results are. First, I think that the simplest ML tools would be able to (say) identify which stores are grocery stores by their name, yet Google Maps is unreliable at this. Second, merchants have a big incentive to tell Google what they sell (either typically or, more ambitiously, with an up-to-date inventory API), if only Google would give them a portal to do so.
iso1631 6y ago
I went to look at apple maps https://www.apple.com/maps/ https://www.apple.com/maps/ All I see is an advert page telling me "You’ll like where this is going" and "get much easier" There's a tiny "open maps" in the top right corner which links to https://maps.apple.com/go https://maps.apple.com/go, but that just reloads the advert page OSM and Google Maps work just fine
- dmd 6y ago
  You can use Apple Maps via DuckDuckGo. As far as I know, you can't use it anywhere from apple.com directly.

628 points by ephesee 6y ago

I've started deleting all my maps review and public pictures I posted after google announced that Photos was not going to be unlimited anymore. I think more people should do the same.

silentsea90 6y ago
Why should Photos be unlimited forever? Do you expect such largesse from Spotify or Netflix? Or do you prefer Google put ads in photos to monetize?

partingshots 6y ago

Anecdotally, a potential counterpoint: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat And the discussion that came with it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653

g0ran 6y ago
It should be noted that this article is from 2017.
- partingshots 6y ago
  I highly recommend checking out Justin’s blog for more of his posts, the most recent being in December 2020. He’s a passionate cartographer, and has been posting about maps since 2010, 2017 being his rise to popularity not withstanding.
  - applemapsanon 6y ago
    He’s actually not a "cartographer" and has no formal training in cartography. (This misconception comes from a 2017 Verge piece on "Google Maps' Moat" that misstated that he was.) Source/Disclosure: I'm a close friend.
    - partingshots 6y ago
      What would be a better word to describe someone who is passionate about maps? Perhaps I used the word “cartographer” incorrectly. I apologize, my native language is German so English is not always 100% forthcoming to me.
      - applemapsanon 6y ago
        A "cartographer" is someone who makes maps for a living. So the word "cartographer" is a job title, similar to how "programmer" is a job title for someone who programs computers. I don't think that there is an English word for someone who likes maps. The best thing to say is what you already said: that they are "passionate about maps".
captain_price7 6y ago
If you click on the first link, it says "This essay no longer reflects the current state of Google & Apple Maps".
- mccaller 6y ago
  I'd love to see his take on the OP's post and if Google still has a moat in mapping.
fnord123 6y ago
It's not really a counter point since OP links it and discusses it.
akudha 6y ago
This is an insanely good article, thank you for sharing. Must've take a ton of time for the author to put this together.

howlgarnish 6y ago

> They appear, to me, to be acting from a place of fear and conservatism rather than innovation. Bingo. Here's a fun exercise: try to find the last genuinely useful feature added to the Maps API in the release notes. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/releases https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/... To give you a taste, here's the largest change made in 3.42: > InfoWindows now have a default max width of 648px which can be overridden by setting the InfoWindow maxWidth property. The width of an InfoWindow can now exceed 648px but will still be limited by the width of the map. (Previously, Infowindows were always restricted to the lesser of 648px or the map width.) Also note that the minor version (0.x) is incremented quarterly, and we're up to 3.43 now, so over 10 years.

Causality1 6y ago
Yeah. Heck, just adding a little "resume previous navigation" button to the Maps screen for when you exit Navigation by mistake would be handy.
draw_down 6y ago
What fresh new innovations are we so dearly missing from Google maps? Do you open Google maps and frown when it does the same reliable simple thing it always has? I don’t
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
afavour 6y ago
I see this as something different: the sign of a mature product. What are competitors doing that Google Maps isn’t? Maybe I’m missing something but I see no significant features. (Not to mention, the Maps API != Google Maps the product)
- mmaurizi 6y ago
  Google Maps the consumer product is far ahead of any competitors, but the Maps API lacks many features available in Google Maps (vector maps, 3d acceleration, real-time styling). These feature disparities between the API & the consumer product were annoying at first, but now that the competitors to the Maps API all have had them for years they're simply baffling.

akmarinov 6y ago

Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.

slezyr 6y ago
In Easter Europe even Google Maps are much worse that OpenStreetMaps.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
  Here maps is good too. I'm always amazed how it consistently gets the speed limit right even in sparsely populated areas and small towns, where the speed limit often changes literally every 50 meters.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    If someone is interested in mapping this kind of things in OpenStreetMap (used by mapy.cz outside Czech Republic) - I recommend StreetComplete (max speed quest must be enabled in settings, it is disabled by default)
- salex89 6y ago
  I'm not sure "much worse", maybe worse, but yet comparable and still useful. Apple Maps, on the other hand... sheesh.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
  I live in northern Europe (Sweden) at at least in my specific area OpenStreetMap is a lot better than Google maps.
  - dagw 6y ago
    I also live in Sweden and do a lot of GIS analysis with both OSM data and other providers. OSM is great when it comes to the actual road geometry (esp. bike and pedestrian roads), although it often gets the speed limits wrong. For pedestrian travel analysis I'd say it's the best dateset available, since it includes all those 'unofficial' paths that everybody uses, but are often left off official maps. It is however pretty terrible when it comes to buildings and addresses. You don't have to get many km out from major cities before a lot of buildings are missing, and the numbering of buildings is often either missing or wrong.

bobviolier 6y ago

These street maps are becoming insanely precise, probably helped by the competition. I see that Google Maps is now testing "detailed street maps" in some cities: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-testing-detailed-street-maps https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-testing-detailed-street... Just a thought: maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps?

