8 ms·

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this jou

by bertil 3y ago

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything. I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversation I wanted to have. You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy. Literally 45 minutes of monologue, none of it about connectivity, being lost or unfamiliar languages. Just how people were wrong, wrong reviews wrong and how they couldn’t read information properly unless they had ‘a mission’. “What if the mission is finding their way in a new city where they don’t have connection?” Didn’t care. Not a real mission. A little later, he was told that the company he was now working for throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy. That was not a conversation he wanted to have.

Tee3993 3y ago
Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?
- palata 3y ago
  If you find it "pretty good", I guess you have never tried an OpenStreetMap-based app like Organic Maps. I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).
  - aix1 3y ago
    > I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases). This is the first come I come across Organic Maps but I do use OSMAnd. I'm wondering how the two compare and would love to hear more about the use cases you have for each of them.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      I use organic maps most of the time but osmand has much better support for hiking trails: you can see them (not just a path, but the name of the route, with a different color to separate it), I can tell the app to prefer it when building an itinerary, and the altitude info is way more detailed. You can spot the exact altitude and gradient at any spot. You can add a second map as an overlay, and I typically use a contour maps to quickly see where the peaks are, where the route will be flat, etc... OSMand is slightly too powerful for everyday use, organic maps is the perfect good-enough, less-is-better example.
    - ygra 3y ago
      I find the UI in Organic Maps to be much nicer. OSMAnd seems to have a larger feature set and extensions and stuff you may or may not need/want/require. Navigation seem to add an announcement in OSMAnd whenever the OSM object for a road changes (seemingly), which leads to a number of totally unnecessary »Continue straight on road X«. Those were a few differences I noticed.
    - ihatehn 3y ago
      I tell people OsmAnd is a swiss army knife that does everything for power users (the cyclists or hikers or drivers who find it really important to do a few specific things that most apps can't do) whereas Organic Maps is the app I actually recommend to family and friends as soon as I know that there's decent address coverage in their area (it's OSM only, so if an address POI doesn't exist in OSM it isn't searchable in OM. But volunteers and everyday users are adding new addresses all the time.)
    - pmontra 3y ago
      I dowloaded Organic Maps ten minutes ago so take my comparison with a grain of salt. I could have missed some features in OM. Here we go: Moving the map is much faster in OM than in OSMAnd. I hope that OSMAnd study the code of OM. The visualization in OM is much nicer. Another thing to copy. OM is extremely better at displaying POIs and their information. Again, copy it. Despite the claims it seems that OM does not show walking and cycling routes. OSMAnd shows them with their name, that matches the one you see on signposts along the routes. OM does not seem to have a way to record a route and save it as gpx. OSMAnd does that. OM does not seem to have a way to place markers on the map. I use them to plan new routes for biking, then I follow the markers. Navigation would bring me where it wants to go through, not where I want to. OM is less than half the size of OSMAnd but it's still 58 MB. I wonder why these mapping apps must be so large. Having to dowload all the maps again is very bad. I wish there is a way to share them among apps but I think that Android makes it impossible, unless we want to use a folder on an external storage (SD card) or root the phone or whatever. I'll keep using OSMAnd because of recording, markers and routes. However I might recommend OM to friends that only need a replacement for Google Maps.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  The support is terrible. You can only choose a rectangle with the same proportions as your screen and the allowed size is too small for a trip in lots of areas of the US. Like a lot of software there are restrictions that make no sense and are extremely user unfriendly.
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    I think now you can search for a city or something and download the offline map
    - rqtwteye 3y ago
