29 ms·

Google Maps has become an eyesore

• 1970-01-01 3y ago
  >In the perennial battle between mapping services, there are two main competitors: Google Maps and Apple Maps Wow, straight out of the gate they're jumping to conclusions. I can think of a dozen "mapping services" that are free for personal use. Each has a particular strength and use-case.
• CogitoCogito 3y ago
  My current way of using Google maps is to use it for searching and localization and then use what I call a "real" map app afterwards. I.e. on mobile I will use Guru Maps or on my desktop I'll use some version of Open Street Maps. My main issue with Google maps is that it isn't really a mapping application anymore; it's a navigation application. It's not really suited to being used as a map (e.g. it jumps around randomly, it hides road names, etc.) and instead focuses on showing you how to get somewhere assuming you're basically a robot following their instructions (e.g. navigation while driving). That's fine and all, but really isn't what I want out of a mapping application. I'd choose a paper map any day over Google maps.
• timthelion 3y ago
  I'd like to recommend the Czech mapy.cz for Europe. It is generally much better and contains fewer translation errors.
• lwansbrough 3y ago
  “Google Maps has become an eyesore” https://i.imgur.com/DeLj7vh.png https://i.imgur.com/DeLj7vh.png
• t0bia_s 3y ago
  I don't use Google maps over 4 years. Mapy.cz is enough for me and I do recommend to use it. It support offline maps, no account, detailed hiking routes... Even more accurate than Google has.
• abdullahhhh 3y ago
  [flagged]
• abdullahhhh 3y ago
  [flagged]
• bick_nyers 3y ago
  My biggest issue with Google Maps is that when it decides it wants to reroute me, it is absurdly aggressive. "Here is a faster route, if you don't take your eyes off the highway, turn on your phone screen, and click this button in the next 5 seconds you will be rerouted". Half the time it reroutes me off a highway to take a series of turns in a location I am unfamiliar, or it takes me onto a highway that I dread driving on (I4 here in Central FL), or it takes me to a toll road that I guess it doesn't realize is a toll road. Even if you do hit "Don't reroute for a potential 2 minute time savings", it will just try again in 2 more minutes. Like dude, I picked the route when I started this thing, go fuck yourself. Clicking buttons on touchscreens while hurling a thousand pounds of steel around at 80 miles an hour is what kills people. And another thing since I'm ranting, if I have do-not-disturb turned on, don't fucking pause my Spotify and play a phone call ringtone through my speakers. If the person calling me is having an emergency they should have called 911, it can wait.
• eatstorming 3y ago
  I used to live by Google Maps for several years, until I moved to China. I knew it'd be worse than other options, but I really didn't expect the gap to be so gargantuan. And I also felt like the move exposed a lot more of some of the problems brought up in the article and comments. To be sure I wasn't remembering things wrongly, I just opened it up and confirmed that the points below still stand today. - There are insane amounts of businesses shown/advertised on Maps, even though Google doesn't have a presence in mainland China. I can confirm that lots of them are correct, as I pass by them frequently. There are many that are outdated, as in Maps showing a given business at location X, but the place has become something else. This is most likely due to Google being unable to update the information in a timely fashion so I don't really blame them, but still adds to the app being considerably less useful. - It cannot show public transport information, even though it says it can. This makes the app completely useless for me, and I'd believe for most others here, as I think foreigners are more likely to try using it than Chinese people, and it is a lot less common for foreigners to drive here. - Even with a VPN on, it still cannot find most information about anything. Even some driving/walking directions seem wrong. Conversely, Apple Maps actually does as well here for me as Google Maps did before I moved to this country. The funnier part of that is how it feels like Apple only cares about the US in regards to Maps data and features, but it does a pretty good job here. No fancy stuff like 3D mapping, look inside, etc, but I can count on one hand the number of times Apple Maps messed up in the several years I've been here.
  • CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    For your first pain point, have you taken into account that China mandates that Google maps deliberately obscure exact locations by being off as much to several hundred meters? If you look at road crossings from Hong Kong to mainland, you'll notice that sometimes the bridges seem to drop straight into the water.
    • eatstorming 3y ago
      That could be related, yes. But most of the businesses I recognize are placed close to where they actually are/were, however a lot of them are now different businesses. I think it's due to Google being unable to update it because they don't have a presence in the country.
• h0nd 3y ago
  The reason I uninstalled google maps is because it would open in a random place not related to me (I live in Europe and it opens in Tucson,AZ,USA). AppleMaps is a great map and even better for guiding directions, but their servers are extremely slow so it is very annoying to browse.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• not_your_vase 3y ago
  Every time I use Google Maps, I feel so helpless, and frankly, stupid. On Desktop, I simply can't figure it out how to switch to A-B route mode, nor how to trigger street view. I literally just click randomly in a more and more frustrated way until suddenly the option appears. And on Android I just avoid the app. I hate that I couldn't turn off the automatic compass. Every time I finally manage to orient myself when in a new place, the map starts spinning like crazy. I truly feel old when using Google Maps.
  • sonofhans 3y ago
    Well, it’s not built for you. Cows may not like milking machines either, but the farmer doesn’t care. Google Maps exists to further Google’s surveillance platform and search monopoly. User preference is incidental. It’s just like Internet Explorer on Windows 20 years ago. Microsoft only needed to make a good product long enough to leverage it into their other monopoly products, then they no longer gave a shit. We can hope Google Maps suffers the same fate.
    • kykeonaut 3y ago
      But a milking machine that spills half of the milk doesn't help the farmer nor the cow.
    • afavour 3y ago
      > Cows may not like milking machines either, but the farmer doesn’t care. Google Maps exists to further Google’s surveillance platform and search monopoly. User preference is incidental. I can’t help but roll my eyes reading stuff like this. Cows have no choice in their lives, Google Maps users can switch to an (increasingly competitive) alternative with very little switching cost. Of course it’s in Google’s interest to keep their product usable.
    • astrange 3y ago
      Google Maps exist(ed) to get the people who wrote Google Maps promoted. The other stuff doesn't really matter. Google is not well run enough to be able to care about those things!
• moomoo11 3y ago
  Love Apple Maps. It has progressively gotten so much better and awesome. I don’t think I ever use my iPhone and get frustrated. Leaving android in 2015 was the best decision I made.
  • browningstreet 3y ago
    I often open Apple Maps and google maps in the same location, just for fun. Google Maps is sinfully ugly and cluttered now in comparison. Whatever the merits or demerits of Material Design are, its cleanliness and elegance hasn’t made it down to Google Naps. And while I’d grant that maps is a hard problem to solve, Apple’s example has been out there for a bit now.
  • jeffbee 3y ago
    Apple Maps has a good UI and bad data. Their problem is the same problem people face when anyone tries to unseat an incumbent platform: they don't have the audience, so people don't contribute to their knowledge base. Apple Maps shows an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood as open on Saturdays, but they haven't been open on Saturdays in years. They didn't even update their hours on their own website, but the hours are correct on Google Maps. Why? Because business owners maintain their info on Google Maps, because it reaches their customers. And the customers do their own editing of business data as well. So Apple is stuck at a point with not enough users to edit the data, and they are either not climbing out of that rut or they are climbing out very slowly.
    • amelius 3y ago
      Perhaps Apple users do not feel inclined to edit the data. It may be a difference in attitude.
    • jemmyw 3y ago
      I just compared for my town. Popular cafe on Google maps has 844 reviews, 0 on Apple Maps. Another cafe, 202 reviews on Google, 1 on Apple Maps plus Apple hasn't updated the name. Also I quite like seeing the review text on Google, gives you a sense of what people like about a place and whether the review is genuine or just a grump. Apple seems to only show quite a simplified rating, although I've not used it enough to determine if there's more info in there. Apple is probably better in the US where it has had a lot more use. It's pretty poor here for the main thing I use it for - finding businesses.
• smeagull 3y ago
  What I don't understand is where there seem to be two versions of google maps. Sometimes I can get streetview, but if I access it about half the time I can't.
  • sverhagen 3y ago
    I feel there are a number of "modes", or, I don't know, "levels" maybe, that offer different features and are not intuitive (for me). I think a long time ago, you were either on the map, or you were in navigation, or you were in Street View. But now I get the impression that there's steps in between, like: you have maybe soft-selected a route, but you're not quite in navigation mode, yet you're unable to drop a pin somewhere else, so you have to go back without knowing how many steps exactly, that sort of funny business.
  • jeffbee 3y ago
    There are two web versions of Google Maps. There's the horrible one that you can reach from the search results page if you made a specifically commercial-local request, like [1]. There is the same thing on proper Google Maps[2]. 1: https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:9&tbm=lcl&sxsrf=AB5stBhx0Pd6kafEwQWwUWBS28-YrhVbmg:1691383757505&q=lunch+in+downtown+berkeley&rflfq=1&num=10&ved=2ahUKEwiu2K3A38mAAxWHADQIHVnpDKIQjGp6BAgaEAE&biw=1237&bih=970&dpr=2#rlfi=hd:;si:;mv:[[37.8736323,-122.265715],[37.865785599999995,-122.273235]];tbs:lrf:!1m4!1u3!2m2!3m1!1e1!1m4!1u5!2m2!5m1!1sgcid_3american_1restaurant!1m4!1u5!2m2!5m1!1sgcid_3seafood_1restaurant!1m4!1u2!2m2!2m1!1e1!1m4!1u1!2m2!1m1!1e1!1m4!1u1!2m2!1m1!1e2!1m4!1u22!2m2!21m1!1e1!2m1!1e2!2m1!1e5!2m1!1e1!2m1!1e3!3sCgIIASABKgJVUw,lf:1,lf_ui:9 https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:9&tbm=lcl&... 2: https://www.google.com/maps/search/lunch+downtown+berkeley/@37.8697089,-122.2720553,17z/data=!3m1!4b1?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/search/lunch+downtown+berkeley/@...