hobofan 6y ago
> maybe they are scanning cities for their self-driving cars and are also using this data for Maps? I think that sounds plausible. I don't see why else they would resume scanning parts of Germany even though they have to blur out large chunks of it on Streetview.
sildur 6y ago
Ah, they now have the same detail OSM had five years ago. Who knows, maybe some day they will be on par.
- dschep 6y ago
  That was my first thought when I just saw "sidewalks" & "crosswalks" too. But AFAIK OSM doesn't have anything remotely like that level of sidewalk shape data. And while stairs on paths are mapped, I don't think outdoor building stairs are mapped.
  - sildur 6y ago
    Here, in OSM, I can see stairs shape, type of pavement, stairs direction, and amount of stairs. Not sure about sidewalks, though. OSM is pretty detailed altogether. It depends on user input, but the tools are there.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    > But AFAIK OSM doesn't have anything remotely like that level of sidewalk shape data. Yes, for now only tiny part of sidewalks has area info. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area:highway https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:area:highway > I don't think outdoor building stairs are mapped. It can be mapped, also not done in most of places

hliyan 6y ago

This is a familiar refrain I've recently begun to hear about many of Google's products and I'm starting to see the point. Technology has evolved significantly in the last ten years. It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. Maps too, will go that way soon. It took IBM and Intel, who were regarded the same way Google is now, half a century to be dethroned. For Google, this might happen on a more accelerated schedule. I suspect there will be a swarm of startups biting at its heels within the next five years.

slezyr 6y ago
> It is now significantly easier to build a search engine with its own index and crawl the entirety of the Internet than it was ten years ago. ReCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, CloudFlare definitely don't make it easier to crawl the web than it was ten years ago
- echelon 6y ago
  Thankfully (1) there just aren't that many useful websites anymore. Most content lives in walled gardens. Negotiate a few deals to get around CloudFlare for those select few and you're set. [1] I'm being sarcastic.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    'Many a true word was said in jest' as the aphorism goes. IME useful information has become somewhat concentrated into nodes, instead of trawling blogs for info it's all on stackoverflow/Twitter/whatever (depending on subject).
    - echelon 6y ago
      For certain populations of data and authors, it's true that centralization aids in discovery, distribution, discourse, maintenance, etc. Unfortunately many of these channels are hooked up to hyper-growth valuation needs and this necessitates volume over quality. Look at Quora, Pinterest, Medium, and LinkedIn. And I haven't even mentioned the biggest offenders. I don't think I'm better served in 2020 than I was in 2008.

saberience 6y ago

I live in London and for commuting around via public transport OR walking I always use Citymapper, which is massively superior than Google Maps for directions. I suspect they are using Googles APIs underneath it all, but their UI is better than Google maps and also their recommended public transport directions are orders of magnitude better than Google Maps. Citymapper will get you between any two locations in London and give you many options based on cost or time or preference for one transport type (e.g. preferring tubes versus buses). Citymapper also gives multi-modal directions: e.g. walking PLUS take an Uber. Or walking, tube, then a cab. Not only this, but it ALSO tells you where you should sit on a train so you have the least walk when you exit the train.

maest 6y ago
Citymapper compute their own routes, so that definitely doesn't come from Google. I'm not sure where they get their map data from, though.
- refurb 6y ago
  I'm curious as well. I was in Asia on business and their navigation is top notch.
berdario 6y ago
Citymapper is nice, but I disagree that it's massively superior: 1- When I was living south of London, Citymapper was completely pointless, since it only showed commuting options with SouthWest trains, and not Southern trains (my station was served by both). I suspect Citymapper might've fixed this since. 2- Maps also gives you all different options, and since some time ago they also started to offer mixed ride-hailing and public transport (they appear to offer that only if your public transport station is far enough from you probably > ~15 minutes walk?) 3- The other features are not that useful: since you'd use a monthly travelcard or pay as you go on your oyster/bank card, the cost estimate is not really something that you have to worry about. If you're a cash-strapped student, you're probably just going to always opt for the bus to save one or two pounds compared to the tube... so, just picking Bus as your preferred mode of transport is enough to cover that use case. 4- Citymapper is/was also inferior to Google maps when you need to quickly check/compare a (different) train that you just managed to hop into if it's not shown in the UI (maybe because it was delayed, and so it was not shown among the options). With Google maps you could just amend the start time for your trip. 5- One really nice feature that Citymapper has is the instructions for which tube exit to use when you arrive at the destination. It really helps to diminish the "which side is north?" disorientation. Otoh, you don't get that unless you actually start the trip (if you only use Citymapper to browse the route options, for example). OTOH, Google maps has AR navigation, which covers the same use case (orient yourself when you do the last bit of your trip on foot) 6- Both Maps and Citymapper have alert notifications for when you should get out at your stop. I almost never use the feature though, because I missed my tube stop a couple of times due to Citymapper triggering their notification AFTER the stop was already past) 7- Both Maps and Citymapper have a way to share your trip with other people. Citymapper is nicer though, since you can see all of the people that shared a trip with you on the same map (nice when you're meeting with more than 1 other friend from different parts of London) That said, I dislike monopolies, so when I'll travel around London again (after the end of the pandemic) I'm planning to try to use maps.me (which uses the OSM data) as my first option.

barnacled 6y ago

One thing I have noticed and found really irritating is the degradation of the street view functionality in Google maps. They have got lazy. I used to be able to click or keyboard navigate through a route but now it either stops responding to clicks, transports me onto a nearby motorway randomly,or gets massively unresponsive. I am very glad there is some competition coming, as good as Google maps is they are clearly resting on their laurels and not bothering to fix blatant issues. Competition is good.

burnthrow 6y ago
Also, if you drop a pin while zoomed out at all, you are going to look at a user's PhotoSphere, no questions. I've tested this at length, no degree of precision in your pin drop will avoid the PhotoSphere, it owns the pin drop region at most zoom levels.
- barnacled 6y ago
  ah yes I have encountered this repeatedly myself!