      You can. But you can’t download a large region like a whole state which makes long road trips a pain. Apple Maps is even worse because it has no offline mode at all.
      - wombat-man 3y ago
        Idk when you tried it last, but it works for me on the iOS app. If you search for something that is a 'region' there should be a download offline map option. In any case, before traveling I try to download the offline maps in HERE wego too.
      - blendergeek 3y ago
        Apple introduced offline support to maps in the most recent iOS update (I wanna say 17).
      - shaftway 3y ago
        I've generally been really impressed with it. Would it be nice if I could pick a bigger area? Yeah. Would it be nice if I could choose the dimensions of my rectangle, or a non-rectangular shape like a state? Yeah. But the fact that I can download a map that has all of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and sizable chunks of 4 other states in that area for 890 MB is pretty awesome. Especially when it comes with full driving directions, business information including hours and the search capabilities? And it'll keep it up to date periodically? I'll take that win.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  With Organic Maps (and Osmand and mapy.cz) I am able to download entire Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This was useful in my recent trips and can download more if needed. I definitely can not do this with Google Maps.
  - imp0cat 3y ago
    Another vote for mapy.cz and their off-line capabilities. Too bad their navigation does not care about traffic outside of Czechia. You can still use them for directions in a car, but no traffic jam avoidance.
- kilroy123 3y ago
  You can also type a city name. Then type 'okmaps' and press ok. Then, it will bring up the download offline map screen for the whole area.
- bertil 3y ago
  The support got better: downloading is good. It should be usable now, but there are basic things that are not supported, like searching for something or finding a path. I typically don’t need to search: I know where for things are, but there aren't other ways to mark something on the map: favorites and stars don’t appear consistently, and pointing at things is completely useless when logged-in and disabled when off-line. So much of it feels like it was never tested. My main issue is that there should be a way to say, “Keep this journey on screen until I explicitly delete it, with a confirmation model.” I’m assuming that’s what “Pin it” is meant to do, but in practice, I occasionally see the path I last searched when I reopen my phone and map; I never see a pinned journey again if anything happens: rotate the phone, a quick switch to another app, the screen goes dark…
lionkor 3y ago
This will be mega off-topic, but: > throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy As much as slow internet hampered my productivity, I used to have 15 mbit/s download speed until very recently (Germany is behind developing countries, of course, in terms of anything internet), it was good to experience. Before that, when I was living in the countryside, I had 500 KB/s. I know exactly how painful downloading 10, 100, 1000MB is, and I try to make everything I do load on GPRS with reasonable speed. My website, much like HN, loads on a 64 kbit/s mobile internet "connection". Of course vodafone's website to recharge prepaid phones takes 20+ minutes (yes) to load on 64 kbit/s internet.
- Maxion 3y ago
  Am I just old if I as a developer think that 10mbit/s is plenty enough? I could probably do with 1mbit/s and still be about as productive as I am now.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    You are not alone. The last time a home internet upgrade felt really significant to me was going from 2mbit to 8mbit. Everything else has been luxury. Though I'll be signing up for ~160 or ~1000 as soon as the new cables the street was recently dug up to put in place are connected, I like my luxuries! I do still notice upstream improvements though. Both those old 2mbit and 8mbit connections were 256kbit up, and I currently have "up to 17mbit" which is [quick check of router logs] ~11mbit ATM - that can be limiting for backups or when wanting to share video or HQ photos with a large group. So the FTTP upgrade _might_ be justifiable as more than pure luxury.
    - lionkor 3y ago
      DSL can usually do up to 250 mbit/s, no?
      - dspillett 3y ago
        The standard FTTC options in the UK are nominally 40/10 and 80/20. I have the latter, which in reality works out as “up to 76mbit down, up to 17mbit up”. My router is currently synced at 56/11. Where G.FAST is available IIRC that is up to 250down/36up.
jonathanstrange 3y ago