    • runlevel1 3y ago
      Every time I encounter the first version I'm dumbfounded that it still exists. Its nerfed features make for such a frustrating user experience. I can't think of a reason for it to exist as its own thing. I'd love to know the rationale.
• joshxyz 3y ago
  so true. on mobile the interface of waze is just cleaner.
  • foobarbecue 3y ago
    It's interesting that Google has kept the Waze brand around. I expected them to merge it into maps when they bought it.
    • resolutebat 3y ago
      It's happening, it just took a while. https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/06/waze-googles-other-mapping-app-gets-hit-with-layoffs/ https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/06/waze-googles-other-ma...
      • sentientslug 3y ago
        I’m not sure you read that article. The separate Waze division has been rolled into the Geo (maps) team but the apps are not merging.
        • resolutebat 3y ago
          Yes, the apps have not been merged yet, but the article notes that Waze no longer exists as an independent entity internally and just had major layoffs, so it certainly sounds like the writing is on the wall.
      • mianos 3y ago
        It would be great if they replaced the Waze search with Google. I really like the waze mapping and interface, but when I use voice to search for a destination, it is nearly useless here in Sydney. For example, if I search for an exact local place to eat, the top result is some completely irrelevant store on the other side of the city, followed by a list of useless distant results that I have to scroll through to, maybe, find the place I want to go to. Whereas, the Google voice search finds it first go and starts navigating to it.
• xcdzvyn 3y ago
  It's inflammatory, but this website is worse. There's some video playing of a stranger eating mustard skittles taking up the bottom quarter of the screen.
  • moritzwarhier 3y ago
    Really, if people here wouldn't use ad blockers and desktop computers in the majority, noone would be discussing the article at all. It's not realistic to discuss UX while plastering your website with things like "mustard skittles hahaha" unless you want to deceive people and dumb them down.
  • zer0zzz 3y ago
    Somehow AdGuard on mobile didn’t filter this horrible shit for me
    • brucethemoose2 3y ago
      Bromite didn't get it either. I think its a 1st party autoplay video?
      • Ocean7585 3y ago
        Bromite is at this point abandonware, try Cromite instead https://github.com/uazo/cromite https://github.com/uazo/cromite
        • zer0zzz 3y ago
          Weird. How does it integrate Adblock? Do they do a native Adblock the way brave does?
        • brucethemoose2 3y ago
          Awesome, thanks.
  • bakugo 3y ago
    Wow, I tried disabling ublock and it is pretty bad. There are exactly 0 words of the body of the article visible when first loading the page on a 1440p monitor, two thirds of the screen are ads...
• moshegramovsky 3y ago
  I really want to know why Google maps is slow on a $3500 laptop with a huge Nvidia card.
  • brucethemoose2 3y ago
    Its probably using the IGP for the browser, unless you run an external monitor. You can check with the Nvidia activity monitor. Maps is mostly going to be CPU bound though.
  • rabuse 3y ago
    What do you mean by "slow"? I'm on a standard M1 Pro Macbook, and don't seem to have any issues?
  • beej71 3y ago
    I have an older computer and it's a dog. Other maps are somehow not dogs.
  • midoridensha 3y ago
    Works fine for me on two laptops, one that sounds similar to yours, and one that's just a Dell with Intel graphics. Both run Linux. Maybe it's your OS or browser?
• joecool1029 3y ago
  https://archive.is/os2JU https://archive.is/os2JU (link without unclosable eyesore autoplaying video. Talk about irony)
• esafak 3y ago
  Google Maps is actually one of the few Google properties that has not got bad. I appreciate their reviews since they don't have Yelp's problem of extorting businesses.
  • blamazon 3y ago
    It's also neat that you can review almost everything in google maps. Wanna leave a review for a cool rock in your neighborhood? Sure! Why not.
    • papa-whisky 3y ago
      https://www.google.com/maps/place/Murder+Cove/@57.0310912,-134.5662589,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x54043683cb6698ed:0x3714d43d29b50099!8m2!3d57.0249754!4d-134.5573902!16s%2Fg%2F1tfk43dx?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Murder+Cove/@57.0310912,-1... edit: also this one made me chuckle https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tim+Hortons/@82.4982691,-62.3469723,15.88z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x4fc413a65f2b68b1:0x1fc081cc6ad99949!8m2!3d82.4984226!4d-62.3534737!16s%2Fg%2F11rxrwhk0n?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tim+Hortons/@82.4982691,-6...
      • aix1 3y ago
        Thanks for that Tim Horton link. I laughed and laughed.
• drpixie 3y ago
  I find that it is often difficult/immpossible to get a sense of scale. The width and detail of streets is adjusted such that it is not obvious if I'm looking at things a few hundred metres apart, or a few kilometers! And there is no scale indication on the screen! I guess they want a "clean" look but it's not so helpful. Take a look at Garmin aviation maps. You're offered only a specific set of scales (not an infinitely adjustable range), there is always an indication of scale, and the detail appropriately hints at the scale.
  • bluefinity 3y ago
    Most maps do that, even print ones. It's not about a "clean look", but about readability. There is also a scale, in the bottom right corner.
• readthenotes1 3y ago
  The lack of street names unless you hit the zoom level just right (or seemingly never) reinforces the adage that systems focus on perpetuating themselves not providing the service they were built for.
• tananaev 3y ago
  Probably not a popular opinion here, but I like Google Maps. Sure there's some clutter, but it's pretty good at navigation, public transit and searching for places. I don't know any better alternative.
  • zbrozek 3y ago
    My wife and I prefer navigating with Apple maps after Google Maps stagnated for years and years. Apple's voice instructions are incomparably better.
    • notantigoogle 3y ago
      what alternate reality is this? Google Maps has never stagnated ever. Tons of new features have been added every year since it was first created. Go read the maps blog posts, watch the google i/o videos, or just search for it and you'll see 10s of thousands of articles listing the new features from each year.
      • zbrozek 3y ago
        It's our lived reality, not the SWE-centric reality. We don't really want new features, we want the existing features to work better. The voice output on Google Maps is simply bad. It calls out turns when there are other available turns before the one you're supposed to take, and doesn't say anything to disambiguate. It draws which lane to be in for your exit but doesn't call it out. It doesn't say what you need to know for compound instructions (e.g., exit followed closely by fork). You must look at the map to be able to follow the instructions. Apple Maps does these things better and that's why we prefer to use it (with screen mirroring to the car). And yes, we even like the 3D view. It helps provide context faster than the 2D view, even if it doesn't always render the best information. Every product has room for improvement, and Apple Maps has been improving. Google Maps isn't usefully better now than it was in 2015.
    • afavour 3y ago
      I want to like Apple Maps but their reliance upon Yelp for useful information infuriates me.
• wg0 3y ago
  Entropy or corporate greed and mismanagement - don't know. But Google is in a slow process to become a Yahoo! or Yelp it seems across all its properties.
• joecool1029 3y ago
  I've commented on this before[1] as have others[2] but Google Maps is willfully malicious software that I am certain has killed cyclists and motorcyclists by re-routing onto dangerous routes after navigation has started. Why this dangerous 'feature' cannot be disabled is infuriating. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31333754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31333754 [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Google%20maps%20motorcycle&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • UtopiaPunk 3y ago
    As a somewhat new commuting cyclist, I've been apps built on top of OpenStreetMap, like OSMAnd. I hear good things about Komoot as well. Also, as a cyclist and a bit of nerd, it's fun to update OSM around my bike routes I know best.
    • edrxty 3y ago
      Osmand should be on every single phone. It works when nothing else does including your cell connection. It's saved my butt a dozen times at this point.
      • beej71 3y ago
        I've been using on this trip to Norway and the detail is excellent. (That said, the only place I found, including undersea tunnels, that I didn't get signal was in the lower car hold of the ferry. This place has infrastructure.) I use it back home to label businesses and add other points to the map. Organic Maps uses OSM data offline and is a little friendlier.
      • galbar 3y ago
        I use it daily. Is become my default maps app, for over two years now
  • 3y ago
• sytelus 3y ago
  Big issue with Google Maps is that it doesn’t zoom in properly when you are complex turn. Number of times I miss the turn on Google Maps is so high compared to Apple Maps. Apple Maps even integrates with Apple Watch and taps on your wrist to ensure you don’t miss turn. More recently I also found Google Maps is not keeping up with closed roads in real time. Gradually but surely, I have moved on to Apple Maps. I never thought this would happen.