Joe8Bit 6y ago

Great article, but I think the conclusion about Google Maps languishing because it’s a low margin product is wrong. While Google Maps as a distinct product has a bottom and top line I think the author underestimates the value that the underlying places data has for Google’s core search product. The local place data is _massivley_ important to search. I don’t see any foreseeable way Google let’s the product that generates it languish. It’s far too strategic for them. Not to mention the amount of brand value maps has for them as an ecosystem. My view is that as Google’s Maps advantage dwindles, they’ll do more and more strategic acquisitions of places data sources. Tying more data into their closed ecosystem. Whether the new tech anti-trust landscape in the US and EU allows this is another question.

cdubzzz 6y ago
Yep. This. I use a couple of different services (primarily Apple Maps and HERE maps) interchangeably _when I know where I am going_. But when I don’t know where I am going (e.g. looking for a type of store or restaurant or whatever) I use Google Maps. Their places data is just still so much better.
joejoebags 6y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response! I don’t have anything interesting to add. I suspect you’re right!
nr2x 6y ago
I hope the days of big tech treating startups as lego pieces to be snapped into their empires will be stopped by regulators. I imagine a lot of new ideas, not bound by ad tech revenue, may take root.
Pxtl 6y ago
Yup. When I switch to DDG, the quality of local results is a huge discriminating factor that pushes me back to Google. Google Maps adds great value to the "one stop search" of Google Search.

max_ 6y ago

Google's bigger moat over Mapping software is the fact that they own android.

growt 6y ago

Can someone explain the sentence about him being only six years old? Some kind of inside joke?

franciscop 6y ago
Ah I see I asked the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25569058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25569058
chippy 6y ago
I = the blog

latch 6y ago

We spend enough on Google Maps API that I've been looking at alternative. We're more interested in fuzzy searching, addresses and points of interest. Street numbers seems like a pretty big weakness for open source datasets. If all you have is the name of a 1km street, you only get 1km precision. The APIs from other commercial providers (e.g. TomTom) have better data, but noticeably worse search. I don't think they make their raw data available except for very large deals.

draw_down 6y ago

I’ll take the author’s word for it, I still just use Google maps on my phone. Obviously it sucks that Google jacked up their prices, but I’m kinda thinking they did that because their mapping solution is the best. That makes sense to me even if, agin, I don’t necessarily like it.

IshKebab 6y ago

Not while everyone uses Google Maps reviews it isn't.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I've avoided using Google Maps API for Apple devices. The main reason, was that I knew someone that used it, and got the "Google $urpri$e," where, all of a sudden, they owe four-to-five figures a month, for a narrow-demographic $0.99 app. They switched over to MapBox. MapBox doesn't have quite the feature set and quality that GM does, but it's a great library, and won't give you sticker shock. Google has a lot of money for a reason. I have found that Apple Maps is fine for my purposes. I don't really need some of the fancier stuff that GM and MapBox gives you. If I needed the fancier stuff, I'd probably go with MapBox.

franciscop 6y ago

Meta: could someone explain/clarify the sentence "Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old)." please? I highly doubt a 6-years-old wrote this article, so is it a joke? Or is it alluding to some mapping alternative being 6 years old?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 6y ago
It is a joke.
- aikinai 6y ago
  An simple outlandish claim doesn't make constitute a joke unless it's referencing something. I think that reference is what GP is asking about.
  - htfu 6y ago
    As bizarre as this may sound to your generation there are, in fact, such things as standalone jokes.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      Could you give an example? Even puns stand on aspects of language to acquire their potency.
    - aikinai 6y ago
      I honestly don’t even know what generation you’re assuming I’m from and referring to. Is this supposed to be something old people don’t understand? Or young people? Of course you can have standalone jokes, but “I’m six years old” is not one.

weeboid 6y ago

Lol, Facebook is going to be _such_ a better actor once Mapillary takes off! $GOOG better start quaking boots now.

robk 6y ago

It’s becoming nearly impossible to fix map problems with google. I have a bunch of weird one way and foot only pathways near me in London and the routing is always awful for delivery drivers. Telling them to come the wrong way down a street etc. despite having a very good history of submissions nothing is ever fixed in the routing despite opening dozens of reports.

thinkingemote 6y ago
Most commerical delivery drivers will use an OpenStreetMap based routing application, so make sure to see if these things are in OSM and if you can fix them.

macintux 6y ago

A recent, complementary piece by the same author: OpenStreetMap is Having a Moment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25137235

sub7 6y ago

Can't think of a product they've fucked up more with every iteration than Maps. Could argue Search here but Maps has been absurd. It started around the time they were pushing Material design and hasn't stopped since then.

tracker1 6y ago
Google assistant, especially in concert with maps/directions is pretty F'd up the past couple months... it's nearly unusable, and definitely not something you can use in a car with voice commands anymore.

thijsvandien 6y ago

My biggest frustration with Google Maps is that no matter how often I report my address to be in the wrong location, nothing ever changes. Another example of the “customer service” Google is famous for.

colesantiago 6y ago

Sure, but do the challengers have real time traffic prediction? [0] [0] https://deepmind.com/blog/article/traffic-prediction-with-advanced-graph-neural-networks https://deepmind.com/blog/article/traffic-prediction-with-ad...