Off-topic, but I find it hard to believe that throttling Wifi could possibly encourage empathy. That sounds so petty to me, it's like removing printer toner and hoping that the office banter about the dysfunctional printer may somehow forge better team-spirit. Or, putting the stapler away so people go looking for it...
- brandall10 3y ago
  I'd gather its empathy for the customers with those constraints, as in, if the product you're building is having issues in this context then you may rethink perf of this or that feature.
- Nition 3y ago
  I think they probably mean empathy for users on slow Internet connections rather than for fellow staff. Basically making you test your software on a slow connection once a week.
  - ricardobayes 3y ago
    While it's a good initiative, I don't think it works as this kind of throttling almost never simulates a real spotty and crap connection.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      More tech companies should do this, and they should do more of it. On Empathy Days, iOS/Android software engineers should have to "live on" 6 year old phones, and desktop software developers should have to use laptops with 8GB RAM and 15" screens as their daily drivers. And Internet throttling should both reduce bandwidth and introduce random latencies and connection drops. Too many developers just assume their users are on this year's phones and supercomputer specced desktops with three 4K 27 inch monitors and write their software to perform well on those systems.
      - ricardobayes 3y ago
jesterson 3y ago
> I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly Very simple answer - they want to know everything you do online. As Google Maps is provided for free, you are the product. Convenience of the product (you) is not a priority whatsoever. > designers like to say that users are always right? It's just smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately IT breeds a number of people who have ignorant position they have the right to tell people how they should interact, conveniently forgetting the service will be used by all groups of people, not just IT geeks.
- aikinai 3y ago
  This lowbrow criticism is really old. Google doesn’t do much offline for the same reason almost no one does offline anymore; it’s hard and the number of users affected is very small. Do you honestly think Google is looking at the number of maps users that go offline and saying, “We absolutely need their data!” rather than “Eh, not worth rearchitecting everything for.” Not to mention they have done a lot for it even if it’s not perfect. There’s a dedicated team doing their best with it. It’s just not worth giving a lot of attention and resources.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    This post is about an offline maps app which is maintained by volunteers, so it can't be that hard for the likes of Google.
    - aikinai 3y ago
      Google could certainly design a basic offline mapping app. They even have offline mapping in their app today. I’m actually not even sure what the complaint is actually about since I don’t use offline myself, but I know that Google Maps is a massive app with tons of teams all working on a myriad of features in parallel and a huge dependency tree. So I’m not surprised at all if there are a bunch of features with online assumptions baked in.
      - bb611 3y ago
tazjin 3y ago
I had a bizarre encounter when working there, also Maps related. I lived in the UK at the time and my post code just didn't exist in Google Maps. I did some digging, and found out that in fact no post codes in the UK had been added in quite some time. Eventually I found out why: There was some lead dev on Maps, who refused to allow new imports of UK post code data because he thought they were "wrong". They were seeing data with multiple post codes for the same building! For the record: This is valid in the UK, as there's a maximum number of households per post code or something like that. Not sure how that ended eventually, left a few years ago, but I just checked and those post codes now exist.
- dspillett 3y ago
  It is quite valid for one property to have multiple street addresses and therefore postcodes. It could genuinely have frontage in two streets, or it could be the result of joining two properties in the same street that originally had different postcodes – many long streets have multiple postcodes along their length¹. --- [1] For example even a not-very-long street I used to live on, Alma Terrace in York, has three postcodes: YO10 4DJ on one side of most of it, YO10 4DL on the other side of that, and YO10 4DQ for both sides of the part between that and Fulford Road. I suspect from the street layout that the third code is due to that part of the road being added later, or originally not having anything on it needing a postcode.
  - tazjin 3y ago