• thematrixadmin 3y ago
  As I am as frustrated as you, there's no alternative unfortunately. Although Apple Maps are nice, they aren't that up to date as Google's in eastern Europe :(
• konspence 3y ago
  I would add to this article that a major issue with Google Maps has been businesses trying to SEO-pad their business names on Google Maps, to the detriment of readability. This is also against their TOS – the "business name" form is supposed to be their legally registered business name, the one that they probably have signage for. Moderators simply don't enforce this, and with Map Maker basically gone, the community of moderators is somewhat of a cloak and dagger group now. I have tried to clean some of these up via submissions, because in spite of agreeing with the points of the article and using mostly Apple Maps for navigation, Google Maps still is better in terms of having a lot of community sourced data and overall place discoverability (along with Yelp, which Apple Maps seems to no longer source data from). Examples of these business names: - {name} - {city name} Axe Throwing - {name} License Agency - (Vehicle/Vessel not drivers license) - {name} - Lunch Buffet (Friday-Sunday) - {cuisine} Restaurant - {city name} And many now have: - {name of a local chain} - {neighborhood or city name} Some of this is a UX problem or perhaps data architecture problem – in the case of local chains, I imagine many are dealing with people calling in orders and showing up at the wrong place to pick up their order. Google Maps could do a better job showing the neighborhood/locality/"local name" of the area in the search results. Others are just a lack of consistent moderation.
  • graftak 3y ago
    This would be solved by dividing it up on 2 distinct fields, a business name field and a title field. Then a business can put their SEO crap in the title field and google maps can decide how much of the info to display when. Of course moderation would still be a thing, perhaps a character limit of 25 for the name should be enforced unless they can demonstrate why that is too little. Coincidently the separate fields is how Apple Maps does it, although their title field appears made up of a category list item, presumably to keep it consistent and free of spam.
  • oidar 3y ago
    I was disappointed that apple took yelp stuff away from apple maps as well. For restaurants though, clicking on the "menu" link for restaurants takes me to the yelp page for that restaurant.
  • 3y ago
• khazhoux 3y ago
  > Why won't you show me the street name? I've been running into this a lot lately. No matter how much I zoom -- no street name. This is Mapping 101.
  • DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    No, mapping 101 is showing me a scale. Without a scale it is a drawing not a map. A for everyone telling me I can enable it always in settings, I will answer that it still gets removed when you start navigation with 'Directions'. But I still agree street omission is pretty bad.
    • function_seven 3y ago
      You just reminded me of my own mapping annoyance. Apple Maps, while navigating, will keep zooming the map as I approach my destination. The scale keeps changing! For a lot of areas, this makes it possible to glance at the map, see that my dot is 32 millimeters away from the destination, drive for a bit, glance again… still 32 mm away. The same unit length on my screen represents 3 miles or 300 feet. I wish there was some visual indication of the scale, other than a tiny line in the bottom right corner.
    • feintruled 3y ago
      Something that catches me out when driving is the scale adjusting for speed. It makes sense, but a junction that looks quite close suddenly starts moving further away from you as you slow down for it and the maps zooms in. It's an odd UI quirk.
  • walthamstow 3y ago
    It's really bad in London. Instead of telling you the road is called Oxford Street (quite a famous road!) it shows instead the road number, A40, which is not known by 95% of the local population, nor by 100% of visitors.
    • caleb-allen 3y ago
      I've had this exact problem before. Extremely frustrating!
• AlbertCory 3y ago
  I worked on Google Maps monetization, and then on Maps itself. Monetization was a dismal failure. I don't know how well they're doing now, but Maps was a gigantic money-loser, forever. I'd be a little surprised if it didn't still lose money, but maybe less. I don't what those "pin ads" cost, but I'd bet it's way less than a search ad. If you don't believe that, that's fine. "What about indirect revenue?" you ask? Google consciously does not want to estimate that, because such a document could be discovered in patent litigation. As it is, there are tons of patent lawsuits about Maps, and the damage claims always tried to get at Ads revenue, because Maps revenue was nil. Caveat: I could be way out of date here. I've been retired a while now. As for the UX: "enshittification" and big-company bureaucracy describe it pretty well.
  • abdullahhhh 3y ago
    [dead]
  • summerlight 3y ago
    I personally think that ads on maps were a bad idea even for monetization. At glance, this seems to be a plausible ads inventory for local businesses but in reality this doesn't scale very well compared to Search or App ads (or even Display) since most of ads will be limited to a very narrow area so big advertisers don't feel as strongly as other channels. They could design ad campaigns specific to local areas but this increases overall complexity and makes it really hard to plan and optimize its budgets. Also, it's worth mentioning the difficulty of measuring offline conversions accurately... Some degree of automation might help, but at this state it's not really a great place for advertisers.
    • vladvasiliu 3y ago
      I hate ads as much as the next guy, but I actually think that if this were better implemented, it wouldn't be that bad. One way I commonly use google maps is as a restaurant or bar finder. Like "show me open restaurants around me". I even do this when at home and feel like eating out for whatever reason. I don't want to walk too far away or take transit. I just want to see the restaurants in a 10-minute walk radius around where I am which are open and what they serve. Now, sure, I'd like to see all restaurants, not just those which took out ads. But I'd be fine with those being featured at the top of the list. Instead, what I get, is ads for hotels down the street when I'm already home. Or ads for a carpet store chain, which was closed that particular day (national holiday), which you also can't really miss if you set foot in the square. Regarding monetization, they could probably figure a way to tell that if I click on the restaurant's pin, then follow directions there and stop at the address, I'm likely dining there.
• TheChaplain 3y ago
  Turning off _all_ notifications and Google Maps on Android is pretty okay, except that unnecessary "Latest in..." bottom sheet that takes up space. Wish I could disable that. And that it's an absolute battery drainer when using GPS navigation.
• ggm 3y ago
  Some locals in Brisbane succeeded in getting a brief historical name for the central business district ("Frogs Hollow") boosted up as a locality name which shows up in several zoom levels. It's more prominent than the real name of the location (Gardens Point) sometimes. Nobody appears able to get this rescinded. Either its being contested, or the process boundaries on "this is graffiti") are limiting. I do quite a lot of maps related input, I don't claim to be high status but I am sure I would have multi year searchable "is a bona fide person" status. Sure, I get it: it's funny. Once. It's really annoying explaining to visitors that its not actually a common name, not used, won't work with Uber or any other mechanistic "where is..." approach with real people.
  • NPC82 3y ago
    There's an entire fake park in my old neighborhood on Gmaps. I reported it ages ago and it's still there for no reason at all.
    • ggm 3y ago
      I'd make the "somebody is going to get killed" remark but it's already been made.
    • Lammy 3y ago
      Maybe it's a "trap" park to catch people copying Google Maps data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
  • stephen_g 3y ago
    I can't actually see it anymore at any zoom level on mobile or desktop. Maybe somebody finally did fix it (or maybe on a different sized screen or something it would still show?)... You can still search for it though.
    • ggm 3y ago
      Phew! the licenced bar which named itself "frogs hollow saloon" isn't a problem, its just the common or garden maps graffiti the article complains about! (amazed it's gone. Thanks for pointing it out)
• ggm 3y ago
  There's a streetsign in a small country town in NSW "ignore google maps" which is a reflection of how strongly mistaken belief about route-finding can require locals to act. (this is not a piece of cardboard, its a full on enamel finish legit sign. The road is a giant U-turn and the road above which it APPEARS on maps to connect to, cannot be reached. I wouldn't be surprised if pretty much every economy has one.
  • eesmith 3y ago
    Here is one on Sardinia ("do not follow the directions suggested by Google maps" and "4x4 only") from 2019 : https://edition.cnn.com/travel/gallery/baunei-google-maps-signs-photos/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/gallery/baunei-google-maps-si... "Disregard GPS instruction to proceed further" in the NJ pine barrens from 2019: https://forums.njpinebarrens.com/threads/in-the-blazing-hot-plains.13098/ https://forums.njpinebarrens.com/threads/in-the-blazing-hot-... Plus a number which warn off larger vehicles, like https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-ford-do-not-follow-sat-nav-warning-sign-in-morland-village-cumbria-71314572.html https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-ford-do-not-follow-sat-nav... and https://innway.blogspot.com/2012/11/do-not-follow-sat-nav-just-ran-3-day.html https://innway.blogspot.com/2012/11/do-not-follow-sat-nav-ju... . Both are from 10 years ago so hopefully things have gotten better. Still happens though. https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/23399093.plea-google-satnavs-send-heavy-traffic-herefordshire-lane/ https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/23399093.plea-google-satn... is from earlier this year, complaining about satnav sending people between Ruxton Green, Ross-on-Wye HR9 6EJ, UK and Llangarron, Ross-on-Wye, UK. Though they were going to "ask Google Maps to remove the road from their data", compared to a 2016 solution where Lyonshall Parish Council 'decided to try supplementing the existing sign with their own large red road sign reading 'HGV drivers - ignore satnav - you will get stuck!' Google Street View shows some very narrow roads, with a last visit date of 2011.
• NPC82 3y ago
  Eyesore issues are an aside to the reckless behavior of GMaps' navigation. I don't want to always take a one lane back-country road to save maybe 5 minutes of my life - and if there's no suggested alternative route at the onset there's not really an easy way to compare the times between usual("fastest") and "safest" routes.
  • wildrhythms 3y ago
    Also that 'feature' where it suddenly wants to completely change my route to 'a faster route' unless I interact with the UI in a time pressure WHILE I'M DRIVING or on a motorcycle. And that's the default setting!!! Who thought that was OK?
• suingintou 3y ago
  wow have they even looked at their own site? people need some self awareness
• suingintou 3y ago
  have they even looked at their own site? people need some self awareness
• tjbiddle 3y ago
  What drives me nuts is using the "Search this area" feature once I zoom in. Especially if there's an add anywhere in a 20mi radius. Google Maps usually shows far too much stuff, so I zoom into the area where I am and want to just search that square so I can browse the list easier. But then it'll zoom out and auto-select the first ad miles away - completely defeating the purpose.
