3 ms·

I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what t

I don't understand this take. Google Maps is one of the world's greatest modern achievements. It's an incredible resource, and it's free. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but if you told me it collectively saved hundreds of billions of dollars a year i wouldn't be surprised. Not to mention the cultural value of being able to teleport virtually anywhere in the world and see the streets, visit places etc. Isn't it a good thing that Google, for all their ills, put their money to work on this? Isn't this one of those capitalism success stories so many people here rave about?

xapata 5y ago
I was on my way to an important meeting and Google Maps had an outage. I panicked, and it took me a good 5 minutes to realize there were other map products that I could use to get directions.
slownews45 5y ago
A fair number of HN takes are snark and critique I think these days, it's a bit more reddit now? I think folks underestimate just HOW MUCH data google maps has and how many users it has, and the integration / scale is impressive particularly as some parts of the system are real time. They seem to update both street view and satellite data pretty frequently, and you can go back in time in sat vie as well, so we have a geo and time dimension now. When I do routing I can route by walking, transit, driving etc. It seems to know every train / bus route and stop and even schedule. It seems to have most businesses. With street view I can zoom from space to a street and see a storefront. This is stuff the CIA spends $20 billion on and gets a crappy product only 3 users at a time can use in a room.
- durnygbur 5y ago
  > When I do routing I can route by walking, transit, driving etc. It seems to know every train / bus route and stop and even schedule. Not only that but they seem to route through the "most popular" or "most attended routes" crowdsourced by their unaware users. Meanwhile others just calculate the "best time" or "shortest path" routing.
  - eythian 5y ago
    I've wondered about this. I sometimes use it for biking if I'm going to an unfamiliar part of the city, and its biking directions sometimes end up a bit weird, like taking a path that, while slightly shorter, is a bit more uncomfortable (crossing somewhere with busy traffic for example.) I've also noticed that it doesn't know about many easy to cross places that everyone uses and will suggest a longer route to an "official" U-turnable spot. So, for the sections of the route I know I often ignore its directions and go my preferred way and just let it catch up. Assuming that many other people around here are making the same choices as me (perhaps a big assumption in some cases, definitely not all), it still has kept recommending the less-preferred routes.
  - sdoering 5y ago
    One thing I regularly encounter is a typical "Tragedy of the Commons" problem with Google Maps. When they do route me, they often tend to route me through residential areas (in Germany these are often traffic reduced areas with respective speed limits). I imagine it is, because these routes tend to be very slightly shorter and often also at least a few seconds shorter in average duration. I tend to use these "Schleichwege" (short cuts only locals know) as a local - but find me using them more and more when I use Google Maps in areas that i am just not familiar with. In bigger cities I (anecdotally) see Google routing lots of traffic through these areas that were before mostly quite with only a few locals using them as short cuts. Now many more people are being routed through to combat the typical road congestion and for google to be able to mostly avoid traffic jams for the users. When considering, that residential streets are not build to encounter this much traffic, they tend to degrade quicker - making the situation even worse for people living there. I do not have a solution - or even made my mind up what to finally think about this. But this is one "data" point more for me to consider when thinking about costs and benefits to society from such a solution like Google Maps.
    - lucumo 5y ago
      In The Netherlands these shortcuts are usually removed or made less attractive. For example, closing a street halfway, so people can still reach both ends, but can't pass through. Or they build a retractable bollard that will delay traffic during high traffic hours. The delay is just long enough that using the shortcut takes longer than just using the main road.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  On the contrary, I see gmaps having map and satellite data that has been and still is out of date for years now. OSM has much more detailed data and is up to date here. So I really don't see what's so impressive about gmaps. The only major advantage they have is the ability to scoop up data from users, as well as the network effects that lead to people posting their photos and other stuff on Google. As always, I'd rather have all map data be free & open. It's not cool that all this effort is concentrated in the hands of one company who can do whatever they want and prevent you from doing cool & useful things with the data. Crowdsourced data should belong to the crowd.

xapata 5y ago

I was on my way to an important meeting and Google Maps had an outage. I panicked, and it took me a good 5 minutes to realize there were other map products that I could use to get directions.

slownews45 5y ago

A fair number of HN takes are snark and critique I think these days, it's a bit more reddit now? I think folks underestimate just HOW MUCH data google maps has and how many users it has, and the integration / scale is impressive particularly as some parts of the system are real time. They seem to update both street view and satellite data pretty frequently, and you can go back in time in sat vie as well, so we have a geo and time dimension now. When I do routing I can route by walking, transit, driving etc. It seems to know every train / bus route and stop and even schedule. It seems to have most businesses. With street view I can zoom from space to a street and see a storefront. This is stuff the CIA spends $20 billion on and gets a crappy product only 3 users at a time can use in a room.

durnygbur 5y ago
> When I do routing I can route by walking, transit, driving etc. It seems to know every train / bus route and stop and even schedule. Not only that but they seem to route through the "most popular" or "most attended routes" crowdsourced by their unaware users. Meanwhile others just calculate the "best time" or "shortest path" routing.
- eythian 5y ago
  I've wondered about this. I sometimes use it for biking if I'm going to an unfamiliar part of the city, and its biking directions sometimes end up a bit weird, like taking a path that, while slightly shorter, is a bit more uncomfortable (crossing somewhere with busy traffic for example.) I've also noticed that it doesn't know about many easy to cross places that everyone uses and will suggest a longer route to an "official" U-turnable spot. So, for the sections of the route I know I often ignore its directions and go my preferred way and just let it catch up. Assuming that many other people around here are making the same choices as me (perhaps a big assumption in some cases, definitely not all), it still has kept recommending the less-preferred routes.
- sdoering 5y ago
  One thing I regularly encounter is a typical "Tragedy of the Commons" problem with Google Maps. When they do route me, they often tend to route me through residential areas (in Germany these are often traffic reduced areas with respective speed limits). I imagine it is, because these routes tend to be very slightly shorter and often also at least a few seconds shorter in average duration. I tend to use these "Schleichwege" (short cuts only locals know) as a local - but find me using them more and more when I use Google Maps in areas that i am just not familiar with. In bigger cities I (anecdotally) see Google routing lots of traffic through these areas that were before mostly quite with only a few locals using them as short cuts. Now many more people are being routed through to combat the typical road congestion and for google to be able to mostly avoid traffic jams for the users. When considering, that residential streets are not build to encounter this much traffic, they tend to degrade quicker - making the situation even worse for people living there. I do not have a solution - or even made my mind up what to finally think about this. But this is one "data" point more for me to consider when thinking about costs and benefits to society from such a solution like Google Maps.
  - lucumo 5y ago
    In The Netherlands these shortcuts are usually removed or made less attractive. For example, closing a street halfway, so people can still reach both ends, but can't pass through. Or they build a retractable bollard that will delay traffic during high traffic hours. The delay is just long enough that using the shortcut takes longer than just using the main road.
foxfluff 5y ago
On the contrary, I see gmaps having map and satellite data that has been and still is out of date for years now. OSM has much more detailed data and is up to date here. So I really don't see what's so impressive about gmaps. The only major advantage they have is the ability to scoop up data from users, as well as the network effects that lead to people posting their photos and other stuff on Google. As always, I'd rather have all map data be free & open. It's not cool that all this effort is concentrated in the hands of one company who can do whatever they want and prevent you from doing cool & useful things with the data. Crowdsourced data should belong to the crowd.