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Google Maps is a critical dependency for nutrition facts on mcdonalds.com

• codeulike 3y ago
  Fair enough. Google Maps is actually pretty solid and usually there.
  • spacecadet 3y ago
    If they wanted to level up the UX they could explain why they need/use location.
  • upon_drumhead 3y ago
    It’s not about the functionality but why does Google need to know that I’m looking at fast food from this specific location? Google isn’t a party to my eating decisions and can only be used to target ads. It’s not a reasonable requirement.
    • ryantgtg 3y ago
      Google Maps has more functionality than just targeted ads.
      • upon_drumhead 3y ago
        What part of https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-calculator.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-... Requires a map? On my phone, there’s no map widget nor distance to a restaurant nor anything else distance related. There’s zero reason for the current functionality to require giving google my location. Sure, you can argue that one day they might add something that uses the map, but that day ain’t today nor does it seem a reasonable requirement to get the calorie content of some chicken nugs.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • Eddygandr 3y ago
          What are your details for 10 chicken nuggets? Are they different to mine in Sweden? Calories Calories 24grams Total Fat (31 % Daily Value) 24g 24grams Total Fat (31 % DV ) Total Fat (31 % Daily Value) 26grams Total Carbs (9 % Daily Value) 26g 26grams Total Carbs (9 % DV ) Total Carbs (9 % Daily Value) 23grams Protein 23g 23grams Protein Protein Saturated Fat: 4g (20 % DV) 4grams (20 Percent Daily Values ) Dietary Fiber: 1g (4 % DV) 1grams (4 Percent Daily Values ) Calcium: 15mg (2 % DV) 15milligrams (2 Percent Daily Values ) Trans Fat: 0g 0grams Total Sugars: 0g 0grams Added Sugars: 0g (0 % DV) 0grams (0 Percent Daily Values ) Iron: 1mg (6 % DV) 1milligrams (6 Percent Daily Values ) Cholesterol: 65mg (21 % DV) 65milligrams (21 Percent Daily Values ) Vitamin D: 0mcg (0 % DV) 0microgram (0 Percent Daily Values ) Potassium: 360mg (8 % DV) 360milligrams (8 Percent Daily Values ) Sodium: 850mg (37 % DV) 850milligrams (37 Percent Daily Values )
          • upon_drumhead 3y ago
            Mine are exactly the same, and I presume because you clicked on the url I gave, which includes "/us/en-us/". Switching to "/se/sv-se/" and navigating over to the McNuggets does give different values, however, given the nation is pre-encoded in the url, adding a google map lookup seems entirely pointless.
          • SushiHippie 3y ago
            In sweden there are only 4 chicken nuggets listed, you probably clicked on the link above which is only for the US. https://www.mcdonalds.com/se/sv-se/naringskalkylatorn.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/se/sv-se/naringskalkylatorn.html For england there are 6 and 9 chicken nuggets listed https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/nutrition-calculator.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/nutrition-ca... The page seemingly doesn't use your location data for anything, you need to go to the specific site for your country to see the nutrition for your country.
        • ryantgtg 3y ago
          As mentioned elsewhere in this post, ingredients vary based on country/location and so geolocation might be used for that. I would think of this as something to explore in this investigation. However, you are coming across as so confident in there being zero value that I’m not seeing any value in continuing this dialog.
• cf100clunk 3y ago
  Just a guess, but maybe its because there are different sources of the chicken, by region?
  • inhumantsar 3y ago
    Almost certainly this. Not just chicken but breading ingredients, the oil they fry them in, probably salt content. Maybe sauces too?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • reaperducer 3y ago
      Almost certainly this. Not just chicken but breading ingredients, the oil they fry them in, probably salt content. Maybe sauces too? Oil sounds like the likely culprit to me. About a decade ago a bunch of cities, including Chicago, started regulating the types of oil that could be used for frying in restaurants.
    • stefan_ 3y ago
      That's a nice idea, as if these nutrition facts are super specialized to your precise McDonalds location, and don't actually ya know come down to how much the kid in the back of the kitchen is using the salt shaker. People don't actually believe these are anything more than averages with huge error bars right?