    In London what ends up happening is that many buildings are so large (e.g. St. George's Wharf[0]) that the household count restriction ends up with multiple codes being allocated. [0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/St._George%27s_Wharf.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/St._Geor...
  - snappysnap 3y ago
    And it's also valid for UK postcodes to be reused, e.g. following demolition of the original buildings, e.g. tower blocks, the postcode may be deactivated for a period of time, then reactivated when new buildings elsewhere need a new postcode.
ricardobayes 3y ago
Probably the same reason why they are showing hotels in the city I lived all my life, and have my home address set. It's mindblowing how they don't set meaningful defaults with all that mountain of data they have.
mabbo 3y ago
Google maps is a real-time social network that you don't realize you are a part of. "This store is busiest at 6pm". "This area is less busy than usual". "There's a 5 minute delay ahead, but you're still on the fastest route". All of that comes from data generated by online users. An offline user isn't providing value to Google, so why would they invest in those users?
ericfr11 3y ago
I would have to agree with the designer's I find it easy to download a map. I've done it in every single country I went to. But I have seen family members struggling because they didn't want to take the time to know how to do it (it could be a bad design but also laziness of users...)
- xrikcus 3y ago
  Once you download it does anything actually work beyond viewing? Can you search? Can you ask for directions? I do download maps, and pay for roaming data, but I still would never completely rely on it in a new place because I'm bound to be out of network coverage at some point.
ezfe 3y ago
Apple Maps in iOS 17 has good offline maps support: - Full searching and POI details including hours, etc. - Full routing (no traffic of course, but possibly expected traffic? I'm not sure) - Freeform region selection, overlapping regions, etc.
- bertil 3y ago
  Apple Maos was only relevant in the Bay Area when they launched. They had no meaningful details elsewhere; they didn’t have most street, told you the Louvre was open on Tuesdays and closed the weekend… “embarrassing” would not cover it. They gradually increased the radius to bring hood and well documented in most of California, then some of the US coastline. I’m not sure where they are now, but I’d be surprised if they had basic things like public transport information, Nike lanes where I am. It’s never been a priority for Apple to serve an international audience.
  - ezfe 3y ago
    Yes, I'm aware that Apple Maps was very different 11 years ago when it launched. While it still has a lesser POI database than Google, I would say in the areas where it has launched its in-house maps (Currently 20% by area, 11% by population - primarily lacking South America, Asia, and Africa) You'll be happy to know that the Louvre is now marked as closed on Tuesdays, has a 94% positive rating, and its own 3D model In France, Apple Maps has - country-wide bike routing (accounts for the size of road, elevation, and prefers bike lanes where present) - trains and busses (I can't say with certainty that every local bus will be present but the trains are) - Paris will have detailed bus and bike lane markings directly on the map I've attached a screenshot of public transit navigation in the greater Paris region: Apple Maps: https://i.imgur.com/9n61j0F.jpg https://i.imgur.com/9n61j0F.jpg Google Maps: https://i.imgur.com/uHHkYVZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uHHkYVZ.jpg
anigbrowl 3y ago
I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. Money. Same reason they won't show you your location on a map unless you turn on location tracking, even though there's a perfectly good GPS in the phone. You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy. I have had similar conversations with leads from Google News & Scholar. My impression is that when those people go to a conference or whatever they're they're to promote the company's outlook, not to listen. In the case of the news guy he when I pointed out some logical flaws in his argument (about why they didn't offer a way of sorting by date), he just switched to nodding while staring off into space and refusing to make eye contact, so he could give the appearance of listening without engaging further.
sdeframond 3y ago
> I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. Perhaps Google's mapping business isn't so much showing maps but helping local businesses get found, rated, reviewed... (restaurants,shops etc).
- bertil 3y ago
  I would love to do that offline too. Just suggest any cafe every two hours of walking, or a gas station every two hours of driving and I’ll stop there and nowhere else.

