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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 gigan

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 Caveat: I could be way out of date here.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
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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.
  - bostik 3y ago
    I do something similar when going around and about in the UK (and to a lesser degree Malta when I happen to be there). I like to visit random places, seeking out locations off the touristy paths. One particular search has helped me over the years: "pubs near me". Local pubs, even those part of a large chain, tend to give a nice feel of the region and the people who live there. And you can learn interesting details about the local history.
- bandrami 3y ago
  The author notes that Google does seem to be leaning in to the sector where they really make a lot of sense, hotels. I'm going to Delhi for work next week and how I picked a hotel was going to maps, zooming out from the venue a bit, and letting hotel pins appear.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
> What about indirect revenue? Google decision makers must know of its importance as a moat, a data collection pipe, a vehicle for other services and so on. No offense, but trying to squeeze direct revenue out seems kinda laughable. Or maybe even a way to plausibly deny the indirect revenue importance.
- 64bittechie 3y ago
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- vmfunction 3y ago
  with giant data beast company like google, everything is about indirect revenue. Just because map doesn't make money, doesn't mean it won't drive up other ad revues.
  - octacat 3y ago
    Google uses maps to collect the location data from iOS devices. So, Apple Maps are useful, because they prevent Google Maps from becoming "too many ads app".
    - vmfunction 3y ago
      Also duckduckgo has apple maps online too: https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&ia=web&iaxm=maps https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&ia=web&iaxm=maps Just noticed it recently.
pests 3y ago
I recently watched this show on netflix called "The Billion Dollar Code" that went into the details about maps beginnings and other companies claim to the idea. It was pretty interesting.
- cpeterso 3y ago
  I can also recommend "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality" (https://amzn.com/0062673041 https://amzn.com/0062673041) about the evolution of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Written by one of the founders of Keyhole (the company that built what became Google Earth), the book is mostly about the founding of Keyhole and its mapping technology, but has some insider info about the political maneuverings between Google's Search and Geo teams over owning the map ads because everyone knew it would be a big deal.
  - Tempest1981 3y ago
    That link gave me "SORRY we couldn't find that page", but this worked: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062673041 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062673041
- aix1 3y ago
  That was about Google Earth, not about Google Maps, right? (I don't know to what extent the tech stack is shared between the two.)
  - pests 3y ago
    Ah you're probably right! I know they are separate things but ever since that update ~10 years ago where they brought many Earth features into Maps the product merged into one for me.
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  Thanks, I'm annoyed that Netflix never recommended this to me, even though I've watched many tech documentaries.
- 3y ago
hedora 3y ago
The main reason degoogled android doesn’t work is because of the (terrible) design of the android location services and maps APIs. I’m not sure who that drives revenue for, though. I switched back to iPhone over this. I strongly prefer Here We Go to Apple Maps, and it is available on Android. (Open platform, my ass…)
- danielhep 3y ago
  Been trying to use GrapheneOS for a while with their Google Play Services location services shim and it does seem to be fully dependent on GPS.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Google play services API's are deliberately designed to be hard to reimplement by third parties. In the case of maps, the placeId of every business or POI is internal to Google, and no other provider can give you a map for a matching placeId. It's no accident.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    This isn't unique to Google. For example, the stripe PaymentMethod object is opaque and can't be moved to any other payment provider. That pretty much locks customers into stripe unless you want to force the customer to sign up to your service and enter their billing details again.
    - athrun 3y ago
      You can export card information to another provider: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan-export https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan...
dietr1ch 3y ago
If google can't make money with maps, why isn't Maps taken out of google into a charity/non-profit backed thing. There's OpenStreetMap, and Wikipedia wouldn't mind having a Map I guess. That way it'd help a bit with the monopoly heat and maintaining it could be slightly cheaper. I don't know the legal stuff, but I'd rather have a company supporting a non-profit than burning money internally, so I hope the incentives follow that (yeah, probably not true thanks to lobby and having rich people run governments)
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  Even if people wanted to do this for some reason, it is practically extremely difficult to extract a codebase from google3.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  ＞ What about indirect revenue This part is probably what keeps Maps valuable as an asset, and it's such a huge moat that letting it go would be irreversible. Building a similar product from scratch takes tremendous capital and local deals, we've seen how much of an effort it is for Apple to even have a viable product, coming up with a competitive offering would require double that. Even if all counted for Maps was net 0 in the balance sheet, I feel there would be no Google CEO agreeing to let it go just for antitrust relief. They'd probably let Youtube become independant before that.
- remus 3y ago
  > If google can't make money with maps, why isn't map taken out of google into a charity/non-profit backed thing. There's OpenStreetMap, and Wikipedia wouldn't mind having a Map I guess. Assuming maps still loses a good chunk of money, how would it survive as a charity or non-profit? Where would the money come from? Who would donate to the charity?