acdha 6y ago
Does Google? They've been publishing cool papers for many years but the experience while using Google Maps has been consistently highly-unrealistc ETAs with things like unprotected left turns across 4 lanes of traffic “saving” time (in areas like DC, NYC, BOS, etc. where they have tons of data, too). Maybe this is the iteration where the results will actually match the publications but it's been years since Apple Maps wasn't consistently more accurate on actual arrival time for me.
- seszett 6y ago
  In my experience it is very reliable in France and Belgium. Whether on my 800-km, 8-hour trip to go to my parents across countries, or on my 150 km weekly commute (across countries as well actually) the traffic is consistently accurate and the ETA is almost always correct to a few minutes. In the worst case, maybe Google will expect 20 minutes extra time entering France or entering Antwerp when it's actually 30 minutes this particular day. But that's a very acceptable error on a 2-hour trip. Of course, this was true in 2019 but I didn't have the occasion to keep doing these trips in 2020. Also, I can't compare with Apple Maps which isn't available on my smartphone.

justinzollars 6y ago

I traveled to Beijing and Shanghai and Google maps was effectively worthless. Apple Maps on the other hand was accurate and included accurate mass transit directions.

dade_ 6y ago
Google Maps is useless in Shenzhen and horrid in Hong Kong (satellite view and street view don't line up at all). I didn't have an iPhone, so I resorted baidu maps in China and memorizing the Chinese characters for the subway stations. I wasn't there for long, but it was very accurate. I guess I'll bring an iPhone next time.
- scanny 6y ago
  There is a legitimate reason for the difference: https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/141542/what-causes-the-gps-offset-shift-in-china https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/141542/what-causes-t... Geographic data is mostly off limits in China; state owned enterprises / native Chinese apps likely get a pass on this though.
silentsea90 6y ago
Perhaps has to do with Google not really being a thing in China coz ethics.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  China forbids crowdsourced or foreign-corporate mapping. It is considered a national security risk. There are local approved sources of cartographic data. Apple presumably could buy them, but Google either could not or chose not to.
- justinzollars 6y ago
  for my benefit I'm Glad apple maps worked!

joejoebags 6y ago

What’s up HN?! Always fun to find an article of mine on here. What I’ve learned so far: I’ve underestimated the important of their place data to the rest of the search apparatus, and likely underestimated the relevance of Maps to their autonomous vehicle strategy. What I remain curious about that I’d love your speculation on: why do they bother with the Google Maps Platform at all? They have plenty of ways to monetize with ad targeting, so why go through the headache of opening it up to other businesses?

runako 6y ago
> why go through the headache of opening it up to other businesses? Such a platform is obviously necessary for the Internet; Google exposing Maps (& related APIs) makes it less likely that another company will build the default platform for map APIs on the Internet.
- awinter-py 6y ago
  commoditize your complement
gr__or 6y ago
I so so much appreciate this article. Google's maps dominance has been frustrating me, both as a user who wants innovation, and as a developer who wants affordable access. Very excited to read about these combined efforts (and, like you said, anti-tragedies-of-the-commons) Thank you!
treis 6y ago
Google wants to control all the ways people search the web so that they don't have to share profits and so that a competitor can't emerge. That's why we have Maps (location), Android (mobile), Home & Assistant (voice), and Chrome (URL bar).
- dleslie 6y ago
  GMail and whatever their chat is called this week (social), Daydream (VR/AR).

wayne 6y ago

> Meanwhile at an office down the hall, Azure Maps has been humming along quietly since 2018, beating AWS to the punch by over two years. Microsoft's actually been in the geo API game for significantly longer, pre-Google Maps. MapPoint started as a desktop GIS product in 2000 that let businesses create desktop maps, and they've had an online API since 2002... it started as a SOAP API: https://news.microsoft.com/2002/04/10/microsoft-announces-mappoint-net-version-2-0/ https://news.microsoft.com/2002/04/10/microsoft-announces-ma... But it was pre-AJAX so Google Maps stole much of their mindshare. And it's been renamed so many times that no one can keep track of it (MapPoint, Bing Maps/Live Maps/MSN Maps, Azure Maps). Though the pricing and documentation has consistently been reasonable.

oflannabhra 6y ago
I also remember Microsoft being involved in TerraServer pre-2000. Loading up satellite photos of my house on dial-up is an early internet memory that will stick with me forever.
- xeromal 6y ago
  I remember being about 8-10 years old and showing my parents a pic of our house from the sky. They freaked out and thought I was "hacking". haha. I can't remember what I used but it was a little before 2000

swiley 6y ago

Good, there needs to be more competition. All the maps apps (both web and mobile) seem to think the actual map is just a background decoration for something else and don't do basic things like render road labels accept at particular zoom levels. The more difficult it is for the end user to modify the GUI the faster the GUI deteriorates into something totally unusable.

larrymyers 6y ago

I really want to use Apple Maps full time on my iPhone, just because of how much clutter Google Maps has accumulated on the screen. If anything tells me Google is losing the ability to innovate it's the newly added pill buttons for pre-set searches and branded POIs on the map. I remember when this was added to MapQuest circa 2010, and was the transition from trying to have an excellent mapping experience to just adding revenue focused features. Google is still operating from an extremely strong position, by nature of having nearly infinite budget and owning their mapping and search dataset. It's concerning that the iOS app seems to be suffering from the same issues that preceded the gradual downfall of MapQuest from a product perspective.