      • asu_thomas 3y ago
        HN is full of propagandized technologists who have yet to realize how few of the world's problems are technical, and how approximately all of them are political. I'm sure there are better essays with similar value, but the one that comes to mind is Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology: https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil394/The%20Question%20Concerning%20Technology.pdf https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil394/The%20Quest...
• anselm 3y ago
  What is the concern? Looking at the law (in Oregon) “Total calories must be posted in a conspicuous place in a font size no smaller than the price, or the least prominent font size of the description of the item. A statement listing the daily nutrient intake amounts of calories, saturated fat, and sodium.” Seems like any legal requirements imply signage in the physical venue ?
  • upon_drumhead 3y ago
    This is their website and not a physical location?
• jwie 3y ago
  Interesting that they won’t infer a location from an IP or other information they have. Seems like they just want the location data and have an excuse to demand it.
  • gruez 3y ago
    >Seems like they just want the location data and have an excuse to demand it. 1. you don't need google maps script to request location 2. the site needs to ask the user before it can get their location. the average user doesn't even know whether google maps is involved or not, so it's totally irrelevant.
  • reaperducer 3y ago
    Interesting that they won’t infer a location from an IP or other information they have. Right now, Google maps tells me I'm in suburban Atlanta. It's off by more than a thousand miles.
    • xattt 3y ago
      Same here. I am in Charlottetown, but can get either that, Halifax or Montreal, which I assume are at different levels of the interconnect to the rest of the Internet. Occasionally, I will get French language automatically picked because of the assumption that I am “in” Montreal.
    • TheCleric 3y ago
      Same, always has me in the Midwest despite not living near there.
  • amf12 3y ago
    Because Sites usually have an input box to enter the store address / zip code, otherwise you'd never be able to look up for another location. Probably the case here too
• Zetobal 3y ago
  Sounds like the typical... "We are not doing it because it's easy but because we thought it would be easy." Kind of manager... the ones that can get your whole company in trouble.
• upon_drumhead 3y ago
  Speaking of which, I hate the new trend of requiring you to use their online ordering flow to view a menu or view nutrition info. I just want to know if I have enough calories left in the day for that medium fries on my way home. I don’t want to order online and have them delivered.
• klyrs 3y ago
  While they could get it in a different way, your location (or, more important, restaurant location) does seem critical as McDonalds' menu is regional https://www.allrecipes.com/gallery/regional-mcdonalds-items/ https://www.allrecipes.com/gallery/regional-mcdonalds-items/
• whirlwin 3y ago
  Is there a more detailed explanation? It would be interesting to know how it works
  • Alifatisk 3y ago
    Visit mcdonalds.com?
  • gruez 3y ago
    Probably not, given that the post's author was seemingly more concerned about making an outrage post than doing the most basic of investigation. From what I can tell one part of the script is trying to do `google.maps`, which errors out because `google` is undefined. The code in question seems to be initialization related, so it's unclear whether the page actually requires google maps api, or the site was poorly designed and tries to initialize google maps api on every page.
    • zagrebian 3y ago
      OP here. I’m not outraged. I’m just sharing interesting observations.
      • pvg 3y ago
        But the observation is wrong or at a minimum, gussied up to make it look interesting. If you're calmly producing clickbait, it's still clickbait.
        • zagrebian 3y ago
          The headline that I wrote is a fact, pure and simple.
          • pvg 3y ago
            Whether it's a fact is under some dispute but it doesn't matter if it's a fact, it's specifically selected to be bait. Take a look at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%27just%20facts%27&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
• tracerbulletx 3y ago
  I mean there's a change your location button at the top that literally displays google maps, also might use it to auto complete addresses, they're probably just preloading the script for that. That page doesn't even request location permissions, this is much ado about nothing.
• gruez 3y ago
  In other words: blocking random scripts might cause sites to stop working. Who would have thought? This is the equivalent of deleting a random third party analytics library and complaining that your app no longer builds. Sure, there's the concept of progressive enhancement or whatever, but at the same time it's also unreasonable to expect the developer to accommodate the possibility of any third party script getting blocked.
  • bandergirl 3y ago
    > possibility of any third party script getting blocked I'd say it's not unreasonable. You're giving your third parties the ability to break your business. Third party scripts are blocked or just fail to load all the time, APIs change suddenly, etc.