  - elaus 3y ago
    Without donations OpenStreetMap would also lose money. But obviously people (and companies) are much more willing to donate to a project when it's a charity/non-profit, instead of the product of one of the biggest companies in the world.
RobotToaster 3y ago
I'm surprised by that given the api pricing.
dheera 3y ago
It's also been downright unusable. While navigating it hides all the business names from me so I can't browse the stores are along my way. I constantly have to exit navigation, approximately remember the route, browse the stores, and then re-enter navigation mode. This is only one of many pain points. Its assistant is also useless. "OK Google, zoom in the map by a factor of 1.5" "OK Google, stop hiding the businesses" "OK Google, add a stop for the last Safeway before the turn onto route 120" None of this stuff works.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  Yes the classic dance of “zoom in slightly further, but this time without arbitrarily removing 3/4’s of my search results that I know exist here, and showing me other random locations” Or “good lord just show me the street name please”
  - jahnu 3y ago
    I’d like to see a defence of the reason why it’s so often a bit of a job to be able to read the street name… on a map. If only for the laugh I would have.
    - thinkingemote 3y ago
      They have a blog post about it from way back. Essentially the map changes depending on context so you don't need to see store names if you are zooming down the freeway by the side of it, you might see road names if walking and navigating, but not if you have gps in a car, you might see more restaurants if you came to maps from a restaurant search context etc etc
      - hgsgm 3y ago
        Yes, Maps does it what it thinks the average mook wants, and refuses to do what the actual user wants.
        3y ago
makeitdouble 3y ago
What kills me is I'd easily pay 50~100 eur a month if Maps had to be non ad subsidized. This is to me Google's most everyday impacting product, and what makes the difference between me being stranded/lost or making it in time. The stories of people ending in a lake for blindly following directions are cheeky, but decent maps are just that important, and Google Maps, how flawed it can be, is currently the best for so many areas.
- bubblethink 3y ago
  You'd pay 50-100 euro a month ? Why ? How did you arrive at this number ? Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much. To stretch this, if maps is 50-100 a month, how much is the total bill of all software you use ? Surely, the h/w, OS, browsers etc. should be orders of magnitude more than what they are today too.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    > How did you arrive at this number ? Straight comparison to the other service I paid for for a while I gave up as it didn't seem worth it. > Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much. They costed a bunch and were a lot less useable in day to day life. There was no device that would tell me the schedule of the next train departing from the station 10 min from where I am, when the store I am going will close, and how I'll get back when there's no train left for the day anymore. To your point there were service providing this info in part, in text format, on super small screen, and they'd cost around 5/10 bucks a month. Now I get that with a mostly accurate map, end to end, automatically udpated as I start moving. And I also get other people's position, and don't need to text them every 5 min to know if they're lost or stuck. The same thing goes for mountain maps, where I live the trail markers are relatively accurate and I can use it as a reference to check the official maps and on trail directions (and getting the other people's position is that much more valuable) All in all it's a package that was never at hand before smarphones arised, and is currently only really working with Google Maps, even as we have OSM and Apple Maps at the distance. > how much is the total bill of all software you use ? Surely, the h/w, OS, browsers etc. should be orders of magnitude more than what they are today too. I actually think that keeping a worldwide map including cities street level details and natural paths up to date could cost a lot more that maintaining a browser or an OS.
bombolo 3y ago
How can google maps monetize when openstreetmaps exists?
- mdp2021 3y ago
  Interesting to know that OSM lists businesses, but GMaps contains more information, which can sometimes be crucial. (E.g. opening days and hours.)
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Those details are even occasionally correct
  - tlocke 3y ago
    OpenStreetMap does hold opening hours of businesses. Here are the details (including opening hours) of my local cafe https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/485163917 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/485163917 I go round entering OSM data using the StreetComplete app. It's slightly awkward if a shop doesn't display their opening hours, because then you have to go in, and I feel I need to buy something and then ask their opening hours.
    - runiq 3y ago
      I do that too (in Germany), and I just… ask them if I may enter their opening hours into OSM. I've never been refused. Sometimes an employee takes an interest and then I take the chance to explain a bit. It's a win-win for both sides, after all—the map users and the shop owners.
      - ce4 3y ago
        Why ask the owner in the first place. Its public information anyway. Google does not ask either.
        runiq 3y ago
        Because I'm nice that way.
cpeterso 3y ago
I assume people on the Google Maps team use Google Maps in their daily lives. Do they not feel the UX friction from all the ad-centric design?
- hbs18 3y ago
  It's more likely they use Apple Maps
- mirzap 3y ago
  People who make decisions usually don't use the product. Just look at Uber CEO, who was clueless about Uber ride pricing.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  All the VPs and directors use iPhones.
  - aikinai 3y ago
    But still loaded with Google products, especially Maps.
tannhaeuser 3y ago
Just a couple weeks ago, Google announced they're going to re-photograph Street View in my country, though, which is still running on the initial 2007ish data. How would that be profitable? The idea of virtual ads placed onto pseudo 3D walls was already present when Street View started but apparently didn't deliver economically. Maybe they want to break resistance this time around as they had lots of data protection complaints/requests for blocking a particular lot from displaying unblurred at my place?