  • danjc 3y ago
    Absence of street names is not accidental. I wonder if the theory is that leaving them off is more likely to ensure you remain dependent on the app.
    • szundi 3y ago
      These desperate antifeatures drive me crazy these days
    • aix1 3y ago
      I don't know whether this actually happens, but it's an interesting thought that removing street names could indeed lead to higher engagement metrics.
      • danjc 3y ago
        When you look for them, perverse incentives abound.
  • hnick 3y ago
    I wasn't sure if I was imagining it but this seemed to change in the last year or so for restaurants on my phone. I used to zoom into the local area when travelling, and click the food icon to see what's around. Now it zooms out and shows a 25km radius. Useless when I want to pick up lunch within a 5 minute drive. I have to zoom in and pan around like a bird pecking for crumbs.
  • aikinai 3y ago
    At least Google has this feature. I'd like to use Apple Maps sometimes, but the search is terrible and you can't even coerce it with a feature like "search in this area".
• pisipisipisi 3y ago
  There are alternatives for mapping apps, but no competitors for street view and discovering local photos (if you need a map/streetview for NY or SF it doesn’t matter what you use). True, even photos has become “spammy” in contested areas. But is indispensable if you want to discover local areas in regions like Turkmenistan for example
• Roark66 3y ago
  >In the perennial battle between mapping services, there are two main competitors: Google Maps and Apple Maps. Seriously? What about Bing? What about the entire segment of the mapping app market for drivers like NaviExpert or Yanosik. Finally, what about OpenStreetMap?
  • sidlls 3y ago
    I didn’t realize Bing had a map app, and I’ve never heard of NaviExpert of Yanosik. Granted, sample size of 1 (actually a half dozen or so—my immediate family haven’t heard of these either).
  • astrange 3y ago
    Nobody uses Bing, which is just another combination of TomTom and OSM like old Apple Maps was. (You can tell nobody used it because it was just as bad as old Apple Maps but nobody complained about it.) Their only appeal is they sometimes license nicer satellite images than other people.
• neilv 3y ago
  I recently was browsing a university neighborhood on Google Maps, and a large condo building had a pin in it... for a bed bug extermination service. I don't know whether the business owner lived there, or an opportunistic business unrelated to the location was just using it to advertise in college (i.e., bed bug) neighborhood, or it was sabotage by someone who wanted to depress market value of the building, or something else. Also regarding possibly rigging Google Maps for marketing... I've also seen a real small business's listing on Google Maps be edited to say that they'd gone out of business. I told them, by walking into their store that was still in-business, and they definitely hadn't done that edit themselves. They were in a niche serving students, and the timing was just as the new students arrived, so I'd guess this edit resulted in some other business locking in some customers who found a business and won't look for a new one for the next few years.
  • astrange 3y ago
    > I don't know whether the business owner lived there This is almost always the reason. Either they're a mobile business or their data source picked up the business owner's address rather than the business address from the local government DB.
• hintymad 3y ago
  Is this inevitable, though? How many PMs and directors and ambitious engineers does Google Maps hire? If a company puts someone in a role, that person will do everything to make something happen, right? As for Google Maps, that means more and more features will show up on the maps.
  • wg0 3y ago
    In a general setting, I have found two interesting aspect to how and why software gets developed. Most of the products reach their inherent feature maturity (a toaster just needs to toast and eject) and beyond that much isn't needed by the end users (a digital temp display, Bluetooth connectivity with notifications to mobile app when toast is ready and such) but rather gets developed either: Because Product manager has to show and prove his/her worth to the higher ups OR the backlog should be full and the team MUST NOT sit idle. In my observation - some 60% of the written software comes from above and that ranks far higher than any critically necessary technical debt no matter what unless software comes to a grinding halt.
• rlv-dan 3y ago
  If you are looking for an alternative navigation app I can recommend giving Magic Earth a try. Simple, clear and free. Nice developers that answers your mail. It even supports Android Auto. https://www.magicearth.com https://www.magicearth.com
  • acherion 3y ago
    Is this app only available in the US app store or something? I tried on my iOS device here in Australia, and a whole heap of other mapping apps are appearing in search results instead, when the query string is "magic earth". iOS App Store is even autocompleting to "magic earth navigation & apps" but no Magic Earth app appears in the results.
    • rlv-dan 3y ago
      Don't know about Australia. It's available in Sweden though, so it's not only for US.
  • computerfriend 3y ago
    I don't think this is "free" in the software sense.
    • rlv-dan 3y ago
      Well, sure. Free as in freeware, gratis, no charge. I haven't seen any ads either.
• latchkey 3y ago
  When I lived in Saigon, it was very hard to remember where places were. Either due to the map not having accurate information, or it being in Vietnamese and I just couldn't read it. So, I started to pin/label every place I went that I had a good experience at. It is a very big city of about 12m+ people, and I really explored pretty much all of it by motorbike late at night when I couldn't sleep. It was a lot of pins, 1000's. My map got so cluttered with pins that I couldn't find anything anymore without zooming in super far. Even worse, removing pins is a painful multi step process. The search process on the map, via pins is also pretty useless. I'm not sure what to do now, so I just left all the pins and moved out of the country during covid. One day, I'll go back, but I'm truly afraid to deal with things being completely out of date now.
• jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Mapping has become a commodity. The differences between various maps are increasingly cosmetic (i.e. styling) and now that people can self host openstreetmap through things like protomaps, even cost is no longer a big obstacle. Core map features have almost no value, it's all the stuff people do on top of maps that holds the value. Honestly Google Maps is fine for what it does but as a search expert I notice that precision and recall metrics aren't great for Google Maps these days. It doesn't find places (recall) I know exist or ranks them so low that you won't find them unless you really look. And it boosts places that (presumably) are paying to get boosted (precision). It's more than a bit manipulative. All that erodes trust. If, I look for restaurants or bars in an area that I know has loads of them, I expect to see all of them; not just a few. This is a problem because it erodes trust and breaks the promise to the user that Google has it all. Once that obviously stops being true, users are free to use competing products. The question is what they should use. Because a lot of the alternatives aren't much better.
• chris_wot 3y ago
  If you want to find major points of interest, then just use Wikishoot-me: https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/ https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/
• memefrog 3y ago
  Google Maps just isn't a map. I wonder if the people that work on it have ever looked at actual maps before. You have to zoom in almost to the maximum setting to see street names, and even then they often don't show up. Real maps show street names labeled on every street. But Google Maps developers are obviously more interested in it looking 'clean' and in showing little ads all over it than in it actually being useful.
  • midoridensha 3y ago
    >Real maps show street names labeled on every street In your locality. Not all places have street names.
  • dalke 3y ago
    > Real maps show street names labeled on every street. You are specifically describing street maps. There are other sorts of maps, even maps for areas with named streets where the streets are not named on the map. A local orientation organization has checkpoints around many areas here in Sweden. You visit each one and tally up how many places you've visited. The web site lets you enter the 1- or 2-digit code for each checkpoint if you want to track it that way. Here's my local map: https://koncept.orientering.se/provapaaktiviteter/hittaut/trollhattan/#karta https://koncept.orientering.se/provapaaktiviteter/hittaut/tr... There are no street names on those streets. There are contour lines, making it a topographic map. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map and you'll see other examples of topographic maps showing streets but not listing all or even most of the street names.
  • izacus 3y ago
    Did you consider that maybe huge majority of users don't actually use Google Maps as a paper map and don't particularly care for using it that way?
    • memefrog 3y ago
      I didn't say anything about using it 'as a paper map'. But using it as a map is the point of a map.
• eisa01 3y ago
  Navigation in cities has also started to become a problem in the last decade, as more and more cities try to reduce car traffic E.g., there's a "no car" street near me where the access restrictions are not on Google Maps. I've submitted the changes a month ago, to no avail. I resubmitted a week ago, as I could not find any trace of my reports. The restrictions can be seen on the past 3+ years of Streetview footage... There are rumours the restrictions have been correctly mapped, but subsequently removed due to telemetry data (cars frequently drive there anyways, as there's no enforcement and also a lot of crappy navigation systems from Here Maps :) ) Apple Maps and OSM have them, the former finally getting it right after they rolled out their own maps. There's no excuse when it's public data in the Road Authority database...
  • dpacmittal 3y ago
    I've noticed gmaps has stopped providing optimal routes when navigating. Just yesterday I was driving to the airport and it showed me a very unusual route which it has never recommended before, the time to destination was 1h30min. It was strange because the usual route doesn't usually have traffic, so I decided to take the usual route instead. The time dropped to 1h10min. For the rest of the route it kept showing me unusual routes and I kept ignoring it taking the usual route instead. At one point it started showing time to destination at 1h50min. It took me 1h and I had to ignore the gmaps at least 5 times until there was no alternate route available.
• thefz 3y ago
  FTA > But as much as I’d like to abandon Google Maps for the increasingly more user-friendly Apple Maps, I can’t. OpenStreetMaps is the only service I use nowadays. Google Maps does not even show secondary or tertiary roads, it's just ad after ad in a color vomit screen.
• thunfisch 3y ago
  Google Maps has been broken on Firefox for many months. Not sure if it's my personal setup, or some addon, but on every Firefox instance I have, the search is entirely broken - it won't return any results. I've since switched over to openstreetmap.org for most of my use. It's absolutely not perfect, the search is not as powerful as Google when it comes to recognizing typos or what I'm looking for, but the actual street data is really, really good, and the map view is very uncluttered.