    • gruez 3y ago
      >Third party scripts are blocked or just fail to load all the time What's your strategy for dealing with jquery not getting loaded? >APIs change suddenly, etc. That's going to be an issue regardless of you check whether the script is loaded or not.
      • Caligatio 3y ago
        > What's your strategy for dealing with jquery not getting loaded? Host it on your own infrastructure so that it's the same reliability as your site itself?
        • gruez 3y ago
          That might be doable if the library is jquery or whatever, but how are you going to replace google maps? Hosting an OSM tiles server is non-trivial, and I highly doubt that you'll be able to host it with better reliability than google.
          • bandergirl 3y ago
• bdcravens 3y ago
  The first couple of months I moved into my new house, many sites and apps were broken to me, as the address wasn't yet on Google Maps, and rather than degrade gracefully, those sites and apps were borked due to inability to pre-populate my address.
  • reaperducer 3y ago
    I had a very similar situation when I moved not too long ago. I couldn't arrange for gas service before I moved into my home because the gas company's web site would only accept Google-blessed addresses. I had to actually move in, and then go down to the gas company office with a copy of my lease to prove the address exists. Strange, since at some time in the past the gas company payed many thousands of dollars to run gas service down my street. But, like in most big organizations, I suspect the web people and the company data people don't talk to one another.
    • asu_thomas 3y ago
      > But, like in most big organizations, I suspect the web people and the company data people don't talk to one another. Sounds like you're trying to assume good intentions, but you sound extremely naive as a result. The issue is privatized utilities. They are an ordained monopoly. Their failure to "talk to one another" is not a failure at all. They have no reason to even consider the problem in the first place. You're still paying them, are you not?
      • tredre3 3y ago
        Oh FFS plenty of government services do the exact same thing. The issue isn't private/public. It's our modern development culture of not looking for edge cases to begin with, and ignoring them when they arise later. My city uses Google to fill addresses on their tax portal, so for new construction this exact issue arises. My power company (a public utility) uses recaptcha for logins and I frequently struggle with it.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• cptskippy 3y ago
  I have a feeling this is some dependency the dev created that's breaking their framework's rendering of the content. I have Firefox loaded with all the ad and privacy blockers installed for this reason when I do tests and code reviews. It reveals a lot of inadvertent dependencies and bugs that devs are unaware of.
• Scarbutt 3y ago
  How bad is mcdonalds food?
• reactordev 3y ago
  The sourced ingredients are indeed regional. The menu is regional as well. The website is built on top of their mobile ordering platform. The mobile ordering platform requires your location to be able to route your order to the “correct” McDonald’s. This is done via requesting your location from Google or via location services within the mobile app. This platform is used by a lot of different QSRs. Or Quick Service Restaurants. Dunkin, Starbucks, Taco Bell, Checkers, etc. I know this because I built the platform. The biggest hurdle to the platform was delivering your order to the store “just-in-time” for it to be hot and ready when you get there. Checkout CardFREE. It’s been a decade but they are still delivering value. The VP of Engineering was a new hire junior engineer when I was there. http://www.cardfree.com http://www.cardfree.com
  • bfdm 3y ago
    Interesting! But also really speaks to the need for a browser setting for very coarse location without requiring user entry. Eg, I always block location API access, and sites often have poor fallback UI for entry. If it'd let me, I'd be setting my browser to always report "Toronto, Ontario" and auto-deny location requests.
    • gabereiser 3y ago
      That ship has sailed. Location data is vital to a lot of internet services now. GeoIP fencing is one thing but location fencing is a tech that is being used by every major government (despite them outcrying privacy concerns). I wish it wasn’t like this but until the open web becomes the “transparent” web, the snooping, spying, logging, graph-identity-building, MarTech driven, web will continue to go towards walled gardens and deanonymizing the internet.
      • hackmiester 3y ago
        And yet if you want your app to be listed on the iPhone App Store, it must be equally functional if the user denies location. So, I always do it, and have no problems, although sometimes it is slightly more annoying to use the app.
• archo 3y ago
  https://archive.is/vLui2 https://archive.is/vLui2
• astura 3y ago
  "I'm so offended that a website wants to give me accurate information." They are using Google Maps to get your local nutrition facts. They change with location.