- pronik 3y ago
  Are you talking about Germany? Google never stopped creating new images in Germany, they've just decided they would put the new images online (which they already did).
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  Mind that they don't only take pictures. The cars are full of sensors. From GPS to verify coordinates of roads, over Wifi to scan SSIDs for locating devices without GPS to LIDAR to scan 3D features and probably a lot more ...
  - bhandziuk 3y ago
    And all the pictures have things like street signs and traffic lights and fire hydrants which people have been helping locate with recaptchas.
    - commonlisp94 3y ago
      I think this a myth told by marketing. They already know the photos have the objects they are interested in. Are they still working on motorcycles buses and signs? The recaptcha part doesn't even depend on recognition, it's just a statistical comparison with what other humans clicked on given the same prompt + some pointer analysis and browser fingerprinting.
DeathArrow 3y ago
>Monetization was a dismal failure. Aren't they charging big money for the API?
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  Depends. Basically, the API is free if all you do is display a map, keep the Google branding at the bottom, and add a few of those pins. Make one of those pins move because it's actually a car, and suddenly your cheeks are getting clapped with 6+-figure bills.
  - dahwolf 3y ago
    False. The API has a free tier, followed by 200$ monthly credit, followed by outrageous prices.
  - 3LazTjBv-f 3y ago
    I don't think this is true for a while (5 years). There are view limits and I still find embedded maps that look just like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50977913/google-maps-shows-for-development-purposes-only https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50977913/google-maps-sho... .
    - ohgodplsno 3y ago
      Currently working on multiple apps hitting anywhere between 5k and 150k maps loads a day, costs are zero because we do not do things outside of the free usage tier. The Maps Embed API (the one you see on websites) is pretty clear on that: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/usage-and-billing#embed https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/usage... Pricing for the Maps Embed API All Maps Embed API requests are available at no charge with unlimited usage. Other usage limits There are no short-term (queries per second) or long-term (queries per day) limits on the Maps Embed API. Similar things apply to the Maps SDK for Android. Seeing the watermark means that there's either no API key being sent with the request or, in relatively new developments, that you haven't enabled billing/inputted a credit card. Which is a scary thing to do when you know that you're not doing anything out of the usage limits... but what if Google suddenly decided that ?
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Peole forget that millions of people submit data to Google Maps for free. I placed all the local postboxes on google maps, people sibmit information about their businesss, opening hours, etc. This is hugely valuable. Also google grew laxy. Not tskes them a year to add a royal mail postbox
- aembleton 3y ago
  Worth adding that information to open street maps so that it available for other maps too.
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    For sure, but for many people there's only Google Maps, and maybe Apple Maps. On the short term, catering to Google Maps makes sense. They'd add to another project if it were to be popular enough, and the network effect keeps Google Maps popular. Hence they get away with enshittification.
    - atlintots 3y ago
      That's just another reason why it's worth adding that information to open street maps, if you are able to.
    - throwaway9621 3y ago
      >They'd add to another project if it were to be popular enough, and the network effect keeps Google Maps popular. Hence they get away with enshittification. Ah yes, the chicken and egg logic of network effect excuses all. How about if people, idk, just evangelized more about the things they love to be smug about on HN? People should be shamed off enshittified platforms. Be "that guy" - or be a hypocrite. For Google it might a little more complicated, but for each one of us it's exactly this simple.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - 3y ago
nielsole 3y ago
Google Maps design is becoming less detailed over the years. It's really apparent when compared to OSM. It is necessary to search for a lot of things in Google maps as they are otherwise not visible. You can't really navigate off Google maps without turn-by-turn navigation. I wonder whether this is a strategic drive from Google to make maps more like search to enable advertising or whether they truly think this is the superior user interface. What is your take on that?
- l33tman 3y ago
  Yeah it's weird, very often a venue on a street is simply not visible unless zoomed in TO THE MAX. And then it's not any weird obscure thing, it's a restaurant or coffeeshop that's been there for years.
  - Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
    What's even worse is that often I'll click "restaurants", zoom in all the way, and then click "Search this area", yet Google will still refuse to show some popular restaurant, even when there are no other restaurants displayed in the window. The only way to get those restaurants to show up is to search them by name. Not sure if they're intentionally penalizing certain restaurants, but it's pretty bad.
    - agentgumshoe 3y ago
      Guess those ones just aren't paying their google taxes...
    - ju-st 3y ago
      I get much better results by clicking on the text input field and pressing enter every time after moving/zooming instead of clicking on "search this area".
    - lancesells 3y ago
      FWIW Apple does the same thing to me in my neighborhood. I live in Brooklyn where there are restaurants on every block but it'll zoom out and show ~15 restaurants scattered over a mile with half in Manhattan. Pretty unusable.
tinus_hn 3y ago
If it’s not making money anyway it’s strange they pull tricks that are just another thing to make Google look greedy and bad, where they very clearly hide businesses to punish them for not taking out an ad. It makes Google look like the mob and everyone sees it. Everyone would understand if they would show businesses that pay at the top of the list but somehow instead they went this way, incomprehensible.
hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