  • midoridensha 3y ago
    >but on every Firefox instance I have, the search is entirely broken - it won't return any results. Works fine for me, with uBO and a bunch of other extensions installed. You might want to try disabling all your extensions and then re-enabling them one-by-one.
  • botanical 3y ago
    I had the same issue where even zooming was jittery and there was no StreetView, for some reason a Firefox profile reset fixed the issue. So I don't know if Google is intentionally breaking it or what.
• rconti 3y ago
  I've felt that Apple Maps has been better than Google Maps in many ways for years now (although I still switch back and forth between them, seemingly at random, for no real reason, using each for about 50% of my map browsing). Finding street names seems to be a massive issue across all maps -- not just mobile, not just Apple and Google. One of the most important things to me when looking at a map can simply not exist at most zoom levels. Zoom way in, checking at each step? No labels. Zoom way out, checking at each step? No labels. WTF
  • FridgeSeal 3y ago
    Apple Maps support for proper lane markings, road features, trees, building outlines etc is so much better. I basically only use Google maps for double checking business hours. Google maps might mark that a road has a lane, but Apple Maps delineates lane size, has better direction and turn markers, is able to pick up bike lanes, slow zones, speed bumps, the _kind_ of lane markers! (Double line, single, single + dash). Also the bike routing on Apple Maps is saner too. Google Maps regularly attempts to route me down highways or arterial roads…
  • aembleton 3y ago
    Try mapy.cz - https://apps.apple.com/cz/app/mapy-cz-navigation-maps/id411411020 https://apps.apple.com/cz/app/mapy-cz-navigation-maps/id4114... They're based on OSM data, and I generally find them better than Google for street names
• beej71 3y ago
  Trying out Organic Maps, I noticed two big things: 1. Man, this UI is so much faster than Google Maps. 2. Man, this has trouble finding addresses. Hopefully they improve with time. On my older laptop at home, Google Maps is horribly sluggish compared to just about any other map product.
  • matkoniecz 3y ago
    > 2. Man, this has trouble finding addresses. If you are or someone else is interested one can: - add addresses to OpenStreetMap if missing (highly welcome!) - report search problems to https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues - or even submit fixes if they want - wait till someone else will do any of above (to be clear, that is also OK to do this - noone is obligated to volunteer for above) - I guess you can also donate to Organic Maps and/or OpenStreetMap Foundation but impact will be less direct
    • beej71 3y ago
      For sure. I've added hundreds of addresses myself. But still there's work to do.
      • matkoniecz 3y ago
        Big thanks for help then!
• feday 3y ago
  What a weird article, first it complains for a long time about PoI information being in the way and then concludes that the author is stuck with google maps because it is the only one with PoI information.
• aib 3y ago
  "Google Maps" is a misnomer. Call it "Google Business Search" or something similar, and the perceived problems disappear. Google Maps provides a small fraction of the functions of a real map. And this fraction does not even cover the fundamentals: Street names, landmarks/points of interest, being able to draw or create marks on the map, and perhaps making basic measurements. Its main view has marginally more information than the "share location" screen of a messenger app. It's a car-driving always-online consumer's guide to spending money. Extremely useful, but not a map.
  • okdood64 3y ago
    Incredible how out of touch HNers are. It's just a fucking maps app.
  • goguy 3y ago
    That's not really true though is it. I use it countless times a week to navigate from my current location to point x l, generally a postal code or POI. At no point during this do I have to interact with alternative businesses or way points.
    • aix1 3y ago
      I agree that Google Maps does work as a navigation aid in certain environments (e.g. dense urban) and certain transportation modalities (definitely cars, to a lesser extent public transport, bike and pedestrian). In my experience it's also useable as a general street/road map. It's clearly not a topographical map; I think it would be foolish and potentially dangerous to rely on Google Maps to, say, hike in the Alps. A standard topographical map would fit that use case much better. P.S. I don't quite follow some of the complaints on this thread about the UX. For example, I always see the map scale in the bottom-right corner of the app. It is true that street names are not always written onto the map; however, clicking on a street gives me a popup with the name (not the most ergonomic UX, but it's not like the app is trying to hide the info, as some commenters are claiming).
      • pepa65 3y ago
• nologic01 3y ago
  Like all community and crowdsourced open source projects openstreetmap is taking its time but boy is it beautiful when it crosses a threshold! When outdoors hiking or looking for cultural points of interest in a city trip OSM is the tool to use. Commercial stuff, as expected, not as well served, which is in a sense a pity. The best way to assist people with their commercial activity is to provide objective information that is not biased by advertising.
• kragen 3y ago
  what's the best map viewer for openstreetmap data that's in the main debian repository? it's okay if it requires me to run a local web server and point a browser at it
• saaspirant 3y ago
  I use a really old modded version (~6.xx) of Maps on Android (and latest version too). It lacks many features but has a very cleaner look for navigation. Is anyone using a relatively new modded version? If so, please link to it The one I use: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-good-old-google-maps-6-parallel-install-to-regular-google-maps.2439236/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-good-old-google-m...
• buro9 3y ago
  Strong recommendation for organic maps on Google. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.organicmaps https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.organicmap... It's still OpenStreetMaps, but presented in a much easier mobile app with an experience closer to Google maps than, say, OsmAnd+ Google continues it's enshittification and this was one of the last things I started migrating due to reasons very similar to the article... The usefulness of Google maps has declined significantly. Organic maps (streets, utilities and businesses) coupled with something like Citymapper (public transport routing) and Waze (car navigation) offer a far better experience than Google maps ever attained in the UK.
• Lastodon 3y ago
  Glass houses etc. The site hosting the article is awful.
• m3drano 3y ago
  I find it funny that this site is speaking about others, but itself is worse: you just can't see the contents of the article, which is laying behind 4 layers of ads, including a video and a half-screen-high banner.
• ceving 3y ago
  You say: > In the perennial battle between mapping services, there are two main competitors: Google Maps and Apple Maps. Sorry but for me there is only one: https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ And this is my app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.psyberia.offlinemaps https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.psyberia.o...
  • anigbrowl 3y ago
    ATAK or go home
  • leokennis 3y ago
    I’m an iPhone user and I’d pay good money for an OSM based app with these features: - Hard focus on “general mapping” like Google Maps, so not outdoor trails or sailing or… - Maps are streamed to my device, also when I zoom in to street level - no requirement to download offline maps first - Search is working and good enough - Routing is working and good enough - Big plus if it does turn by turn navigation, or can kick me into Apple/Google Maps turn by turn with the address I found - Big plus if I can choose from some map styles
    • gorbypark 3y ago
      Organic Maps is the closest thing to what you want that I have found. The only thing it doesn't tick off your list is the streamed maps parts, as it's fully offline. It works really well in my experience, I use it frequently while travelling. The only downsides I've found are that it doesn't do real time traffic, and it doesn't seem to do multi lingual search very well. For example, if you are in Barcelona where the local official language is Catalan, and you are trying to search for "Calle Somestreet" in Spanish, it will be expecting you to search for "Carrer de Somestreet" and will show you "Calle Somestreet" in Madrid, for example.
      • matkoniecz 3y ago
        Sadly, search is still far from ideal. Not saying that you should not use it, but rather that reporting problems (such as say https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/5251 https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/5251 ) is useful and worth doing. And to not expect search as good as what Google provides, at least for now.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• grishka 3y ago
  Funny to see that the pins are the author's biggest problem with Google Maps. Google seems to have started using some kind of automation to generate maps several years ago and quality just went to utter shit. In my city, there are buildings that overlap a river. They're there since at least 2020 and no one tried to fix that. When I traveled to Dubai this spring, it was even worse — only the streets on Google Maps somewhat matched reality, but buildings were some arbitrary shapes strewn around. This kind of product quality is something that I'd be too shy to show to an office janitor, yet Google — a multi-billion-dollar company — somehow deemed it appropriate to ship this abomination to production.
• fbn79 3y ago
  In my recent trips I have found Google Maps and related reviews much more effective than Tripadvison for discovering and choosing where to eat.
• anigbrowl 3y ago
  All of these criticisms are very valid, especially the street name one, which is a great example of core functionality being sacrificed to...whatever this is. But then the end: And as annoyed as I am by all those unwanted pins on my screen, I still often need some of those points of interest, such as popular times, live foot traffic data, reviews, photos, and other useful data that help me plan an outing. It’s nice to know peak wait times for a restaurant and how long customers typically spend there. Nonsensical. This is smartphone as pacifier for people who can't tolerate any uncertainty or figuring anything out the hard way. It's such a bd excuse I feel like the editor made the writer add it.
  • scrollaway 3y ago
    You really can’t conceive that this stuff might be useful information to someone who isn’t exactly you? Seriously, how arrogant is that?
    • anigbrowl 3y ago
      Maps worked great for their primary purpose of finding your way to some designated location for hundreds of years without built-in analytics and marketing info. When the latter is getting in the way of the core function (eg finding out what street you're on), something has gone badly wrong. Lately Google maps won't show your own location if you have Google location services disabled, even though pretty much every phone has a GPS built in. The map is no longer the product, data about what you're doing is the product.
• paweladamczuk 3y ago
  The video that autoplays on this website is infuriating.
