4 ms·

This sounds like a feature that could be really nice, being able to search for something in a new city where you have no frame of reference on what to search fo

This sounds like a feature that could be really nice, being able to search for something in a new city where you have no frame of reference on what to search for and getting good results sounds really nice! That said, I expect the worst from this update. My expectation is that it will serve recommendations based on AdWords or other advertising tech. And this will then transform Google Maps into even worse of a product that will be even more covered in ads than it already is. I hope this beats my expectations, but I’m not optimistic.

JohnFen 3y ago
I think every major update to Google maps in the last decade or so has made it worse. I expect no different with this one.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  Decade? I disagree. A lot of the changes to highlight places with more commercial activity to give a high level overview of places to visit, the reviews and ratings system, the highlighting of landmarks, transit directions with live train/bus updates, local guides and so on were immensely helpful features that make trip planning these days so much easier and I think most of these were post 2014 and they made substantial and positive changes during 2014 to 2019 at least I'd agree in the last 4-5 years the changes have been worse. Post-COVID they seem to have focused on making a lot of negative changes by stuffing it with too many ads, worse color schemes and a lot of "features" that are half baked to try and capture users and send them to paying businesses on the platform
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > A lot of the changes to highlight places with more commercial activity to give a high level overview of places to visit, the reviews and ratings system, the highlighting of landmarks, transit directions with live train/bus updates, local guides and so on Interestingly, that list is mostly what I had in mind when I said that maps was getting worse. I suppose that it entirely depends on what you want out of a map application. For me, all that stuff just gets in my way. That you think those things are great tells me that maps is no longer aiming to solve the problems that I want solved, and is addressing other problems instead. That's not saying Google Maps is bad or wrong, just that it's a different product now, and one that isn't going to provide what I want. So I should just pipe down. I'm not the target demographic anymore. I just need to move on to a different application and be done with it.
    - aniforprez 3y ago
      I still have no idea what problems you want solved The problems most people have are finding places and ways to get to those places. All the changes I outlined, including continuing improvements to their directions, served that purpose for quite a while. Reviews, the commercial areas highlighting and local guides helps find shopping and food spots and I used this extensively during multiple trips with great success. Same with the transit directions and landmarks highlighting and I fail to see any reason how these made maps worse. I cannot possibly think of why adding bus and rail timings made maps worse. They are incredible features. Things I didn't originally include are also traffic conditions and suggesting routes based on that by factoring in timing which is somewhat hit or miss but still leaning towards hit in my experience I can point specifically to things like their new Business Messaging, the ramped up difficulty to contributions and reducing them primarily to photos and reviews, and the new experimental color schemes as decidedly worse changes
