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Google Search gets most of the attention for being ruined by Google, but I think the Maps trajectory is just as bad. It has shown remarkable consistency in gett

by rurp 2y ago

Google Search gets most of the attention for being ruined by Google, but I think the Maps trajectory is just as bad. It has shown remarkable consistency in getting worse year after year, for a long time now. Basic functionality is regularly broken or degraded, and the UI is increasingly covered in ads of various types. Maps is a prime example of the costs from not enforcing antitrust laws. Google spent billions of dollars from its ad monopoly to control this market and is now squeezing it for all it can. This product is only going to get worse for the foreseeable future.

gruez 2y ago
>Maps is a prime example of the costs from not enforcing antitrust laws. Google spent billions of dollars from its ad monopoly to control this market and is now squeezing it for all it can. The alternative to "Google spent billions of dollars from its ad monopoly to control this market" (ie. a non-subsidized maps app) is you paying $100 for a dedicated GPS device, paying $30/year for tomtom[1], or using a free app like organic maps. All of those are still options today. What exactly is "the cost" from letting google subsidize its maps app? Do you think that if such anti-trust laws were enforced, maps would still be free and ad-free? [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tomtom-go-navigation/id884963367 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tomtom-go-navigation/id8849633...
- rurp 2y ago
  Are we really arguing about whether a massively advertised "free" product will distort a market? If a heavily subsidized Google Maps hadn't been dominating the ecosystem for the past decade and a half many more companies would have competed with various approaches to features, UX, and monetization. You seem to be assuming that all of that competition would have resulted in no improvements over the early 2000s. I guess that's possible, but I expect it would have gone more like nearly every other part of the tech landscape and some actual innovation would have happened. No I'm not expecting that there would be a perpetually free and ad-free option, that wouldn't make any sense. But the space of possibility is vastly more broad than totally free or the dreck that Google Maps has turned into.
  - gruez 2y ago
    I'm sure there's non-zero amount of impact, but it's unclear what exactly that translates to. We still have free competitors like from Apple, Here, and various apps based on OSM. There's apps with subscription models. There's still paper maps and dedicated GPS devices from before google maps. What exactly do you think we've missed out on?

by rurp 2y ago

gruez 2y ago

>Maps is a prime example of the costs from not enforcing antitrust laws. Google spent billions of dollars from its ad monopoly to control this market and is now squeezing it for all it can. The alternative to "Google spent billions of dollars from its ad monopoly to control this market" (ie. a non-subsidized maps app) is you paying $100 for a dedicated GPS device, paying $30/year for tomtom[1], or using a free app like organic maps. All of those are still options today. What exactly is "the cost" from letting google subsidize its maps app? Do you think that if such anti-trust laws were enforced, maps would still be free and ad-free? [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tomtom-go-navigation/id884963367 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tomtom-go-navigation/id8849633...

rurp 2y ago
Are we really arguing about whether a massively advertised "free" product will distort a market? If a heavily subsidized Google Maps hadn't been dominating the ecosystem for the past decade and a half many more companies would have competed with various approaches to features, UX, and monetization. You seem to be assuming that all of that competition would have resulted in no improvements over the early 2000s. I guess that's possible, but I expect it would have gone more like nearly every other part of the tech landscape and some actual innovation would have happened. No I'm not expecting that there would be a perpetually free and ad-free option, that wouldn't make any sense. But the space of possibility is vastly more broad than totally free or the dreck that Google Maps has turned into.
- gruez 2y ago
  I'm sure there's non-zero amount of impact, but it's unclear what exactly that translates to. We still have free competitors like from Apple, Here, and various apps based on OSM. There's apps with subscription models. There's still paper maps and dedicated GPS devices from before google maps. What exactly do you think we've missed out on?