• nokeya 3y ago
  Google maps are terrible. My list of claims: 0) Outdated 1) Not only street names are not shown, local businesses too! My typical use case: I want to check working hours. Expected - zoom to the address, tap on the icon and here it is. Reality - sometimes no matter how I zoom - icon not shown, I had to search store name, it zooms out to the whole city, zoom again and only now it can be seen! 2) Search is too exact, opposite to the main google search. When I enter “flowers” it shows me only businesses with flowers in the name but not all the flower shops around. 3) Several weeks ago they broke public transport navigation in my city. Public transport was not great before (it was absolutely wrong about timings and) but now it is gone completely.
• Animats 3y ago
  The example in the article shows the San Francisco Hilton, with a big ad. They're going out of business.[1] (Hilton Hotels hasn't been a real hotel company in years, anyway. It's just a franchise name now, like RCA.) [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/park-hotels-leaving-san-francisco-clouded-recovery/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/park-hotels-leaving-san-francis...
  • astrange 3y ago
    > It's just a franchise name now, like RCA. If it has a points system and co-branded credit card it's real enough.
• okdure 3y ago
  Fastcompany plays unrelated commercial over the article. Not sure how they can peddle that headline without seeing their own efforts in the argument.
• calaverainfo 3y ago
  Czech Republic is one of the few countries where Google has a meaningful local competitor, Seznam, for it's major services and maps is the service where I'm most glad for that. All the shortcomings from the article are so much more obvious and painful when you have an alternative that does it right. I wondered for a long time how Google can have such a bad product, like I literally can't recognize a place I know perfectly on the screen so I need to "search" for it so Google zooms into some indistinctive bland colored area for me. And I've realized that's exactly the point, that's the prime example of enshitification. Tool that works so bad that you think you need it more. I'm so glad for mapy.cz and that statement from the article, that I can choose only Google or Apple maps, is not true for me.
• LimeLimestone 3y ago
  Is it just me or have you guys also noticed that the routes suggested by Google Maps have gotten worse? It seems that it only takes into account current traffic jams and not the ones which will occur 30mins into the trip. For instance, there's this spot in my city where I know there is a traffic jam at around 3:20 PM every day. I usually set off from home around 2:50 PM, which means I'll hit that congested area by 3:20 PM. Interestingly, there are a couple of alternative routes I could take to avoid getting stuck. However, Google Maps keeps pushing me towards the route that's bound to get jammed, simply because there's no traffic showing at the exact moment (2:50 PM) when I'm starting. Doesn't it make sense for the app to use past data to predict the traffic jam? On the other hand, it often insists on taking me through strange shortcuts and weird backroads just to save a minute or two.
  • switch007 3y ago
    Personally I’ve found it’s been that way for many years. I associate it with the app that directs me in to traffic.
  • 01acheru 3y ago
    I came here to look for someone talking about it and totally agree, Google Maps routes are getting really worse over time and now I switched to Apple Maps almost exclusively. I can understand the jam thing but the weird route thing is crazy, especially because that route often makes you spend more time not less. It prefers weird backroads with lots of turns instead of straight larger roads (and that's stupid) but a thing I noticed traveling a lot for work in a hilly area is that it doesn't seem to take road pendency into account. Sometimes it makes you go up and down a hill instead of staying in the valley road that goes around it: it take twice the time IRL but is like it thinks "whoa, 5km instead of 7, that's a great optimization" and that's incredibly stupid. Apple maps is more conservative and tries to stick to larger roads if possible only sending you into more obscure ones if it is very convenient. Another thing is that Google Maps is really aggressive on labeling something as a road: sometimes they are off roads, tractor paths or large trails that a car cannot travel on but it doesn't care. Those are my impressions traveling mostly in Italy and bordering countries.
• onion-soup 3y ago
  Google maps destroys session after I open it again on iOS. This is clusterfuck of UX
• DeathArrow 3y ago
  Google had/has some useful apps but almost all are filled of junk while collecting and selling your data. Google represents the enshittification of the Internet.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  ... this article is published on a website that shows me a "Would you eat mustard Skittles?" autoplay video 5 seconds after I started reading the article. I can pause the video, but can not close it. It remains at the bottom of the page. Wow.
• kilolima 3y ago
  I've recently switched to Organic Maps as a replacement for gmaps. Navigation is offline, it uses OSM for its basemap and points of interest, and you can easily save points (and export them) without needing to login to an account. I also find it easier to use for planning routes for diving or hiking. The only problem is that it doesn't have that nifty terrain view from gmaps or a way to show an aerial satellite view.
  • stinos 3y ago
    OsmAnd is ok as well and offers more layer choices, but it's heavier. Organic Maps is great though to just quickly see where you are for instance. No fuzz, just a map, which is a feature these days, unfortunately. Yet the thing which I don't really understand in the OP's article is statements like Many times I just want to see the name of the street I’m standing on followed by But for now, I’m stuck with Google Maps Of course I don't know whether they really think there are no other maps than Google and Apple, but that seems rather far fetched. This seems such a basic 'right tool for the job' thing. You have a computer in your hand, it's still supposed to work for you and not the other way around. And for a lot of things you can actually make it do that, so why wouldn't you?
• underwater 3y ago
  My beef with Maps is the UI. It's so skittish and modal I'm constantly fighting with it. If I position the viewport ans run a query, it unhelpfully searches a different area. If I tap on a pin it moves the viewport again. If I dismiss the pin info it moves yet again to an arbitrary position. Same for a while other bunch of interactions. It feels like a UX that thinks it's clever but doesn't respect me as the user.
• agumonkey 3y ago
  Google has entered the rot phase of the big corp cycle.
• ogou 3y ago
  In Berlin, Google Maps shows bike share and scooter clusters on the same layer as public transport. Searching for a bus or tram stop with all that noise is punishing. Also the icons for the bus and bike are very similar at the default zoom level. You have to zoom in constantly to differentiate and inevitably it's a marker for Donkey Republic or nextbike, instead of the bus. They don't even mark actual docking stations. It's just sidewalk areas. I assume those companies had access to a bulk map update API and just claimed spots all over the city. The result is a mess.
• jerjerjer 3y ago
  Lack of street names and even house numbers in gmaps is the worst. OSM is getting better and better though I primarily use it for navigation, with gmaps to search for poi.
• ranting-moth 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if this is a precursor to offering Maps Premium. Just as with YouTube, UX is obnoxious unless you pay.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  On top of that, the route planing with all those green routes now just sucks, unless one is paying attention to what is being proposed. No Google, I don't want to drive through a farmer field road only usable by tractors to shorten my ride in a couple of minutes in a more environment friendly way.
• h1fra 3y ago
  I understand the ads and everything else, I don't not enjoy it but I understand. What I really don't get is the product is hiding a lot of stuff for no reason. Whenever I zoom in my neighbourhood: it doesn't display all the streets, some shops are missing even at maximum zoom, search is removing some results that should match my query, etc... I have slowly lost trust in the products (except for navigation), it's still my main source but I usually double check with google search or apple map.
  • bunga-bunga 3y ago
    That’s what you get when you fire the last actual mappers and just leave developers to keep it running. Google thrives on data quantity, not on quality.
  • samanator 3y ago
    > Yet no matter how far in I zoom in, Google Maps doesn’t always apply a label to the street I’m standing on. It just remains blank. The same thing happens to me. The most useful piece of information is hidden. I've never understood that decision.
  • TheRealSteel 3y ago
    I'm always so annoyed at Google Maps for not displaying street names. Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you zoom or pan, it just won't show it. I know it knows them because it announces them just fine during navigation. Why? What's the point? It's a map. Street names are pretty much the #1 most important thing.
    • bhandziuk 3y ago
      This complaint is interesting to me because in the last few years I've noticed street names have become more and more abundant. For example, I am looking at the 100ft zoom level (what my scale shows in the bottom right) and this street which is 2000 ft long is labeled 9 times. For major rivers there's always a label on screen. This didn't used to be the case for me. I used to have to really work to find labels but now it's very good.
    • 3y ago
• gizajob 3y ago
  But the world is an eyesore. The map represents the territory. Google maps might be becoming ugly, but it's still phenomenally useful.
• hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  > The square pins you see in Google Maps are ad pins. They represent a place of business (a hotel, spa, etc.) that is paying Google to make sure it’s displayed on the map, despite the business’s irrelevance to me. That summarizes what Google is quite well.
• sma3in 3y ago
  I strongly recommend MAPS.ME as a great alternative to Google Maps. It comes with offline navigation and it's less cluttered than Gmaps. not sure if it's built around Gmaps API, I don't know much about that but it's nice to use. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme.maps.pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme...
  • benhurmarcel 3y ago
    Organic Maps is a fork of Maps.me from before they started to make it worse. https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/
• daza 3y ago
  I can't recommend MAPS.ME enough. It's an iOS app based on OpenStreetMap. The amount of details is overwhelming, compared to Google Maps or Apple Maps.
  • habi 3y ago
    I heavily recommend you switch to https://organicmaps.app/ https://organicmaps.app/, a privacy-focused, open-source fork of Maps.me, not by a payment processor.
• blitz_skull 3y ago
  The irony of fast company complaining about Google maps being an eyesore while their mobile website is an ad-ridden hellscape is disgustingly poetic.
• mFixman 3y ago
  My main pet peeve is how you cannot hide major roads from Google Maps, but there's no way to show trains and most public transit without clicking on a station. Even on a large city like London half the public transit is invisible. What alternatives are there? I'm trying to use OSM, but I find it to complicated and time-consuming to do anything.