> "What about indirect revenue?" you ask? Google consciously does not want to estimate that, because such a document could be discovered in patent litigation. Could you tell us more how you came to this conclusion? Did someone high up ever literally tell you "we're not doing that because it could show up in discovery"? And if not, why have you concluded that?
victorantos 3y ago
Given your firsthand experience and the industry's evolving nature, do you think there have been any significant shifts in Google Maps' monetization approach since your time working on it?
WeylandYutani 3y ago
It's funny Maps has become so crap that I paid 10 euro for OSM. But I think open street maps has a killer feature that Google doesn't have: the community.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  It's not a killer feature if you only use it because Google got crappy.
- urbandw311er 3y ago
  Except of course that Google can just freely use the OSM data anyway.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Maybe. They have (or have as of 10 years ago when I signed up) a checkmark for I consider this public domain. If you don't check that OSM cannot freely use the data. I only edit OSM so that people can find my house, so I consider it a feature that google can freely use my changes, but not everyone agrees.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I know, because they tried to sell it to me when I was at a megacorp, they resell the real time location and local data correlated to user characteristics, as data service to large discrete customers. This includes constant real time information about where people are traveling to, businesses being frequented by demographics, with a sophisticated query interface for asking relatively complex questions of maps derived data. It has some differential privacy layers but we suspected it could be attacked to suss out individuals with sufficient care and effort. Our impression was “holy shit that’s creepy” and it convinced us to never put our sensitive workloads or data in any Google product, cloud or other.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Anywhere you put your data can be read by the people that run the place, regardless of what other products they make.
  - tommit 3y ago
    It seems like the person you're responding to has a problem with them selling their data in real-time to 3rd parties, rather than just any Google employee knowing where they are heading.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      Yes that’s the specific issue. We didn’t fear specifically they could read our data; the key management systems available appeared sufficient at some level (although the gcp audit system had some issues, particularly access audit is available as a IAM decision log rather than point of use, so any access bypassing IAM or that failed in the service but succeeded in an IAM call would appear a positive access, etc - aws does the right thing here). More of concern is they appeared more than happy to harvest utilization information for the profit of others, and in our business that was a potentially serious side channel.
    - gardenhedge 3y ago
      surely google employees can't look up peoples locations..
wakeupcall 3y ago
I was working on web maps before google maps steamrolled (effectively killed) the competition. The big thing for us was that we couldn't compete with the storage and licensing requirements for satellite imagery. I suspect it was the same for other local competitors at the time: our local data was objectively better, but google's was just sexier, and you couldn't compete with free. I've long since switched fields, but the irony is that the company I was working for survived and I heard maps for various business use is now much more expensive than our offer used to be and several large clients eventually switched back. As a user, I loved maps when it came out. The pre-rendered tiled maps were clean and fast. The web UI was clean and responsive. Streetview was (and still is) absolutely mind boggling. Heck, I even applied to work for google maps at the time. Nowdays maps is an absolute shitshow. I find it utterly unusable for almost any purpose except for streetview, which is the only reason I still know how it looks like.
behringer 3y ago
Let's hope they don't forget about the indrect revenue because honestly the only reason I even use google for local results at all is google maps.
hiddencost 3y ago
Ads and Search use the data from maps to make up the difference. Even just the ability of search to serve local seeking queries is a huge defensive moat, but the marginal revenue from having a model of the world is worth it.
jklinger410 3y ago
Wow, this is crazy insight. From my perspective as an advertiser, mobile/local PPC has taken over, be it Local Service Ads or regular search ads listings that show up in maps. SMART ads that use your GMB profile instead of your website go GANGBUSTERS for brick and mortar clients, who love them. I wonder how long you have been gone, and if it's possible that they have taken over so much since you left that your statements here are no longer true.
smortaz 3y ago
speaking of monetization, i’d happily pay a $10 monthly fee for these features as a biker: - weather along route Google knows the weather, it knows the route… Just add a layer! better yet suggest a reroute. i pay for a separate app for this currently. - motorcycle friendly features bigger buttons for usage with gloves; selection of straight, curvy, unpaved etc roads; right now it’s just Highway or non Highway - ability to create a group and show their live locations on the map. Something better than WhatsApp live location. The current approach that Google maps uses is cumbersome and non-intuitive. also if a route is updated, an option to update everyone else’s shared route. - local info, POI, etc you know my location and interests, tell me some interesting stuff over Bluetooth about the city or POI’s i’m passing by.
mike_hock 3y ago
A rotten spirit enshittens the smallest UI.
flyinghamster 3y ago
One of my biggest peeves with Google Maps is its lack of respect for my zoom level. When I tap the centering button, NO, I don't want to zoom in. If I wanted to zoom in, I'd zoom in! Couple that with the roughly decade-old removal of the +/- zoom buttons, and I basically don't bother with Google Maps any more except for turn-by-turn navigation.
- armandhammer 3y ago
  Why do you need +/- zoom buttons? You can just double-tap the screen but hold down the second tap, then slide your finger up or down to zoom in/out as an alternative to pinch-zooming.
  - flyinghamster 3y ago
    That's not what I'd call "discoverable" by any stretch of the imagination.