by bertil 3y ago

Tee3993 3y ago

Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?

palata 3y ago
If you find it "pretty good", I guess you have never tried an OpenStreetMap-based app like Organic Maps. I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).
- aix1 3y ago
  > I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases). This is the first come I come across Organic Maps but I do use OSMAnd. I'm wondering how the two compare and would love to hear more about the use cases you have for each of them.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    I use organic maps most of the time but osmand has much better support for hiking trails: you can see them (not just a path, but the name of the route, with a different color to separate it), I can tell the app to prefer it when building an itinerary, and the altitude info is way more detailed. You can spot the exact altitude and gradient at any spot. You can add a second map as an overlay, and I typically use a contour maps to quickly see where the peaks are, where the route will be flat, etc... OSMand is slightly too powerful for everyday use, organic maps is the perfect good-enough, less-is-better example.
  - ygra 3y ago
    I find the UI in Organic Maps to be much nicer. OSMAnd seems to have a larger feature set and extensions and stuff you may or may not need/want/require. Navigation seem to add an announcement in OSMAnd whenever the OSM object for a road changes (seemingly), which leads to a number of totally unnecessary »Continue straight on road X«. Those were a few differences I noticed.
  - ihatehn 3y ago
    I tell people OsmAnd is a swiss army knife that does everything for power users (the cyclists or hikers or drivers who find it really important to do a few specific things that most apps can't do) whereas Organic Maps is the app I actually recommend to family and friends as soon as I know that there's decent address coverage in their area (it's OSM only, so if an address POI doesn't exist in OSM it isn't searchable in OM. But volunteers and everyday users are adding new addresses all the time.)
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I dowloaded Organic Maps ten minutes ago so take my comparison with a grain of salt. I could have missed some features in OM. Here we go: Moving the map is much faster in OM than in OSMAnd. I hope that OSMAnd study the code of OM. The visualization in OM is much nicer. Another thing to copy. OM is extremely better at displaying POIs and their information. Again, copy it. Despite the claims it seems that OM does not show walking and cycling routes. OSMAnd shows them with their name, that matches the one you see on signposts along the routes. OM does not seem to have a way to record a route and save it as gpx. OSMAnd does that. OM does not seem to have a way to place markers on the map. I use them to plan new routes for biking, then I follow the markers. Navigation would bring me where it wants to go through, not where I want to. OM is less than half the size of OSMAnd but it's still 58 MB. I wonder why these mapping apps must be so large. Having to dowload all the maps again is very bad. I wish there is a way to share them among apps but I think that Android makes it impossible, unless we want to use a folder on an external storage (SD card) or root the phone or whatever. I'll keep using OSMAnd because of recording, markers and routes. However I might recommend OM to friends that only need a replacement for Google Maps.
rqtwteye 3y ago
The support is terrible. You can only choose a rectangle with the same proportions as your screen and the allowed size is too small for a trip in lots of areas of the US. Like a lot of software there are restrictions that make no sense and are extremely user unfriendly.
- wombat-man 3y ago
  I think now you can search for a city or something and download the offline map
  - rqtwteye 3y ago
    You can. But you can’t download a large region like a whole state which makes long road trips a pain. Apple Maps is even worse because it has no offline mode at all.
    - wombat-man 3y ago
      Idk when you tried it last, but it works for me on the iOS app. If you search for something that is a 'region' there should be a download offline map option. In any case, before traveling I try to download the offline maps in HERE wego too.
    - blendergeek 3y ago
      Apple introduced offline support to maps in the most recent iOS update (I wanna say 17).
    - shaftway 3y ago
      I've generally been really impressed with it. Would it be nice if I could pick a bigger area? Yeah. Would it be nice if I could choose the dimensions of my rectangle, or a non-rectangular shape like a state? Yeah. But the fact that I can download a map that has all of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and sizable chunks of 4 other states in that area for 890 MB is pretty awesome. Especially when it comes with full driving directions, business information including hours and the search capabilities? And it'll keep it up to date periodically? I'll take that win.
matkoniecz 3y ago
With Organic Maps (and Osmand and mapy.cz) I am able to download entire Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This was useful in my recent trips and can download more if needed. I definitely can not do this with Google Maps.
- imp0cat 3y ago
  Another vote for mapy.cz and their off-line capabilities. Too bad their navigation does not care about traffic outside of Czechia. You can still use them for directions in a car, but no traffic jam avoidance.
kilroy123 3y ago
You can also type a city name. Then type 'okmaps' and press ok. Then, it will bring up the download offline map screen for the whole area.
bertil 3y ago
The support got better: downloading is good. It should be usable now, but there are basic things that are not supported, like searching for something or finding a path. I typically don’t need to search: I know where for things are, but there aren't other ways to mark something on the map: favorites and stars don’t appear consistently, and pointing at things is completely useless when logged-in and disabled when off-line. So much of it feels like it was never tested. My main issue is that there should be a way to say, “Keep this journey on screen until I explicitly delete it, with a confirmation model.” I’m assuming that’s what “Pin it” is meant to do, but in practice, I occasionally see the path I last searched when I reopen my phone and map; I never see a pinned journey again if anything happens: rotate the phone, a quick switch to another app, the screen goes dark…

lionkor 3y ago

This will be mega off-topic, but: > throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy As much as slow internet hampered my productivity, I used to have 15 mbit/s download speed until very recently (Germany is behind developing countries, of course, in terms of anything internet), it was good to experience. Before that, when I was living in the countryside, I had 500 KB/s. I know exactly how painful downloading 10, 100, 1000MB is, and I try to make everything I do load on GPRS with reasonable speed. My website, much like HN, loads on a 64 kbit/s mobile internet "connection". Of course vodafone's website to recharge prepaid phones takes 20+ minutes (yes) to load on 64 kbit/s internet.