• al_be_back 3y ago
  Well, Maps is as much ado about Mapping, as Smart Phones about Phoning, or social networks about socializing etc. Most popular apps/services are about forming a community around "X" subject, with the aim of selling/advertising services around "X,Y,Z" From experience, I know many people & businesses that use maps mostly for Business Intelligence, if you're Renting property of Buying property/businesses/real estate, Google maps has data up to 2008 (street view). Couple that with Satellite data, reviews, user-generated photos etc, and you've got a treasure trove. Yes, the map UI is "busy" but I think we've evolved as users too. All google need to do now is work a way to Verify/Trust info around Pins/Comments etc, and they've revenue sorted.
• lawgimenez 3y ago
  I just came home from driving and using Google Maps and not only it has become an eyesore, it also has become a resource hog. Can’t count how many times it freezes during intermittent mobile signal. Also the directions are not accurate and updated anymore.
• Knee_Pain 3y ago
  The funniest thing to me is that Google Maps seems to be the "normal person" option and yet only OSM tells me where water fountains are. Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer?
  • iamacyborg 3y ago
    > Millions of tourists worldwide use GMaps to navigate around in foreign places and yet they have no option to see where the closest place to refill their bottles is? Especially in the summer? It’s almost like this isn’t a thing folks are actually looking for.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • Symbiote 3y ago
      I thought to try searching "public toilet" in Copenhagen, which I'm sure is something tourists search for. It does show a few of them, but it also shows an apartment complex miscategorized as one, and misses several within the city centre. They are shown with various names ("Toilet", "Public toilet", "Public toilet for men", "Public restroom") so I think this is crowdsourced, rather than anything Google has made an effort to map. Although the interface of https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ doesn't have a way to highlight them, other interfaces (phone apps etc) can, and OSM has much better coverage.
    • mcpackieh 3y ago
      Why is it that whenever somebody comes up with a clear cut and reasonable shortcoming of a big tech product, there's a mass of sycophants that crawl out of the ground to say "nobody wants that, you're just a weirdo"? Everybody drinks water. It often isn't intuitively obvious where you can find water. Even in city parks, water fountains may not be where you expect but often are where you wouldn't. Google maps also sucks at finding bathrooms. Everybody pisses, even cyborgs.
• aden1ne 3y ago
  My main gripes with Google Maps is that it seems to work OK if you know the name of the place you are looking for, but not its location. But it really doesn't work if you know the location but not the name. If there's any clustering of stores, you can zoom in all you want but it will only show 1 in 2 stores, sometimes even fewer. Also annoying is the sort order of many searches these days somehow giving you random residential locations at the very top. I suppose these are small webshops ran out of homes for the same search term. But that's rarely what I want to find when I'm using google maps.
• hoseja 3y ago
  psst, kid: https://mapy.cz https://mapy.cz
• kzrdude 3y ago
  Google Maps is fundamentally a commercial map layer. I use google maps to find commercial places - shops, restaurants and hotels! I use OsmAnd to follow forest paths and follow roads (to some extent - google maps has live traffic info, which is sometimes useful). OsmAnd can route you even if you are offline with only GPS signal.
• bowsamic 3y ago
  Another bad experience on Google Maps on iOS, that both my wife and I have experienced on two totally different iPhones: if you zoom in, half the time it will glitch out and jump somewhere else totally random on the map. Literally just the pinch zooming in functionality has been broken on iOS for a year or more. Unfortunately, it is an amateur app made by amateur devs.
• iinnPP 3y ago
  Around 2 years ago while working on a geolocation project I researched a few alternative services to cover our reverse lookup needs (coordinates to address). The difference in quality of data for the above mentioned process between MapQuest and Google, and then Google and OSM, was quite telling. Everyone who read the resulting report was also puzzled. OSM was about 80% accurate, Google was about 90%, and MapQuest was over 98%. Also worth mentioning is that only two of these sources let you store the data (Mapquest and OSM). Someone else on my team wanted to use Canada Post's geolocation data. Do not. It is extremely bad. We ended up running a service off MapQuest for advertising by mail using data from web traffic. The mailed letter or advertisement could be in the mailbox by the next day. The UX over the same period has gotten noticeably worse. The embedded maps that use two fingers to move around the map is my favorite UX decision of all time...
• xdennis 3y ago
  My biggest frustration with Google Maps is its insistence on always showing me Marx's grave. I live in North London, and whenever I plan a photography trip Google always shows me that genocidal maniac's grave. Oddly enough if I zoom in more it disappears. The Germans are much better at it. They just made a car park over Hitler's death location.
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    Marx? Genocidal? Are we even thinking of the same Marx here? Or is there a well known serial killer buried in North London that happens to be named Marx?
• johnnyworker 3y ago
  I miss the original NASA World Wind (back when Google Earth was also a free desktop application). We've fallen a long way, baby.
• DonHopkins 3y ago
  When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS Personal Navigation Devices. Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard! That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal department. The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members along the same stretch of road. They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for placements.
• paultopia 3y ago
  The street name thing is maddening with Apple Maps as well. I can never figure out how to find, for example, the name of the street before my intended turn.
• footlose_3815 3y ago
  Also: it automatically turning on eco trips without asking you. I had to turn it off twice. It was taking me these horrible windy hilly directions when I should have been on the highway.
• laurels-marts 3y ago
  I've fully bought into Apple ecosystem but I refuse to use Apple Maps. Not sure how good they are in US but in Europe they are dismal. When they announced the release re-designed maps in Netherlands I gave them a shot but it honestly wasn't a big improvement. I took a screen of my area in Google Maps and the same screen using Apple Maps and the side-by-side difference was shocking. Google maps had orders of magnitude more detailed and precise topography, cycling paths, canals, traffic etc.
  • KolenCh 3y ago
    Once I was directed my Google Maps in Germany leading to a closed entrance of a highway. I passed that entrance and Google rerouted me, after driving for some time apparently I went through a big loop and go back to the same entrance. Then I drove off to the other direction, somehow I went back to the same entrance again, passing through a certain road that we already remembered from the last loop in the opposite direction. We wasted what feels like an hour, but probably around half? And then we changed to Apple Maps which has the data on the closure and we can get on the right road on the first try.
    • brohee 3y ago
      I was once in a new rental Skoda (using Here maps), that tried to make me cross a river on a bridge that was never built (I looked it up afterward, the project was abandoned). Google Maps saved the day...
• amai 3y ago
  https://info.2gis.com/ https://info.2gis.com/ has the best maps app in the world. Unfortunately only in Russia.
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  I wanted to read more but the webpage is 1/3 auto play mustard video ad with a shrink (not close) button so small I tapped the ad instead. Fastcompany has become an eyesore.
• Invictus0 3y ago
  This article is completely fucking unreadable on mobile. Half the page is taken up by a banner ad an unminimizable autoplay video.
• whalesalad 3y ago
  I’ve been using Apple Maps more and more lately and it’s quite refreshing. I prefer their rendering style now, just looks cleaner. Google Maps is really a mess.
• nfRfqX5n 3y ago
  Maps and Waze after acquisition have just been stagnating for years. The voice quality is so bad idk how anyone can stand it.
• datavirtue 3y ago
  Missing basic features like "No highways" and minimum overpass height in directions.
• diegoveralli 3y ago
  > Finally, Google Maps seems more intent today on showing bars, restaurants, ads, and work-from-home businesses than useful map-related features. Sometimes it doesn’t even show the most basic information anymore, including street names. I suspect they arrived at this through a series of A-B tests, since the more useful navigational information they display, the easier it is for the user to "learn" a city, and be able to navigate by themselves. So hiding information that allows the user to learn the map layout probably increases usage metrics. A couple of years ago I noticed I missed precisely that: "learning" the layout of a city when I travel. So I started using Organic Maps, which always shows street names and other useful information to assist me in my navigation, instead of guiding me turn by turn. Search results are a lot worse than Google Maps, and the routes it picks are also often worse, and it's missing traffic information. But when I'm travelling I'm usually on foot, and I'm there to get lost and discover the place, so it's OK if my route is not as efficient as it could be.
  • cvoss 3y ago
    As a rule, when in my home city, I always study the route to a new place before navigating, try to get back home without the GPS (which is usually pretty easy, actually), and, on my second visit, challenge myself to get there without the GPS. After enough of this, I have a strong enough map of the city in my own head that I can plan my own routes, get unlost, and make decisions about alternate routes. I often find that there are easier routes than the one proposed by Google Maps. ("No, I'm not going to try to turn left onto a six-lane divided highway without a light at this hour")
  • bitterblotter 3y ago
    This doesn't apply for me personally, and I think also for most people using public transport. The lack of effort needed for effective transport makes me more likely to use it again, because I don't need to think about uncertainties like delays, roadblocks and timing. I actually end up using Maps for routes I've taken many times before, because of this.
  • dogleash 3y ago
    > I suspect they arrived at this through a series of A-B tests And based on the article, they might be using user frustration as a indicator of success: > A workaround I’ve stumbled upon whenever this happens is to select a business pin on the next street over. When Google Maps centers on that, it for some reason will label the street I’m standing on.
• artursapek 3y ago
  Ah yes, let’s read about this “eyesore” https://imgur.io/ZNFLc3y.jpg https://imgur.io/ZNFLc3y.jpg
• longitudinal93 3y ago
  It's even worse than just an eyesore. I live in Canada but on a recent trip to Denver GMap deliberately and repeatedly tried to make me catch an Uber from the airport to a train station close to the city centre, in spite of large signs in the airport that directed me to the train that would take me directly downtown (which I did after concluding that Google was deceiving me in order to make a cut from Uber). The experience was identical for a friend on an iPhone.
• IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  I tried using OSM. I could not figure out something as simple as searching an address. I avoid google with passion. Ive been able to get off chrome, gmail, GCP, but getting off maps is next level frustrating.
• woodruffw 3y ago
  > Why won't you show me the street name? This, beyond anything else, is the main reason I use Apple Maps: if I'm not actively in a navigation mode, then 99.9% of the time I'm looking for cross-streets. Apple Maps is also not perfect about this (you still need to pinch-and-zoom sometimes to get it to show the street), but it behaves far more consistently than Google Maps in this regard. The only reason I have Google Maps still installed is because they have all of my pins; once I stop being lazy and figure out how to export those, I'll be only too glad to delete it permanently.
• jhaenchen 3y ago
  A more insidious failure is how google maps does not always show local businesses. When I lived in another city I would search for "tacos" and I would get Taco Bell. Never mind there were five local places that serve tacos nearby. These were not deprioritized, they were never listed. Search for them directly and they come up. But broad search.... you realize that the yellow pages app is actually better at a comprehensive list of businesses.
• neycoda 3y ago
  Google and Alphabet and all of its services including on Android have been slowly turning into a buggy counter-intuitive mess for the last several years.
• Biganon 3y ago
  > TOO MANY ADS CLUTTER THE MAP ...he complained, in an article on a website where 30% of vertical space is used by an autoplay video ad featuring an idiot asking me whether I'd eat "mustard Skittles". Ironic.
  • prepend 3y ago
    I was never able to stop the auto play video. Just make it small and pinned to the bottom. Playing something and wasting data the whole time I read the article.
    • chaps 3y ago
      And one of the advertisement's X doesn't work and just opens the link. It'd be funny if it wasn't sad.
  • ajnin 3y ago
    Out of admittedly slightly perverse curiosity I opened the site without adblock : at some point when scrolling the whole page is covered with ads. An eyesore indeed.
  • mats852 3y ago
    Curious. I don't see any ads ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
  • lopkeny12ko 3y ago
    If you're not using an adblocker in this day and age in 2023, you're doing it wrong.
    • hughes 3y ago
      It got through AdGuard on iOS Safari. Is there a better option?
    • dmix 3y ago
      Mobile doesn't have ad blocking, at least on iOS. Which is why I pay for Youtube premium.
• karaterobot 3y ago
  > Whenever I’m in a major metropolitan area, Google Maps seems to have an obsession with displaying as many hotels, bars, and clubs on the map as it can. This happens even when I haven’t searched for a single hotel or bar. All this data they slurp up about me, and they can't even figure out that I checked into my hotel and slept in it last night, and am probably not looking for another nearby hotel today. Or that I never go to nightclubs, and probably won't be going to one today either. They say they collect data to improve their products, not just to sell it to advertisers. I believe they sell it to advertisers, I'm starting to suspect they don't use it to make better products at all.
  • prepend 3y ago
    This is why I think google sucks at AI and is just BSing. If they actually had decent AI, they’d know this stuff and customize the experience. Some cynically think they know and are just money grubbers. But I think they don’t know, because it’s hard. And there’s no motivation for them to know.
• SirMaster 3y ago
  I switched to Apple maps awhile ago now. I just find that the UI is nicer to use and look at and it seems to be more performant and smoother. I haven't really had any problems getting to where I need to go using Apple Maps. Maybe it doesn't work well in some countries and places, but it seems to work perfectly fine where I need it to.
• brap 3y ago
  I just wanna say how ironic it is that this website has an ugly banner covering half of my screen (mobile).
• prepend 3y ago
  I feel bad for all those hotels and businesses that pay for you to see them. I assume that google shows me stuff because people pay them. There’s no way they think I want to see McDonald’s locations on my map.
• QuadrupleA 3y ago
  Google's slow decline of enshittification... soon it'll be ads during navigation, "rerouting... on your left is Burger King, your number one craving fix. Make it your way with tasty fried spice crisps..." We could create such nice things as a species, sad our tech seems to so often devolve into desperate greedy crap.
• picadores 3y ago
  In a way, the enshittification is impressive to behold. The moment competing empires prop up there "giants" all ilusion o free enterprise competing for customers falls apart, leaving us this. I wonder how bad it can get..
• fouc 3y ago
  One thing I absolutely hate about Google Maps is you can't do text search for buildings/businesses with "hotel" or "inn" specifically in the name, it'll jack that search and show you its special hotels interface in an attempt to sell you rooms. Also there's no way to look up "serviced apartments" specifically, it's an actual category, but that also gets used as an excuse to load the hotels interface. The interface basically hides totally valid hotels that don't necessarily have an online presence but their name/category is on the map.
• JSavageOne 3y ago
  Criticize Google Maps all you want, but it is easily one of the most useful apps to me, especially as someone who's been been living nomadically the last 5 years. It's kind of scary how dependent I am on this app. Anytime I need to find a restaurant, dentist, electronics store, etc. - I'm looking first on Google Maps and my life is basically dictated by the results. I have lists like "Places to Work" which is a list of all the nice coffee shops and places I like to work out of (currently have 200). I star hotels + AirBnBs I'm staying in, and bookmark a ton of things. I rely on it for public transportation. If I could only pick 3 apps on my phone, Google Maps would definitely be one of them. I do wish there were better alternatives and I hate being overly dependent on one company. Unfortunately the open source alternatives like OpenStreetMap don't really even compare.
  • smolyeet 3y ago
    Waze is a decent alternative, if not mostly for the community driven aspect of it. Sometimes it’s too aggressive to save 1-2 minutes but it knows tolls , when they’re open, and just as accurate if not more than google maps at times
    • Toutouxc 3y ago
      I don't understand this at all, how can Waze be a decent alternative when it doesn't show, well, anything? [At least where I live,] there's no photos, rating, comments, no info about opening times, no way to get there unless I'm driving (which in this European capital I am totally not), and even if I'm driving there's no info on parking zones (you can't just park anywhere on the street). Waze is literally 100 % useless for me in the city.
  • wuliwong 3y ago
    I have a similar experience. The addition of all the places details and reviews that are accessible inside of Google Maps has actually expanded its usefulness. Google Maps has grown to be more than just navigation software for me. I live in the US but was in Berlin recently. It seems that Google reviews have supplanted Yelp as the main platform for reviews over there. It honestly made things simpler and easier and I can see in the US it looks to be trending in the same direction. I actually have more of an issue with the busyness of google.com and the search in Youtube than I do with the changes in Google Maps.
• manbitesdog 3y ago
  I understand most of these problems are the undesirable consequences of Google Maps trying to make money. But there’s no excuse for the ones that are just bad UX, like the zoom level or location changing when searching “food” at a given place, or how it’s impossible to search “smash burgers” if there’s a business called smash somewhere around
• gorkish 3y ago
  The only technical advantage that Google maps retains in any way is having good imagery. The rest of it (and by that I mean not only maps but the entirety of Google) is built on a fundamentally broken social contract between the products and the users.
• dmix 3y ago
  > Why won’t you show me the street name? This is my biggest gripe. I get the annoying ad stuff, it is a free service after all. But why do I have to scroll and pinch zoom for 2min trying to find a streetname? And sometimes it just doesnt show up. Isn't that the most important part of a map?
• 627467 3y ago
  Fast company along inc.com are among the worst offenders on invasive ads. Anytime I hit a amp link I can't block ads the first thing I do is open actual url. Autoplay video should be ilegal. I get these publications (similar to Google maps) are huge costs centers but please be self aware on your criticism. Yeah, maps is not as minimal as it used to be and maybe it will die as it is due to inexistent business model but my clutter of personal pins - at the moment - is competing with ads, so unless I zoom in I barely see any ads.
• tradewinds 3y ago
  This article is mainly about ads popping up, but I think their whole UI is also worth shitting on. Really as an organization, Google doesn't seem to have any good-looking UIs. They're all ugly, awkward and inefficient. Clicking on a pin on Google Maps takes up an enormous portion of the screen for no reason. My Gmail page uses the top half to list pages of emails and the bottom half for absolutely nothing, and there is a huge space at the top outlined by an ugly 1-pixel rounded border that says something I won't ever care to read. The Google Search results page looks like it was just what they used for testing and then never created the actual UI.
• neya 3y ago
  "Get the latest from Fast Company Click Sign Up then Allow for Notifications" A popup blocks, as I continue past the gazillion ads to read about an article that complains about ads.
• thefringthing 3y ago
  On work-from-home businesses that are not open to the public: you can report these, and it seems that if you have a good track record of submitting corrections to Google Maps, your reports are handled fairly swiftly.
• gkfasdfasdf 3y ago
  At least twice in the past 6 months, Google Maps navigation has taken me down a road or exit or that is closed. And not just temporarily closed for an event or something, but closed construction for multiple weeks or months. And there is no obvious way to report the closure in the app (I'm using the Android version).
• LeoPanthera 3y ago
  The thing that annoys me most is people listing their run-from-home business on the map. This is explicitly against Google's TOS but they don't stop people putting them on. You can flag them, and Google do remove them. Scan your neighborhood, click any business which is clearly actually a house, click Suggest an Edit > Close or Remove > Not open to the public. I've had a lot of success removing a whole ton of spammy junk from the map this way.