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > I still have no idea what problems you want solved My problem is very basic: I want to see an uncluttered map, to be able to search for a particular address or street and be shown it on that map, and to get driving directions. The driving directions are OK, but the uncluttered map isn't a thing anymore. Now, the map is obscured with with quick-search buttons, that pull-up thing showing "places of interest" at the bottom, and is populated with irrelevant (to me) pins showing random businesses. It all just makes actually using the thing as a map more difficult. > The problems most people have are finding places Fair enough. That's why I say that Google Maps is not aiming at people like me. I want basic navigation, in a way that is as friction-free as possible. I also have zero interest in things like reviews, local guides, and that kind of thing. Again, I'm not saying that what you want isn't important, or even that what you want isn't what most people want. It's just not what I want, and the presence of those things makes using the app for my use case more difficult. So I just need a different product that is aimed more at my needs.
        swells34 3y ago
        I've been using OsmAnd for years now, and it's fantastic. Much more complicated to set up the way you like, but you can set it up exactly the way you like. No ads, search results are what I'd call "sterile", and you can have as many or as few features as you'd like. If you pay a $2 monthly subscription, you can download large tiles of highly detailed information from their servers, so you can use it completely offline.
- gretch 3y ago
  I think you vastly underestimate how much baseline experience has improved on the internet in the last 10 years. Here's a talk that google gave on improvements happening in Maps 10 years ago: https://youtu.be/HrLyZ24UcRE?si=t0J0FToLO5fBsdA7 https://youtu.be/HrLyZ24UcRE?si=t0J0FToLO5fBsdA7 It feels like when people say "they used to make cars better in the 1950s; now those were REAL cars"
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I think you vastly underestimate how much baseline experience has improved on the internet in the last 10 years. I honestly don't think it's that at all. It's that google maps has gotten worse at addressing my particular use case.
    - gretch 3y ago
      Well do you want to tell use about your use case at all or do you just want to be mysterious and indignant?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        I explained in a different comment, and I'm very, very far from indignant about any of this. You seem to be taking offense, and I don't know why.
        gretch 3y ago
        Because your original comment is very low quality >I think every major update to Google maps in the last decade or so has made it worse. I expect no different with this one. I just hold our community to higher standards. You know offline maps came out in 2015? Because I suppose that wasn’t in your rubric for what’s good and not.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  Traffic integration with Waze has made a big improvement. And, of course, Android Auto. But for discovery? When I look around my neighborhood, I see Circle K, Walgreens, and Wendy's, all with their colorful logos. I don't know for sure, but now it feels like a yellow pages of advertised businesses where it used to be a map. When I use OSM or Google Earth, I see the parks and street names. I can search for Wendy's if I want that, but it's not promoted info.
- tnel77 3y ago
  The updates are only good if you are a shareholder. It’s a bummer.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
oxfordmale 3y ago
The best choice might be to avoid the places recommend by Google as everyone will be there. The current AI is not clever enough to handle crowd control.
mFixman 3y ago
I expect SEO to break Google's AI soon, like they broke PageRank. Imagine finding guides on HN about how to make your shop appear first when searching for any of the top 500 words.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
acdha 3y ago
Yeah, given how bad the SEO problem already is I’m setting my expectations low. It seems like it will be a big problem dealing with fake reviews if the LLM makes it harder to see the source and how trustworthy it looks. This is an incredibly hard problem since businesses have such strong incentives to game the system, so it’s hardly new but I think AI is going to make it even harder to spot fake accounts.