Maxion 3y ago
Am I just old if I as a developer think that 10mbit/s is plenty enough? I could probably do with 1mbit/s and still be about as productive as I am now.
- dspillett 3y ago
  You are not alone. The last time a home internet upgrade felt really significant to me was going from 2mbit to 8mbit. Everything else has been luxury. Though I'll be signing up for ~160 or ~1000 as soon as the new cables the street was recently dug up to put in place are connected, I like my luxuries! I do still notice upstream improvements though. Both those old 2mbit and 8mbit connections were 256kbit up, and I currently have "up to 17mbit" which is [quick check of router logs] ~11mbit ATM - that can be limiting for backups or when wanting to share video or HQ photos with a large group. So the FTTP upgrade _might_ be justifiable as more than pure luxury.
  - lionkor 3y ago
    DSL can usually do up to 250 mbit/s, no?
    - dspillett 3y ago
      The standard FTTC options in the UK are nominally 40/10 and 80/20. I have the latter, which in reality works out as “up to 76mbit down, up to 17mbit up”. My router is currently synced at 56/11. Where G.FAST is available IIRC that is up to 250down/36up.

jonathanstrange 3y ago

Off-topic, but I find it hard to believe that throttling Wifi could possibly encourage empathy. That sounds so petty to me, it's like removing printer toner and hoping that the office banter about the dysfunctional printer may somehow forge better team-spirit. Or, putting the stapler away so people go looking for it...

brandall10 3y ago
I'd gather its empathy for the customers with those constraints, as in, if the product you're building is having issues in this context then you may rethink perf of this or that feature.
Nition 3y ago
I think they probably mean empathy for users on slow Internet connections rather than for fellow staff. Basically making you test your software on a slow connection once a week.
- ricardobayes 3y ago
  While it's a good initiative, I don't think it works as this kind of throttling almost never simulates a real spotty and crap connection.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    More tech companies should do this, and they should do more of it. On Empathy Days, iOS/Android software engineers should have to "live on" 6 year old phones, and desktop software developers should have to use laptops with 8GB RAM and 15" screens as their daily drivers. And Internet throttling should both reduce bandwidth and introduce random latencies and connection drops. Too many developers just assume their users are on this year's phones and supercomputer specced desktops with three 4K 27 inch monitors and write their software to perform well on those systems.
    - ricardobayes 3y ago

jesterson 3y ago

> I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly Very simple answer - they want to know everything you do online. As Google Maps is provided for free, you are the product. Convenience of the product (you) is not a priority whatsoever. > designers like to say that users are always right? It's just smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately IT breeds a number of people who have ignorant position they have the right to tell people how they should interact, conveniently forgetting the service will be used by all groups of people, not just IT geeks.

aikinai 3y ago
This lowbrow criticism is really old. Google doesn’t do much offline for the same reason almost no one does offline anymore; it’s hard and the number of users affected is very small. Do you honestly think Google is looking at the number of maps users that go offline and saying, “We absolutely need their data!” rather than “Eh, not worth rearchitecting everything for.” Not to mention they have done a lot for it even if it’s not perfect. There’s a dedicated team doing their best with it. It’s just not worth giving a lot of attention and resources.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  This post is about an offline maps app which is maintained by volunteers, so it can't be that hard for the likes of Google.
  - aikinai 3y ago
    Google could certainly design a basic offline mapping app. They even have offline mapping in their app today. I’m actually not even sure what the complaint is actually about since I don’t use offline myself, but I know that Google Maps is a massive app with tons of teams all working on a myriad of features in parallel and a huge dependency tree. So I’m not surprised at all if there are a bunch of features with online assumptions baked in.
    - bb611 3y ago

tazjin 3y ago

I had a bizarre encounter when working there, also Maps related. I lived in the UK at the time and my post code just didn't exist in Google Maps. I did some digging, and found out that in fact no post codes in the UK had been added in quite some time. Eventually I found out why: There was some lead dev on Maps, who refused to allow new imports of UK post code data because he thought they were "wrong". They were seeing data with multiple post codes for the same building! For the record: This is valid in the UK, as there's a maximum number of households per post code or something like that. Not sure how that ended eventually, left a few years ago, but I just checked and those post codes now exist.