abdullahhhh 3y ago

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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.
- bostik 3y ago
  I do something similar when going around and about in the UK (and to a lesser degree Malta when I happen to be there). I like to visit random places, seeking out locations off the touristy paths. One particular search has helped me over the years: "pubs near me". Local pubs, even those part of a large chain, tend to give a nice feel of the region and the people who live there. And you can learn interesting details about the local history.
bandrami 3y ago
The author notes that Google does seem to be leaning in to the sector where they really make a lot of sense, hotels. I'm going to Delhi for work next week and how I picked a hotel was going to maps, zooming out from the venue a bit, and letting hotel pins appear.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

> What about indirect revenue? Google decision makers must know of its importance as a moat, a data collection pipe, a vehicle for other services and so on. No offense, but trying to squeeze direct revenue out seems kinda laughable. Or maybe even a way to plausibly deny the indirect revenue importance.

64bittechie 3y ago
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vmfunction 3y ago
with giant data beast company like google, everything is about indirect revenue. Just because map doesn't make money, doesn't mean it won't drive up other ad revues.
- octacat 3y ago
  Google uses maps to collect the location data from iOS devices. So, Apple Maps are useful, because they prevent Google Maps from becoming "too many ads app".
  - vmfunction 3y ago
    Also duckduckgo has apple maps online too: https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&ia=web&iaxm=maps https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&ia=web&iaxm=maps Just noticed it recently.

pests 3y ago

I recently watched this show on netflix called "The Billion Dollar Code" that went into the details about maps beginnings and other companies claim to the idea. It was pretty interesting.

cpeterso 3y ago
I can also recommend "Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality" (https://amzn.com/0062673041 https://amzn.com/0062673041) about the evolution of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. Written by one of the founders of Keyhole (the company that built what became Google Earth), the book is mostly about the founding of Keyhole and its mapping technology, but has some insider info about the political maneuverings between Google's Search and Geo teams over owning the map ads because everyone knew it would be a big deal.
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  That link gave me "SORRY we couldn't find that page", but this worked: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062673041 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062673041
aix1 3y ago
That was about Google Earth, not about Google Maps, right? (I don't know to what extent the tech stack is shared between the two.)
- pests 3y ago
  Ah you're probably right! I know they are separate things but ever since that update ~10 years ago where they brought many Earth features into Maps the product merged into one for me.
Tempest1981 3y ago
Thanks, I'm annoyed that Netflix never recommended this to me, even though I've watched many tech documentaries.
3y ago

hedora 3y ago

The main reason degoogled android doesn’t work is because of the (terrible) design of the android location services and maps APIs. I’m not sure who that drives revenue for, though. I switched back to iPhone over this. I strongly prefer Here We Go to Apple Maps, and it is available on Android. (Open platform, my ass…)

danielhep 3y ago
Been trying to use GrapheneOS for a while with their Google Play Services location services shim and it does seem to be fully dependent on GPS.
londons_explore 3y ago
Google play services API's are deliberately designed to be hard to reimplement by third parties. In the case of maps, the placeId of every business or POI is internal to Google, and no other provider can give you a map for a matching placeId. It's no accident.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  This isn't unique to Google. For example, the stripe PaymentMethod object is opaque and can't be moved to any other payment provider. That pretty much locks customers into stripe unless you want to force the customer to sign up to your service and enter their billing details again.
  - athrun 3y ago
    You can export card information to another provider: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan-export https://stripe.com/docs/payments/account/data-migrations/pan...

dietr1ch 3y ago

If google can't make money with maps, why isn't Maps taken out of google into a charity/non-profit backed thing. There's OpenStreetMap, and Wikipedia wouldn't mind having a Map I guess. That way it'd help a bit with the monopoly heat and maintaining it could be slightly cheaper. I don't know the legal stuff, but I'd rather have a company supporting a non-profit than burning money internally, so I hope the incentives follow that (yeah, probably not true thanks to lobby and having rich people run governments)

UncleMeat 3y ago
Even if people wanted to do this for some reason, it is practically extremely difficult to extract a codebase from google3.
makeitdouble 3y ago
＞ What about indirect revenue This part is probably what keeps Maps valuable as an asset, and it's such a huge moat that letting it go would be irreversible. Building a similar product from scratch takes tremendous capital and local deals, we've seen how much of an effort it is for Apple to even have a viable product, coming up with a competitive offering would require double that. Even if all counted for Maps was net 0 in the balance sheet, I feel there would be no Google CEO agreeing to let it go just for antitrust relief. They'd probably let Youtube become independant before that.
remus 3y ago
> If google can't make money with maps, why isn't map taken out of google into a charity/non-profit backed thing. There's OpenStreetMap, and Wikipedia wouldn't mind having a Map I guess. Assuming maps still loses a good chunk of money, how would it survive as a charity or non-profit? Where would the money come from? Who would donate to the charity?
- elaus 3y ago
  Without donations OpenStreetMap would also lose money. But obviously people (and companies) are much more willing to donate to a project when it's a charity/non-profit, instead of the product of one of the biggest companies in the world.