nr2x 6y ago
I wanted Apple Maps to succeed so I’ve been using it from day one. It’s gotten much, much better. That said, if I’m going on a long trip where a non-optimal route is a big deal, I’ll double check with google maps and often (but not always) find a better route.
- antipaul 6y ago
  I also _want_ to like Apple Maps. But I always need to double check business hours using Google.
  - jimktrains2 6y ago
    I usually check the store's site or call. I've had enough entries on Google be wrong to blindly trusy it either.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dasil003 6y ago
      Store sites tend to be less reliable than Google. Just last night I was searching one and the website had been out of date for months and yet Google had it right.

qalmakka 6y ago

I tried opening Apple Maps, and they are still way behind Google in almost everything where I live in (EU, Italy). For instance, Apple Maps correctly pins my parent's house but they show it as being several hundred metres away from the street (it's not). Look around also isn't available in my area, and as far as I could see it's not even available in Milan (there's 3D available, though). The only areas I saw the binoculars icon turning on was while hovering over London and Dublin, which puts it firmly at least 10 years behind what Google's been offering in Europe, which has close to complete coverage of rural areas, including in certain parts even roads not fully paved. I think that outside the USA (and China, where Google maps isn't available) it will be a while before people will actually consider switching. The only thing I'm sure of is that I haven't seen any iPhone user using Apple Maps in my area since, I don't know, ever.

joseph_grobbles 6y ago
Maybe you lumped Canada in with the US, but Apple Maps is superb here, and I always default to it with few complaints [1]. It already was brilliant for navigation, but their recent detail update makes it much more usable for map porn. The fun thing about maps is that there is little lock-in. If I go to someplace where Apple Maps is poor, I'll open Google Maps. Heck, if a particular city or country had a superior option ("ItalyMapper" where the citizens and government of Italy put group effort into making an excellent product) I'd use that for the trip. There is absolutely nothing saying that it's all or nothing (you aren't saying this, but some other comments are arguing as if this is a holistic binary choice that we all have to make. But we don't). My son sends me Google Maps links when he's at friends and needs a pickup because that's what he uses. Whatever. I use GM for that trip, but revert back to AM when I am setting directions myself. [1] - I enjoy the app more, don't like Google tracking, and it's simply better at navigating. GM does a lot of weird stuff. On major city streets with two lanes in each direction, but with an extra left turning lane that appears near the intersection, it will say "stay right to continue straight" as I approach. It is confusing -- do I need to move to the right lane? (no) -- and when the actual instructions are just "keep going straight" it's needlessly intrusive because of course that is what I was going to do regardless. Weird little quirks like that abound.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

awinter-py 6y ago

I'll believe spatial computing is here when I can successfully search for an open restaurant with usable outdoor dining sorted by proximity to a point shocking that businesses who are investing $10k+ in greenhouses can't list that data on G maps for search general extension of G's failure to support faceted search of any kind

MayeulC 6y ago
Well, you can get pretty close with overpass, but I don't think "outdoor dining" is a tag in OSM? I don't often edit restaurants. https://overpass-turbo.eu/ https://overpass-turbo.eu/ OSM is primarily a database, it's a shame mostt frontends aren't extremely user-friendly, it could easily capture a lot of users. Brouter, OSMand, overpass are gems built on OSM data.
- awinter-py 6y ago
  whoa very cool

strogonoff 6y ago

The more competition the better, though article’s take might be somewhat rosy-eyed. In the end-user apps domain, alternatives including Apple Maps lose to Google Maps miserably in all regions I have been to in the past 2–3 years with the exception of mainland China. If I need to get somewhere and accurately estimate arrival time, I am not happy feeding Google my movement data but I will since it’ll be the most reliable option available no matter where I am. As far as developer-oriented solutions, I know that Algolia Places shut down earlier this year citing insufficient quality of OSM data[0]. If Mapbox is indeed getting there and we’re about to have some proper competition in this space, I’m all for it. [0] https://www.algolia.com/blog/sunseting-our-places-feature/ https://www.algolia.com/blog/sunseting-our-places-feature/

greggturkington 6y ago

Please change your inline footnote references to be links (<a>) to the footnote itself, with the link wrapped in superscript (<sup>). Please wrap the citations themselves in <cite> elements. (great article, thanks for sharing)

heavymark 6y ago

Apple Maps is for from parity with Google Maps. I use both extensively. I tend to use Apple Maps more since I like how the Apple Watch integration works, and prefer the UI on CarPlay, among some other benefits. Though I usually always and going to places I know that are not far, and use it more so I now if say their is unexpected traffic and I should take a different route, and well as gentle reminder that a turn is coming up when the kids are distracting me. I'm in New England we have the 'new' maps, though when going some where new I more often than not still always run into issues with Apple Maps, where the place I'm going the location on the map isn't correct, or directions stop prematurely when there is a small road your suppsoe to take or who knows what else, where is I almost never have those issues with Google Maps/Waze. Also anytime say I store closes and moves, or a new store opens, Google Maps shows it within a day or so, where is Apple Maps most often can go weeks or months, and often I am the one submitting the issue to Apple Maps (Which they then correct but takes a while vs Google Maps where I submit an issue and its fixed very quickly). So while Apple Maps is getting much better, there reporting feature is far behind Google Maps and until that changes I don't see how they will be able to be as good. And for many of us Waze is preferred over Google Maps or Apple Maps, when on the highway, since knowing when police are ahead, or a road hazard in real time is invaluable. Though for me, like many Apple Maps is usually good enough, and when it shows the wrong end result, I simply quickly open up Waze or Google Maps to get me the last mile.

