5 ms·

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

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.
    - rattray 3y ago
      Have you found anything better for the area? This frustrates me too...
      - Symbiote 3y ago
        OpenStreetMap has at least some of the data: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/40.67540/-73.95641 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/40.67540/-73.95641 so an interface could be made to present it better: without being zoomed in so much, with filters and so on. I know of https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/ https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/ which does this for public toilets. I just found this which has an example for restaurants in one town: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/where-to-eat-in-middlebury_419497#14/44.0020/-73.1690 http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/where-to-eat-in-middlebu...
        Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
        I love OSM and use it all the time for hiking, but even though their restaurant and hotel listings have good coverage, they're sadly not much use to me without the reviews. Short of scraping reviews from Google and importing them into OSM for the area in which I'm traveling, I'm not sure there is a good short-term solution.
    - manicennui 3y ago
      I don't think that they understand how people in NYC and Chicago live. It is designed for people who are driving everywhere.
  - vidanay 3y ago
    Also the "cuisine" filters for restaurants appears to be completely irrelevant. You will still get results for Chinese restaurants even though you have selected "Pizza".
    - KMag 3y ago
      It would seem that the revenue-optimizing ML has learned that the median user could really go for Chinese take-out right about now (for all values of now), no matter what sort of food they started out looking for, so it's always going to show up. I know median and mediocrity already share a common root, but I wish there were a clever portmanteau describing ML-optimizing for the median user leading to a mediocre experience. "Medianocre" just sounds like an eggcorn, so I presume 99% of readers would take it as a mistake instead of a neologism.
  - pbnjeh 3y ago
    Been noticing this, myself. E.g. for a local used bookstore that's reasonably popular and has been there for decades. I know the owner and can guess -- though I haven't asked -- that they aren't giving Google much if any money. So, no Maps presence for you! (Except via direct search within Maps.) Just my anecdotal experience, but one of several similar on Maps that leave me thinking they "have that feel" to them.
  - asielen 3y ago
    I really hate when I click search this area and it zooms out to a larger area. I specifically had an area selected for a reason. I know there are plenty of restaurants there. I don't need it to tell me to look somewhere else.
phiresky 3y ago
There was some articles on here about how maps have been changing over the years (also other map apps). The gist is that why would you need to show street names anymore? On printed maps that's the only thing you have, but that's not how most people navigate anymore. They search for a place or POIs and then use navigation. So the things most people care about have changed, streets are less important now and things like attractions or "active areas" are more important. Yeah, some people still read maps the "old way", but now probably those are in the minority so catering to them isn't worth it anymore. Of course that's only one aspect next to the question of what makes the most ad money.
- abdullahhhh 3y ago
  [dead]
- unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
  It's process lock-in applied to the real world. Sad.
- driscoll42 3y ago
  I think you mean this blog? https://www.justinobeirne.com/ https://www.justinobeirne.com/ , it's been shared a number of times https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=justinobeirne.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=justinobeirne.com here with this one being the most popular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653 , though that's six years old. Still well worth reading
- rchaud 3y ago
  > They search for a place or POIs and then use navigation. In big cities, there is construction happening everywhere, POIs have closed down or changed location after the pandemic. Street names are the only thing that stays the same.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Perhaps not a large use case, but I use street names regularly when discussing bicycle routes. "How to get from Town A to Town B by bicycle" often relies on street names - take Rt 123 for 2 miles, turn left on Fancy Farm Lane, etc. The route-finding often keeps you on Rt 123 for the whole route, but it's a busy dual carriageway and really not suitable for bikes.
lost_tourist 3y ago
I'm not sure why they could add "personalities" or "modes" like simple, tourist, night-life, etc. Seems rather obvious to just about anyone who thinks more than 30 seconds about it
- gdprrrr 3y ago
  Implemented in OsmAnd, called profiles :)
DropInIn 3y ago
Yea it's got some really odd behaviors that I can only attribute to Yelp style behavior from Google. I was literally on the same block as a restaurant and it wouldn't show in maps at all, though the other 3 restaurants on the block were, and the only way to get it to show up was to Google it then click on the maps link. As soon as I took focus off the restaurant it disappeared again. I can only presume it's because they hadn't paid Google or were being punished for some reason. It lead to me looking for more examples and found many places, including some major ones in the city I'm visiting, were excluded for no apparent reason, even ones with 4.9 ratings, and the only correlation between them was that they either were inherently more "indy" than the rest and thus likely to avoid engaging in certain aspects of Google or were close to a more powerful competitor. This was particularly shocking when Wendy's wasn't being shown at a strip mall but the Burger King was....