RobotToaster 3y ago

I'm surprised by that given the api pricing.

dheera 3y ago

It's also been downright unusable. While navigating it hides all the business names from me so I can't browse the stores are along my way. I constantly have to exit navigation, approximately remember the route, browse the stores, and then re-enter navigation mode. This is only one of many pain points. Its assistant is also useless. "OK Google, zoom in the map by a factor of 1.5" "OK Google, stop hiding the businesses" "OK Google, add a stop for the last Safeway before the turn onto route 120" None of this stuff works.

FridgeSeal 3y ago
Yes the classic dance of “zoom in slightly further, but this time without arbitrarily removing 3/4’s of my search results that I know exist here, and showing me other random locations” Or “good lord just show me the street name please”
- jahnu 3y ago
  I’d like to see a defence of the reason why it’s so often a bit of a job to be able to read the street name… on a map. If only for the laugh I would have.
  - thinkingemote 3y ago
    They have a blog post about it from way back. Essentially the map changes depending on context so you don't need to see store names if you are zooming down the freeway by the side of it, you might see road names if walking and navigating, but not if you have gps in a car, you might see more restaurants if you came to maps from a restaurant search context etc etc
    - hgsgm 3y ago
      Yes, Maps does it what it thinks the average mook wants, and refuses to do what the actual user wants.
      - 3y ago

makeitdouble 3y ago

What kills me is I'd easily pay 50~100 eur a month if Maps had to be non ad subsidized. This is to me Google's most everyday impacting product, and what makes the difference between me being stranded/lost or making it in time. The stories of people ending in a lake for blindly following directions are cheeky, but decent maps are just that important, and Google Maps, how flawed it can be, is currently the best for so many areas.

bubblethink 3y ago
You'd pay 50-100 euro a month ? Why ? How did you arrive at this number ? Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much. To stretch this, if maps is 50-100 a month, how much is the total bill of all software you use ? Surely, the h/w, OS, browsers etc. should be orders of magnitude more than what they are today too.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  > How did you arrive at this number ? Straight comparison to the other service I paid for for a while I gave up as it didn't seem worth it. > Even before google maps, the standalone navigation devices didn't cost that much. They costed a bunch and were a lot less useable in day to day life. There was no device that would tell me the schedule of the next train departing from the station 10 min from where I am, when the store I am going will close, and how I'll get back when there's no train left for the day anymore. To your point there were service providing this info in part, in text format, on super small screen, and they'd cost around 5/10 bucks a month. Now I get that with a mostly accurate map, end to end, automatically udpated as I start moving. And I also get other people's position, and don't need to text them every 5 min to know if they're lost or stuck. The same thing goes for mountain maps, where I live the trail markers are relatively accurate and I can use it as a reference to check the official maps and on trail directions (and getting the other people's position is that much more valuable) All in all it's a package that was never at hand before smarphones arised, and is currently only really working with Google Maps, even as we have OSM and Apple Maps at the distance. > how much is the total bill of all software you use ? Surely, the h/w, OS, browsers etc. should be orders of magnitude more than what they are today too. I actually think that keeping a worldwide map including cities street level details and natural paths up to date could cost a lot more that maintaining a browser or an OS.

bombolo 3y ago

How can google maps monetize when openstreetmaps exists?

mdp2021 3y ago
Interesting to know that OSM lists businesses, but GMaps contains more information, which can sometimes be crucial. (E.g. opening days and hours.)
- midasuni 3y ago
  Those details are even occasionally correct
- tlocke 3y ago
  OpenStreetMap does hold opening hours of businesses. Here are the details (including opening hours) of my local cafe https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/485163917 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/485163917 I go round entering OSM data using the StreetComplete app. It's slightly awkward if a shop doesn't display their opening hours, because then you have to go in, and I feel I need to buy something and then ask their opening hours.
  - runiq 3y ago
    I do that too (in Germany), and I just… ask them if I may enter their opening hours into OSM. I've never been refused. Sometimes an employee takes an interest and then I take the chance to explain a bit. It's a win-win for both sides, after all—the map users and the shop owners.
    - ce4 3y ago
      Why ask the owner in the first place. Its public information anyway. Google does not ask either.
      - runiq 3y ago
        Because I'm nice that way.

cpeterso 3y ago

I assume people on the Google Maps team use Google Maps in their daily lives. Do they not feel the UX friction from all the ad-centric design?

hbs18 3y ago
It's more likely they use Apple Maps
mirzap 3y ago
People who make decisions usually don't use the product. Just look at Uber CEO, who was clueless about Uber ride pricing.
wildrhythms 3y ago
All the VPs and directors use iPhones.
- aikinai 3y ago
  But still loaded with Google products, especially Maps.

tannhaeuser 3y ago

Just a couple weeks ago, Google announced they're going to re-photograph Street View in my country, though, which is still running on the initial 2007ish data. How would that be profitable? The idea of virtual ads placed onto pseudo 3D walls was already present when Street View started but apparently didn't deliver economically. Maybe they want to break resistance this time around as they had lots of data protection complaints/requests for blocking a particular lot from displaying unblurred at my place?

pronik 3y ago
Are you talking about Germany? Google never stopped creating new images in Germany, they've just decided they would put the new images online (which they already did).
johannes1234321 3y ago
Mind that they don't only take pictures. The cars are full of sensors. From GPS to verify coordinates of roads, over Wifi to scan SSIDs for locating devices without GPS to LIDAR to scan 3D features and probably a lot more ...
- bhandziuk 3y ago
  And all the pictures have things like street signs and traffic lights and fire hydrants which people have been helping locate with recaptchas.
  - commonlisp94 3y ago
    I think this a myth told by marketing. They already know the photos have the objects they are interested in. Are they still working on motorcycles buses and signs? The recaptcha part doesn't even depend on recognition, it's just a statistical comparison with what other humans clicked on given the same prompt + some pointer analysis and browser fingerprinting.