moron4hire 6y ago

Google Maps Platform's Terms of Service are really quite onerous. You're not allowed to combine their data with any other data, so you're pretty much stuck with exercising just the features the API provides without any room for creativity. But you're also not allowed to create anything that competes with Google's own app offerings[0]. So it is very unclear just what exactly you're expected to do with these APIs. [0] Of course, not that they provide enough features through the APIs that you could. Things like StreetView photospheres are only available through a black box viewer widget or small, rectangular snapshots at configurable view angles. You can recreate the photosphere by combining several dozen of these shots, but each of them will have a very visible copyright watermark that you are contractually obligated to retain. You also don't get any access to their LIDAR depth data, so you can't do any sort of stereo reproduction. This all boils down to making the data source essentially useless for VR. Which would probably be considered as "competing with Google Earth" anyway.

eightysixfour 6y ago

Only tangentially related, but has anyone noticed that the Google Maps app for iOS has become significantly worse in the last few years? They have crammed so many touchpoints on to the map that it is impossible to touch anything of value - I can't tell you how many times I have somehow managed to select an entire county (something I don't think I've ever intentionally done) on my iPhone instead of a POI, which then zooms out to show me the whole county and removes all of the POIs I was looking at in the first place! Is this a problem for others as well?

jimktrains2 6y ago
I dont have iOS, but I have similar, and more, complaints with the android and web versions.

tylerrobinson 6y ago

I would switch to Apple Maps if they adjusted your estimated position while driving. When you're following directions on Google Maps, the app seems to estimate your location based on your current speed and the road you're on. Apple Maps doesn't do this (or doesn't do it as much) so it causes me to miss turns.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
I'm so happy I'm not the only one. This drives me crazy, and seems like such a simple feature to implement.

sonotmyname 6y ago

I switched to Apple Maps long before it was believed to be good enough for 2 features that Google Maps will never (likely) implement - random identifiers and location fuzzing. These privacy-first features are important to me. Now that Apple Maps has had many years to get a lot better, I genuinely prefer it to Google Maps - even setting aside the privacy issues. I love in California, so I understand there may be locale based differences, but it’s never really steered me wrong (pun intended), and always does a good job of picking a logical route.

bikingbismuth 6y ago
I've used Apple maps in Phoenix for a while and prefer it over Google maps as well. Google doesn't always update their maps in a timely fashion and will display closures that have since cleared up, especially on rural sections of highways.

norswap 6y ago

Personally, what I find mind-boggling is the inability of Google to capitalize on Map's potential. If improved, it could concurrence at least TripAdvisor and Yelp easily (and maybe Booking too, if they were willing to invest in customer service - which I doubt). Maps has the potential to be integrated (or better integrated) everywhere in Google's digital estate (search, GMail, Android, even YouTube). Simarly, simplifying the creation, sharing, and most of all, discovery of user-made maps could boost it enormously. Instead, it languishes. The UX is incredibly frustrating. Just sharing a location on a map can be non-trivial. Making it more difficult to build on top of maps was an incredibly bone-headed move as well.

aerovistae 6y ago

> Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old). Can anyone explain this? Comment seems very random, total non-sequitur

pueblito 6y ago
The author is being funny

dleslie 6y ago

Google Maps lost its luster for me when they made it difficult to plot arbitrary routes and draw regions. Once upon a time, I would use google maps to plot hiking routes and draw regions to describe destination areas. Ie, "in this neighbourhood one can find good street-level shoppes". You can still do these things, but it's cumbersome and buried in the menus; whereas I recall this behaviour being first-class.

vxNsr 6y ago

Isn't the whole moat of google maps that it's part of google? when I search I don't want to have to use different websites for each type of search, right now google is the leader but even if they become only mediocre at maps but stay at no. 1 at search they're very safe. I don't see any future where google creates a special modal box for apple maps on it's search results page no matter who is deemed "the best map"

coldtea 6y ago
>Isn't the whole moat of google maps that it's part of google? No, that's only for the very lazy :-) Especially for something like Maps, that doesn't get some huge benefit from the integration.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  The lazy being all the people who don't go to different search engines for different topics or who don't care about privacy hoopla and just want to find their thing... so basically 96% of people.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Well, people switch all the time when it offers some real benefit. The don't stick with Google search out of lazyness, but because all alternatives suck llamas balls (Bing, DDG, etc.) But consider how fast, and how many times, people switched browsers, first leaving behind the de-facto market leader (Netscape to IE), then leaving behind the OS-bundled one (IE to Firefox), then again leaving behind the current leader to a new faster engine (Firefox to Chrome). With Google Maps deteriorating and the discomfort of change much smaller than changing than changing browsers, it's all too easy to switch to another map website. Heck, that has happened in the past, Google Maps wasn't the first always. As recorded in this classic piece of folk lore: (well let's hit up yahoo maps to find the dopest route!) I prefer mapquest (that's a good one too) Google maps is the best (true dat) double true!

chooseaname 6y ago

I like Here We Go, except for the name. It isn’t as polished as others but I find it good enough to trust it. It has great support for offline as well.

gerash 6y ago

Google maps also has this visual localization without using GPS which the competitors don't have. It helps to quickly localize in a dense urban area

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

alasdair_ 6y ago

I worked at a company that heavily used the maps API in 2018. The 1,400% price hike really was an eye opener. It wasn't just the money involved, which was large, but the fact that it came so suddenly and with so much magnitude. Google's choice to bump these prices made me realize that they could do the same thing with their compute cloud pricing or other APIs, again with little notice. That, in turn, led to the realization that we needed to remove our reliance on Google's entire stack, and quickly, or we'd be in a terrible bargaining position later. This one choice by the maps team likely cost Google significantly in the medium to long term, if any other companies realized the same things we did.