JohnFen 3y ago

I think every major update to Google maps in the last decade or so has made it worse. I expect no different with this one.

aniforprez 3y ago
Decade? I disagree. A lot of the changes to highlight places with more commercial activity to give a high level overview of places to visit, the reviews and ratings system, the highlighting of landmarks, transit directions with live train/bus updates, local guides and so on were immensely helpful features that make trip planning these days so much easier and I think most of these were post 2014 and they made substantial and positive changes during 2014 to 2019 at least I'd agree in the last 4-5 years the changes have been worse. Post-COVID they seem to have focused on making a lot of negative changes by stuffing it with too many ads, worse color schemes and a lot of "features" that are half baked to try and capture users and send them to paying businesses on the platform
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > A lot of the changes to highlight places with more commercial activity to give a high level overview of places to visit, the reviews and ratings system, the highlighting of landmarks, transit directions with live train/bus updates, local guides and so on Interestingly, that list is mostly what I had in mind when I said that maps was getting worse. I suppose that it entirely depends on what you want out of a map application. For me, all that stuff just gets in my way. That you think those things are great tells me that maps is no longer aiming to solve the problems that I want solved, and is addressing other problems instead. That's not saying Google Maps is bad or wrong, just that it's a different product now, and one that isn't going to provide what I want. So I should just pipe down. I'm not the target demographic anymore. I just need to move on to a different application and be done with it.
  - aniforprez 3y ago
    I still have no idea what problems you want solved The problems most people have are finding places and ways to get to those places. All the changes I outlined, including continuing improvements to their directions, served that purpose for quite a while. Reviews, the commercial areas highlighting and local guides helps find shopping and food spots and I used this extensively during multiple trips with great success. Same with the transit directions and landmarks highlighting and I fail to see any reason how these made maps worse. I cannot possibly think of why adding bus and rail timings made maps worse. They are incredible features. Things I didn't originally include are also traffic conditions and suggesting routes based on that by factoring in timing which is somewhat hit or miss but still leaning towards hit in my experience I can point specifically to things like their new Business Messaging, the ramped up difficulty to contributions and reducing them primarily to photos and reviews, and the new experimental color schemes as decidedly worse changes
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > I still have no idea what problems you want solved My problem is very basic: I want to see an uncluttered map, to be able to search for a particular address or street and be shown it on that map, and to get driving directions. The driving directions are OK, but the uncluttered map isn't a thing anymore. Now, the map is obscured with with quick-search buttons, that pull-up thing showing "places of interest" at the bottom, and is populated with irrelevant (to me) pins showing random businesses. It all just makes actually using the thing as a map more difficult. > The problems most people have are finding places Fair enough. That's why I say that Google Maps is not aiming at people like me. I want basic navigation, in a way that is as friction-free as possible. I also have zero interest in things like reviews, local guides, and that kind of thing. Again, I'm not saying that what you want isn't important, or even that what you want isn't what most people want. It's just not what I want, and the presence of those things makes using the app for my use case more difficult. So I just need a different product that is aimed more at my needs.
      - swells34 3y ago
        I've been using OsmAnd for years now, and it's fantastic. Much more complicated to set up the way you like, but you can set it up exactly the way you like. No ads, search results are what I'd call "sterile", and you can have as many or as few features as you'd like. If you pay a $2 monthly subscription, you can download large tiles of highly detailed information from their servers, so you can use it completely offline.
gretch 3y ago
I think you vastly underestimate how much baseline experience has improved on the internet in the last 10 years. Here's a talk that google gave on improvements happening in Maps 10 years ago: https://youtu.be/HrLyZ24UcRE?si=t0J0FToLO5fBsdA7 https://youtu.be/HrLyZ24UcRE?si=t0J0FToLO5fBsdA7 It feels like when people say "they used to make cars better in the 1950s; now those were REAL cars"
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I think you vastly underestimate how much baseline experience has improved on the internet in the last 10 years. I honestly don't think it's that at all. It's that google maps has gotten worse at addressing my particular use case.
  - gretch 3y ago
    Well do you want to tell use about your use case at all or do you just want to be mysterious and indignant?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I explained in a different comment, and I'm very, very far from indignant about any of this. You seem to be taking offense, and I don't know why.
      - gretch 3y ago
        Because your original comment is very low quality >I think every major update to Google maps in the last decade or so has made it worse. I expect no different with this one. I just hold our community to higher standards. You know offline maps came out in 2015? Because I suppose that wasn’t in your rubric for what’s good and not.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Traffic integration with Waze has made a big improvement. And, of course, Android Auto. But for discovery? When I look around my neighborhood, I see Circle K, Walgreens, and Wendy's, all with their colorful logos. I don't know for sure, but now it feels like a yellow pages of advertised businesses where it used to be a map. When I use OSM or Google Earth, I see the parks and street names. I can search for Wendy's if I want that, but it's not promoted info.
tnel77 3y ago
The updates are only good if you are a shareholder. It’s a bummer.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

oxfordmale 3y ago

The best choice might be to avoid the places recommend by Google as everyone will be there. The current AI is not clever enough to handle crowd control.

mFixman 3y ago

I expect SEO to break Google's AI soon, like they broke PageRank. Imagine finding guides on HN about how to make your shop appear first when searching for any of the top 500 words.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

acdha 3y ago

Yeah, given how bad the SEO problem already is I’m setting my expectations low. It seems like it will be a big problem dealing with fake reviews if the LLM makes it harder to see the source and how trustworthy it looks. This is an incredibly hard problem since businesses have such strong incentives to game the system, so it’s hardly new but I think AI is going to make it even harder to spot fake accounts.