DeathArrow 3y ago

>Monetization was a dismal failure. Aren't they charging big money for the API?

ohgodplsno 3y ago
Depends. Basically, the API is free if all you do is display a map, keep the Google branding at the bottom, and add a few of those pins. Make one of those pins move because it's actually a car, and suddenly your cheeks are getting clapped with 6+-figure bills.
- dahwolf 3y ago
  False. The API has a free tier, followed by 200$ monthly credit, followed by outrageous prices.
- 3LazTjBv-f 3y ago
  I don't think this is true for a while (5 years). There are view limits and I still find embedded maps that look just like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50977913/google-maps-shows-for-development-purposes-only https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50977913/google-maps-sho... .
  - ohgodplsno 3y ago
    Currently working on multiple apps hitting anywhere between 5k and 150k maps loads a day, costs are zero because we do not do things outside of the free usage tier. The Maps Embed API (the one you see on websites) is pretty clear on that: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/usage-and-billing#embed https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/usage... Pricing for the Maps Embed API All Maps Embed API requests are available at no charge with unlimited usage. Other usage limits There are no short-term (queries per second) or long-term (queries per day) limits on the Maps Embed API. Similar things apply to the Maps SDK for Android. Seeing the watermark means that there's either no API key being sent with the request or, in relatively new developments, that you haven't enabled billing/inputted a credit card. Which is a scary thing to do when you know that you're not doing anything out of the usage limits... but what if Google suddenly decided that ?

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

Peole forget that millions of people submit data to Google Maps for free. I placed all the local postboxes on google maps, people sibmit information about their businesss, opening hours, etc. This is hugely valuable. Also google grew laxy. Not tskes them a year to add a royal mail postbox

aembleton 3y ago
Worth adding that information to open street maps so that it available for other maps too.
- Fnoord 3y ago
  For sure, but for many people there's only Google Maps, and maybe Apple Maps. On the short term, catering to Google Maps makes sense. They'd add to another project if it were to be popular enough, and the network effect keeps Google Maps popular. Hence they get away with enshittification.
  - atlintots 3y ago
    That's just another reason why it's worth adding that information to open street maps, if you are able to.
  - throwaway9621 3y ago
    >They'd add to another project if it were to be popular enough, and the network effect keeps Google Maps popular. Hence they get away with enshittification. Ah yes, the chicken and egg logic of network effect excuses all. How about if people, idk, just evangelized more about the things they love to be smug about on HN? People should be shamed off enshittified platforms. Be "that guy" - or be a hypocrite. For Google it might a little more complicated, but for each one of us it's exactly this simple.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- 3y ago

nielsole 3y ago

Google Maps design is becoming less detailed over the years. It's really apparent when compared to OSM. It is necessary to search for a lot of things in Google maps as they are otherwise not visible. You can't really navigate off Google maps without turn-by-turn navigation. I wonder whether this is a strategic drive from Google to make maps more like search to enable advertising or whether they truly think this is the superior user interface. What is your take on that?

l33tman 3y ago
Yeah it's weird, very often a venue on a street is simply not visible unless zoomed in TO THE MAX. And then it's not any weird obscure thing, it's a restaurant or coffeeshop that's been there for years.
- Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
  What's even worse is that often I'll click "restaurants", zoom in all the way, and then click "Search this area", yet Google will still refuse to show some popular restaurant, even when there are no other restaurants displayed in the window. The only way to get those restaurants to show up is to search them by name. Not sure if they're intentionally penalizing certain restaurants, but it's pretty bad.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    Guess those ones just aren't paying their google taxes...
  - ju-st 3y ago
    I get much better results by clicking on the text input field and pressing enter every time after moving/zooming instead of clicking on "search this area".
  - lancesells 3y ago
    FWIW Apple does the same thing to me in my neighborhood. I live in Brooklyn where there are restaurants on every block but it'll zoom out and show ~15 restaurants scattered over a mile with half in Manhattan. Pretty unusable.

tinus_hn 3y ago

If it’s not making money anyway it’s strange they pull tricks that are just another thing to make Google look greedy and bad, where they very clearly hide businesses to punish them for not taking out an ad. It makes Google look like the mob and everyone sees it. Everyone would understand if they would show businesses that pay at the top of the list but somehow instead they went this way, incomprehensible.