maxerickson 6y ago
Mapbox responded to Google raising prices by raising their prices. Is it likely that Azure and Amazon would do similar if they raised prices on GCP?
- MichaelZuo 6y ago
  Did all of the major providers raise their prices after?
- arafsheikh 6y ago
  Curious to know if AWS has ever hiked the price of any of its services.
  - cldellow 6y ago
    In 11 years of using it, I've never seen AWS increase the price for a service whose cost inputs they controlled entirely. It can happen, though. They increased AWS Pinpoint costs because their cost to send SMSes in India increased by 25% due to a regulatory action that increased the price for all SMS traffic in India. Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it ensures your early adopters are those who get the most value, and it gives you a big buffer when discovering how much it actually costs to operate. This usually guarantees that prices have only one way to go. For example, AWS IoT Device Management had a 90% price cut after it was introduced.

johnny_reilly 6y ago

> Back in 2012, I had not yet been born (I am, in fact, only six years old). But I am a student of history. So good. So very good

tracker1 6y ago

Related... when I'm in the car, and not, I often use the google assistant to search... for at least a couple months, it's gotten to be almost worse than useless as the bottom 1/3 is covered by google buttons over the stuff I'm searching for, and the mini map view at the top doesn't easily expand to the screen for pan/zoom. The assistant should be much easier to use, and while not the best, I admit I have tried to use it driving, and now I pretty much have to pull over and use it, because "OK Google give me directions to X on Y st in City" no longer does what it should.

aduitsis 6y ago
Google maps started from a position of being better and snappier than (then) Nokia maps. Today, it's almost impossible to use google maps while driving, the UI is simply unusable unless you can devote your 100% attention to it, and even then the results may vary. On the other hand, Here maps (former Nokia maps) has gotten better. Oh, and my favourite google maps feature, announce the instruction to turn left or right while YOU STILL HAVEN'T PASSED the previous street intersection!
- tracker1 6y ago
  Reminds me... one thing I don't like is that you don't know which side of the street you should be on far enough ahead after a turn... "Turn right, then navigate to the left lane" if the next turn is less than a mile away.

brian_herman 6y ago

Don’t know I used Apple Maps and it still gave me highways when I had tolls and highways turned off. Waze got bought by google... Anyone have any recommendations for anything else than google maps?

rootusrootus 6y ago

I'm glad. They need a kick in the pants. They haven't updated street view in my area in eight years.

z77dj3kl 6y ago

This is a great article. One mapping product that's rarely mentioned but seems to run on an entirely different/unique stack is 2GIS (https://2gis.ru https://2gis.ru). It's incredibly detailed and ubiquitous in Russia among other places.

monksy 6y ago

Some clarification needs to be mentioned. Also, this is an issue with the industry. There are more companies out there than MFANG. Our industry should acknowledge other players out there. Bing Maps and Facebook uses HERE maps under the covers. That's a company that has had the people to really knock mapping out of the park. However, you have some major mismanagement there and lack luster direction that made google maps continue to exist. (They have lead the way in offline mapping.. no joke in 2010 you could install it on your phone, fly from Europe to the US and drive to Canada and back without having data or having to micromanage your "offline data storage") Also, to add insult to injury.. you used to get here.com to point to your customer facing maps, now you have to go "wego.here.com" if you even want to use the consumer maps anymore.

Demiurge 6y ago

> You know Google Maps? What I do is, like, build little pieces of Google Maps over and over for people who need them but can’t just use Google Maps because they’re not allowed to for some reason, or another. I've been working with web mapping for 15 years and I've never thought of saying it because it's never been true for hundreds of applications. Google Maps has always been the worst map client to integrate with. OpenLayers, leaflet, MapBox and myriads of alternative data sources, layers, behaviors and widgets are more suitable for custom applications. Some people seem to love a particular Google layer, like parcels or businesses, but it never seemed vital unless they were trying replicate some Google Maps experience, in which case I would just advise to send a route or street view request directly to the Google Maps website or app, and be done with it. The latest fad seems to be 3D terrain and 3D buildings. It's so amazing in the product demso, but the real world usefulness?

nojs 6y ago

As another point of comparison Apple Maps works very well in China whereas Google Maps is completely broken (even if you have the data offline the GPS location is usually wrong). Apple have obviously put a lot of focus on making it work there.

kccqzy 6y ago
That's a stupid Chinese restriction because Chinese mapping data uses GCJ-2 instead of the standard WGS 84 datum. If the Chinese government were to give Google the license to use their datum, Google's map location issue would be gone. (Though POI would still be a problem.)

jedberg 6y ago

> Today, I would argue the three pillars of its comparative advantage are Places, Street View, and 3D data. And TRAFFIC data. The main reason I still use GMaps/Waze is because they give better arrival estimates than anyone else, because they have more traffic data, because of network effects. I think the winner of the maps wars will be the one who gets the best traffic estimates, and I think Google/Waze are still way ahead on that front. I just wish the GMaps UI and Waze UI would be combined. I love the cop, traffic camera, and hazard notifications of Waze, I love the lane markers in GMaps, as well as their navigating by landmark (I was once told "turn in the driveway after the Chipotle" by GMaps). I also love Apple's "turn at the second stop sign". So if I could get a UI with all those things and Google's traffic data, that would be peachy.

throwaway1777 6y ago
That seems like a solvable problem with money. Get car manufacturers on board. A lot of people use their car’s built in navigation.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > A lot of people use their car’s built in navigation. I don't think that's true anymore. We were looking for cars back in February, and one thing I noticed is that many of the new cars did not come with navigation. When I asked why the dealer told me everyone just wants CarPlay because they use Google Maps on their phone. That made sense to me, since I too did not want to pay for navigation since I just use Google Maps via CarPlay.