dspillett 3y ago
It is quite valid for one property to have multiple street addresses and therefore postcodes. It could genuinely have frontage in two streets, or it could be the result of joining two properties in the same street that originally had different postcodes – many long streets have multiple postcodes along their length¹. --- [1] For example even a not-very-long street I used to live on, Alma Terrace in York, has three postcodes: YO10 4DJ on one side of most of it, YO10 4DL on the other side of that, and YO10 4DQ for both sides of the part between that and Fulford Road. I suspect from the street layout that the third code is due to that part of the road being added later, or originally not having anything on it needing a postcode.
- tazjin 3y ago
  In London what ends up happening is that many buildings are so large (e.g. St. George's Wharf[0]) that the household count restriction ends up with multiple codes being allocated. [0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/St._George%27s_Wharf.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/St._Geor...
- snappysnap 3y ago
  And it's also valid for UK postcodes to be reused, e.g. following demolition of the original buildings, e.g. tower blocks, the postcode may be deactivated for a period of time, then reactivated when new buildings elsewhere need a new postcode.

ricardobayes 3y ago

Probably the same reason why they are showing hotels in the city I lived all my life, and have my home address set. It's mindblowing how they don't set meaningful defaults with all that mountain of data they have.

mabbo 3y ago

Google maps is a real-time social network that you don't realize you are a part of. "This store is busiest at 6pm". "This area is less busy than usual". "There's a 5 minute delay ahead, but you're still on the fastest route". All of that comes from data generated by online users. An offline user isn't providing value to Google, so why would they invest in those users?

ericfr11 3y ago

I would have to agree with the designer's I find it easy to download a map. I've done it in every single country I went to. But I have seen family members struggling because they didn't want to take the time to know how to do it (it could be a bad design but also laziness of users...)

xrikcus 3y ago
Once you download it does anything actually work beyond viewing? Can you search? Can you ask for directions? I do download maps, and pay for roaming data, but I still would never completely rely on it in a new place because I'm bound to be out of network coverage at some point.

ezfe 3y ago

Apple Maps in iOS 17 has good offline maps support: - Full searching and POI details including hours, etc. - Full routing (no traffic of course, but possibly expected traffic? I'm not sure) - Freeform region selection, overlapping regions, etc.

bertil 3y ago
Apple Maos was only relevant in the Bay Area when they launched. They had no meaningful details elsewhere; they didn’t have most street, told you the Louvre was open on Tuesdays and closed the weekend… “embarrassing” would not cover it. They gradually increased the radius to bring hood and well documented in most of California, then some of the US coastline. I’m not sure where they are now, but I’d be surprised if they had basic things like public transport information, Nike lanes where I am. It’s never been a priority for Apple to serve an international audience.
- ezfe 3y ago
  Yes, I'm aware that Apple Maps was very different 11 years ago when it launched. While it still has a lesser POI database than Google, I would say in the areas where it has launched its in-house maps (Currently 20% by area, 11% by population - primarily lacking South America, Asia, and Africa) You'll be happy to know that the Louvre is now marked as closed on Tuesdays, has a 94% positive rating, and its own 3D model In France, Apple Maps has - country-wide bike routing (accounts for the size of road, elevation, and prefers bike lanes where present) - trains and busses (I can't say with certainty that every local bus will be present but the trains are) - Paris will have detailed bus and bike lane markings directly on the map I've attached a screenshot of public transit navigation in the greater Paris region: Apple Maps: https://i.imgur.com/9n61j0F.jpg https://i.imgur.com/9n61j0F.jpg Google Maps: https://i.imgur.com/uHHkYVZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uHHkYVZ.jpg

anigbrowl 3y ago

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. Money. Same reason they won't show you your location on a map unless you turn on location tracking, even though there's a perfectly good GPS in the phone. You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy. I have had similar conversations with leads from Google News & Scholar. My impression is that when those people go to a conference or whatever they're they're to promote the company's outlook, not to listen. In the case of the news guy he when I pointed out some logical flaws in his argument (about why they didn't offer a way of sorting by date), he just switched to nodding while staring off into space and refusing to make eye contact, so he could give the appearance of listening without engaging further.

sdeframond 3y ago

> I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. Perhaps Google's mapping business isn't so much showing maps but helping local businesses get found, rated, reviewed... (restaurants,shops etc).

bertil 3y ago
I would love to do that offline too. Just suggest any cafe every two hours of walking, or a gas station every two hours of driving and I’ll stop there and nowhere else.