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago

> "What about indirect revenue?" you ask? Google consciously does not want to estimate that, because such a document could be discovered in patent litigation. Could you tell us more how you came to this conclusion? Did someone high up ever literally tell you "we're not doing that because it could show up in discovery"? And if not, why have you concluded that?

victorantos 3y ago

Given your firsthand experience and the industry's evolving nature, do you think there have been any significant shifts in Google Maps' monetization approach since your time working on it?

WeylandYutani 3y ago

It's funny Maps has become so crap that I paid 10 euro for OSM. But I think open street maps has a killer feature that Google doesn't have: the community.

hgsgm 3y ago
It's not a killer feature if you only use it because Google got crappy.
urbandw311er 3y ago
Except of course that Google can just freely use the OSM data anyway.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Maybe. They have (or have as of 10 years ago when I signed up) a checkmark for I consider this public domain. If you don't check that OSM cannot freely use the data. I only edit OSM so that people can find my house, so I consider it a feature that google can freely use my changes, but not everyone agrees.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I know, because they tried to sell it to me when I was at a megacorp, they resell the real time location and local data correlated to user characteristics, as data service to large discrete customers. This includes constant real time information about where people are traveling to, businesses being frequented by demographics, with a sophisticated query interface for asking relatively complex questions of maps derived data. It has some differential privacy layers but we suspected it could be attacked to suss out individuals with sufficient care and effort. Our impression was “holy shit that’s creepy” and it convinced us to never put our sensitive workloads or data in any Google product, cloud or other.

hgsgm 3y ago
Anywhere you put your data can be read by the people that run the place, regardless of what other products they make.
- tommit 3y ago
  It seems like the person you're responding to has a problem with them selling their data in real-time to 3rd parties, rather than just any Google employee knowing where they are heading.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Yes that’s the specific issue. We didn’t fear specifically they could read our data; the key management systems available appeared sufficient at some level (although the gcp audit system had some issues, particularly access audit is available as a IAM decision log rather than point of use, so any access bypassing IAM or that failed in the service but succeeded in an IAM call would appear a positive access, etc - aws does the right thing here). More of concern is they appeared more than happy to harvest utilization information for the profit of others, and in our business that was a potentially serious side channel.
  - gardenhedge 3y ago
    surely google employees can't look up peoples locations..

wakeupcall 3y ago

I was working on web maps before google maps steamrolled (effectively killed) the competition. The big thing for us was that we couldn't compete with the storage and licensing requirements for satellite imagery. I suspect it was the same for other local competitors at the time: our local data was objectively better, but google's was just sexier, and you couldn't compete with free. I've long since switched fields, but the irony is that the company I was working for survived and I heard maps for various business use is now much more expensive than our offer used to be and several large clients eventually switched back. As a user, I loved maps when it came out. The pre-rendered tiled maps were clean and fast. The web UI was clean and responsive. Streetview was (and still is) absolutely mind boggling. Heck, I even applied to work for google maps at the time. Nowdays maps is an absolute shitshow. I find it utterly unusable for almost any purpose except for streetview, which is the only reason I still know how it looks like.

behringer 3y ago

Let's hope they don't forget about the indrect revenue because honestly the only reason I even use google for local results at all is google maps.

hiddencost 3y ago

Ads and Search use the data from maps to make up the difference. Even just the ability of search to serve local seeking queries is a huge defensive moat, but the marginal revenue from having a model of the world is worth it.

jklinger410 3y ago

Wow, this is crazy insight. From my perspective as an advertiser, mobile/local PPC has taken over, be it Local Service Ads or regular search ads listings that show up in maps. SMART ads that use your GMB profile instead of your website go GANGBUSTERS for brick and mortar clients, who love them. I wonder how long you have been gone, and if it's possible that they have taken over so much since you left that your statements here are no longer true.

smortaz 3y ago

speaking of monetization, i’d happily pay a $10 monthly fee for these features as a biker: - weather along route Google knows the weather, it knows the route… Just add a layer! better yet suggest a reroute. i pay for a separate app for this currently. - motorcycle friendly features bigger buttons for usage with gloves; selection of straight, curvy, unpaved etc roads; right now it’s just Highway or non Highway - ability to create a group and show their live locations on the map. Something better than WhatsApp live location. The current approach that Google maps uses is cumbersome and non-intuitive. also if a route is updated, an option to update everyone else’s shared route. - local info, POI, etc you know my location and interests, tell me some interesting stuff over Bluetooth about the city or POI’s i’m passing by.

mike_hock 3y ago

A rotten spirit enshittens the smallest UI.

flyinghamster 3y ago

One of my biggest peeves with Google Maps is its lack of respect for my zoom level. When I tap the centering button, NO, I don't want to zoom in. If I wanted to zoom in, I'd zoom in! Couple that with the roughly decade-old removal of the +/- zoom buttons, and I basically don't bother with Google Maps any more except for turn-by-turn navigation.

armandhammer 3y ago
Why do you need +/- zoom buttons? You can just double-tap the screen but hold down the second tap, then slide your finger up or down to zoom in/out as an alternative to pinch-zooming.
- flyinghamster 3y ago
  That's not what I'd call "discoverable" by any stretch of the imagination.