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.
  - rattray 3y ago
    Have you found anything better for the area? This frustrates me too...
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      OpenStreetMap has at least some of the data: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/40.67540/-73.95641 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/40.67540/-73.95641 so an interface could be made to present it better: without being zoomed in so much, with filters and so on. I know of https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/ https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/ which does this for public toilets. I just found this which has an example for restaurants in one town: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/where-to-eat-in-middlebury_419497#14/44.0020/-73.1690 http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/where-to-eat-in-middlebu...
      - Ycdr4thfdd 3y ago
        I love OSM and use it all the time for hiking, but even though their restaurant and hotel listings have good coverage, they're sadly not much use to me without the reviews. Short of scraping reviews from Google and importing them into OSM for the area in which I'm traveling, I'm not sure there is a good short-term solution.
  - manicennui 3y ago
    I don't think that they understand how people in NYC and Chicago live. It is designed for people who are driving everywhere.
- vidanay 3y ago
  Also the "cuisine" filters for restaurants appears to be completely irrelevant. You will still get results for Chinese restaurants even though you have selected "Pizza".
  - KMag 3y ago
    It would seem that the revenue-optimizing ML has learned that the median user could really go for Chinese take-out right about now (for all values of now), no matter what sort of food they started out looking for, so it's always going to show up. I know median and mediocrity already share a common root, but I wish there were a clever portmanteau describing ML-optimizing for the median user leading to a mediocre experience. "Medianocre" just sounds like an eggcorn, so I presume 99% of readers would take it as a mistake instead of a neologism.
- pbnjeh 3y ago
  Been noticing this, myself. E.g. for a local used bookstore that's reasonably popular and has been there for decades. I know the owner and can guess -- though I haven't asked -- that they aren't giving Google much if any money. So, no Maps presence for you! (Except via direct search within Maps.) Just my anecdotal experience, but one of several similar on Maps that leave me thinking they "have that feel" to them.
- asielen 3y ago
  I really hate when I click search this area and it zooms out to a larger area. I specifically had an area selected for a reason. I know there are plenty of restaurants there. I don't need it to tell me to look somewhere else.

phiresky 3y ago

There was some articles on here about how maps have been changing over the years (also other map apps). The gist is that why would you need to show street names anymore? On printed maps that's the only thing you have, but that's not how most people navigate anymore. They search for a place or POIs and then use navigation. So the things most people care about have changed, streets are less important now and things like attractions or "active areas" are more important. Yeah, some people still read maps the "old way", but now probably those are in the minority so catering to them isn't worth it anymore. Of course that's only one aspect next to the question of what makes the most ad money.

abdullahhhh 3y ago
[dead]
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
It's process lock-in applied to the real world. Sad.
driscoll42 3y ago
I think you mean this blog? https://www.justinobeirne.com/ https://www.justinobeirne.com/ , it's been shared a number of times https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=justinobeirne.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=justinobeirne.com here with this one being the most popular https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653 , though that's six years old. Still well worth reading
rchaud 3y ago
> They search for a place or POIs and then use navigation. In big cities, there is construction happening everywhere, POIs have closed down or changed location after the pandemic. Street names are the only thing that stays the same.
alistairSH 3y ago
Perhaps not a large use case, but I use street names regularly when discussing bicycle routes. "How to get from Town A to Town B by bicycle" often relies on street names - take Rt 123 for 2 miles, turn left on Fancy Farm Lane, etc. The route-finding often keeps you on Rt 123 for the whole route, but it's a busy dual carriageway and really not suitable for bikes.

lost_tourist 3y ago

I'm not sure why they could add "personalities" or "modes" like simple, tourist, night-life, etc. Seems rather obvious to just about anyone who thinks more than 30 seconds about it

gdprrrr 3y ago
Implemented in OsmAnd, called profiles :)

DropInIn 3y ago

Yea it's got some really odd behaviors that I can only attribute to Yelp style behavior from Google. I was literally on the same block as a restaurant and it wouldn't show in maps at all, though the other 3 restaurants on the block were, and the only way to get it to show up was to Google it then click on the maps link. As soon as I took focus off the restaurant it disappeared again. I can only presume it's because they hadn't paid Google or were being punished for some reason. It lead to me looking for more examples and found many places, including some major ones in the city I'm visiting, were excluded for no apparent reason, even ones with 4.9 ratings, and the only correlation between them was that they either were inherently more "indy" than the rest and thus likely to avoid engaging in certain aspects of Google or were close to a more powerful competitor. This was particularly shocking when Wendy's wasn't being shown at a strip mall but the Burger King was....