rhacker 6y ago

It's a bit hand-wavy except for street view catching up. I'm pretty much completely migrated to Firefox/DDG for most browser stuff, except for maps. I still use Google Maps on my phone because there's so damn much information packed in there. Including ways to search for companies open til 11pm. I can instantly see which restaurants are doing curbside. It's also on my phone (although I do plan on switching to iOS next year when my android gets a bit too old). We'll see how my maps changes with that.

dmje 6y ago

Here's a little story: I run a tiny digital agency. Our clients are all non technical. They all want maps of some form. Until Google did their infamous pricing thing, all was well: we could set up as many nice embedded maps on websites as needed, clients all happy. Then the price / key requirement thing happened. Turns out you have to navigate through the absolute hell hole that is Google Cloud Console or whatever they call it this week. It involves permissions, and users and keys and all manner of layers that only a hardcore Dev can cope with. Google don't let us do it on client's behalf - I certainly can't ask client to do it for themselves. Stalemate. So, yeh, MapBox here we come.

zyang 6y ago
Have you tried Mapkit JS?
- dmje 6y ago
  I have not, but I'll check it out - thanks :-)
jawartak 6y ago
Have you tried Stadia Maps? It sounds like precisely what you're looking for.

pedalpete 6y ago

Maps as a tool for finding your way is just the starting point. In the last month we've seen MapBox release their 3D API and Microsoft show off what they are able to do with Project Anywhere. Re-creating the world in 3D and making that a valuable product is next on the horizon, and though Google had the upper hand with Google Earth, they never opened up an API to it, and I think they'll be kicking themselves that this didn't get more attention in the future. I have a horse in this race as the founder of 3D mapping for outdoor sports start-up https://ayvri.com https://ayvri.com

thrower123 6y ago

I can't think of a Google product that is actually better now than it was a decade ago; in fact they've almost universally become less useful, less powerful, slower, and less ergonomic. Or they've been destroyed and either not replaced, or replaced with one or more increasingly half-baked successors. It's astounding how difficult it is to use Google Maps these days, and how much less data is available.

makecheck 6y ago

Generally agree, except for this doozy at the end: “...Google could reduce its cost basis moving forward and free up resources for competing at what they’re really great at: building great software.” Oh NO, they are definitely NOT great at software. All of my problems with Google Maps, Google Search, admin panels, etc. boil down to mind-numbingly bad software design decisions, that have become worse every year. Google essentially sabotages its own products at this point, regardless of what competitors may do. (They’re not alone, of course...)

winrid 6y ago

Fun tidbit. I recently started working on my own 3D map renderer, without any 3D programming experience, it wasn't actually that hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XIFC2SawY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XIFC2SawY It looks much better nowadays, but you get the idea...

shp0ngle 6y ago

From my experience, OpenStreetMap is getting significantly better in the "long tail", as big companies (Grab, Uber, Apple) are using it and then contributing the issues back and reusing it in their proprietary maps. Still, they are no match for Google Maps.

telltruth 6y ago

As the story goes Marissa Mayer was "demoted" to take charge of Maps/Places group that till that point no one much cared. To keep her into "leash", she got the budgets she wanted and she truly threw herself at Maps. She went out and bought enormous amount of expensive data and eventually setup the team with more than thousand people. Until that time still no one much cared. It wasn't unlike iPhone came out and everyone woke up to maps and Mayer's efforts paid off. After Mayer left, Google Maps has stagnated. There is not much of next horizon chase, big bets any more. Budget growth had been slowing down as well. However, I'm doubtful Apple will ever leap from Google Maps. You don't see hundreds of cars mapping the alleys all over the world. OSM gets better but last 1-3% is unattainable for them. More importantly, Apple significantly lacks in AI/ML skill sets. Siri is still shit show precisely for same reason.

huntedsnark 6y ago

Missing the issue by a mile: It's the place data not the maps, and you're required in the ToS to use Google's maps if you want to display their data geospatially. When Factual/Foursquare/Facebook/Apple (who all use a blend of each other's place data) overtake Google's data quality there then we can talk about the decline of maps.

ugjka 6y ago

Google API's? Never again. You are not a customer but cattle

sunstone 6y ago

Many large corporations including Apple are pouring millions of dollars annually into OpenStreetMaps so they have access to a decent map system.

Liamjohn 6y ago

Well I have several zozo water tanks filled to the brim with clean rain water. Just give me a shout.

867-5309 6y ago

what an oddly annoying manner of writing

hamandcheese 6y ago

> These are the actions of an organization that is annoyed they ever let people become their customers. Well put. This is the essence of Google’s (non-advertising) business practices.

jessriedel 6y ago

To me, the killer maps app would be the ability to type a consumer product into the maps search bar and have it display on the map all businesses (likely) selling that product. There are still lots of items that are not on Amazon or that I cannot wait two days for. Every time I try this now, I'm amazed by how bad the results are. First, I think that the simplest ML tools would be able to (say) identify which stores are grocery stores by their name, yet Google Maps is unreliable at this. Second, merchants have a big incentive to tell Google what they sell (either typically or, more ambitiously, with an up-to-date inventory API), if only Google would give them a portal to do so.

iso1631 6y ago

I went to look at apple maps https://www.apple.com/maps/ https://www.apple.com/maps/ All I see is an advert page telling me "You’ll like where this is going" and "get much easier" There's a tiny "open maps" in the top right corner which links to https://maps.apple.com/go https://maps.apple.com/go, but that just reloads the advert page OSM and Google Maps work just fine

dmd 6y ago
You can use Apple Maps via DuckDuckGo. As far as I know, you can't use it anywhere from apple.com directly.