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It's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there. I understand that at low zoom levels you may need

• DANmode 10mo ago
  Click on the building, it populates “businesses at this address” - at least, when I’ve tried.
  • pests 10mo ago
    Just tested - slightly different UI but still works the same. Also useful for taller buildings with a lot of tenants.
    • DANmode 10mo ago
      Businesses inside hospitals, businesses at shared addresses, businesses underground, all sorts of great uses.
• fsckboy 10mo ago
  >I am forced to go to street view to read the sign, then type the company name into the search box to force the business marker to show up and get clickable. I've found Apple Maps is a little better in this regard. the way you juxtapose them calls for pointing out, Apple Maps don't have streetview which makes Apple Maps a lot less convenient.
  • fragmede 10mo ago
    Where are you? Apple street view coverage isn't as extensive as Google's but there's a binoculars button for it if they do for a given location.
    • SigmundA 10mo ago
      Hardly anything unless in a major city, no way to easily tell if there is any coverage other than randomly clicking until it shows, also doesn't tell you the date taken. Google street view has the 2d overlay letting you know where there is coverage, shows the date taken along with previous imagery, and they have coverage nearly everywhere in the US at a least, although some of its pretty old. Apple Maps does seem to have more up to date satellite / aerial imagery though. Hard to overstate how valuable all that street view coverage is on the Google side.
      • plorkyeran 10mo ago
        In areas with partial coverage Apple Maps has basically the same overlay showing where Look Around is available. It just doesn't have a great indicator as to why the option is greyed out when there's no coverage.
        • SigmundA 10mo ago
          I mean in Google Maps you can drag the little man over the map and it has a map layer that highlights all the roads available, so you can easily see where it is and is not. Not randomly picking a point and seeing if indicator is available.
      • robin_reala 10mo ago
        My little Swedish village has full Look Around coverage, and clicking on the ⋯ icon shows an “Imagery” menu item that tells me the month and year the coverage was last updated. I think you’re underestimating where they’re currently at.
        • SigmundA 10mo ago
  • Delphiki 10mo ago
    Apple Maps has had "Look Around" (their implementation of Street View) for a while now.
  • baxtr 10mo ago
    Actually… last time I checked some local addresses Apple Maps had newer streetview data than Google.
  • encom 10mo ago
    As interesting as StreetView is, it's such a colossal privacy invasion, it's absurd. In my neighbourhood, you can literally see in peoples windows, into their living rooms.
    • psunavy03 10mo ago
      And how is this any different from walking down the sidewalk? They're on the road, they're not stuffing cameras into your living room window to try to catch you walking around nekkid or anything. It is literally documenting what public view looks like.
      • amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
        The biggest difference is that you would have to actually travel there and look, rather than scanning the whole city from your recliner.
      • jen20 10mo ago
        The difference, as usual with this kind of thing, is scale.
• nicoburns 10mo ago
  OpenStreetMap-based maps tend to be much better in this regard. Although this is counterbalanced by the fact that they tend to have less data on businesses in general.
  • szszrk 10mo ago
    Which is not surprising, as those two have very different priorities. - OSM want's a detailed and reliable map. - Google maps tries to either sell your data to clients, or make you buy from them. Their business data is their priority for maps. You can see that clearly when you look at location history changes over past decade or so. It used to be actual user location history and it was glorious. Now it's "near what businesses you were more or less, help us rate them". It's a great moment to again remind about existence of low-friction tools that you can use to add business data (among others) to OSM, like StreetComplete app, available on F-droid and Google Play :) https://streetcomplete.app/?lang=en https://streetcomplete.app/?lang=en In my region OSM business data starts to be on par with google, better (more up to date) sometimes.
    • eisa01 10mo ago
      If you just want to add POI data, then Every Door is a good choice that also works on iOS CoMaps would be a good map app, and it will also display when POIs and opening hours were last confirmed (the only OSM app to do so AFAIK) https://every-door.app https://every-door.app https://www.comaps.app https://www.comaps.app
    • DanOpcode 10mo ago
      I have recently tried to navigate with OsmAnd a few times where I live. Once I ended up in the wrong location, and a few times I have had to look up the business in Google Maps to find their address. I would love to use OsmAnd more. StreetComplete sounds great and looks like a nice way to be able to contribute fixes to OSM. Thanks for the recommendation!
      • szszrk 10mo ago
        It is smooth and kind of "I'm doing my part!" but with low friction. > a few times I have had to look up the business in Google Maps to find their address Exactly my point - Gmaps taught us to expect *businesses" on maps. Not addresses. Pins and stars, instead of streets and numbers. Arrival time and traffic, instead of distance, elevation and road type (size). I use gmaps still, mostly for businesses, but to actually know where I am I have better options. Gmaps hides most of typical map features - you see less of trees, water, buildings, height elevation. On Comaps/Osmand you suddenly can correlate map with things you see (without street view! :P).
• jdycbsj 10mo ago
  Its not possible to be better because its not possible for even Google or Apple to verify anything anyone claims which is not static btw. The info keeps changing all the time with biz disputes/divorces/inheritence wars etc etc.
  • potato3732842 10mo ago
    Nobody is asking for the data to be perfect at the margin. Just for it to be readily visible at all.
• ginko 10mo ago
  The most annoying thing is when you search for instance for "Chinese restaurants" and Google maps shows me Japanese restaurants while hiding actual Chinese restaurants.
  • decae 10mo ago
    In Tokyo when I search for convenience stores, a lot of the time Google Maps will also show ATMs, assuming that's the reason I want to go to a convenience store. Inversely, if I search for a bank branch, it'll show convenience stores. The fuzzy search results can be very frustrating sometimes.
  • specialist 10mo ago
    My search for thrift stores did not include Goodwill. Had to search for Goodwill explicitly. Clever.
• pmdr 10mo ago
  > It's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there. 8-10 years ago it was way more reliable. The decline started with them adding the option to promote a business. Frustrating.
  • iso1631 10mo ago
    advertising ruins everything, users don't want to change to other services, news at 11.
  • zdc1 10mo ago
    Yes, I've noticed their results are definitely becoming more opaque and driven by what they want to show you. (This is even when there isn't a sponsored option on the map.)
    • Fricken 10mo ago
      Yesterday I was having the same issues as the top commenter except I was having trouble getting Google to label various mountain peaks I had zoomed in on.
      • kevin_thibedeau 10mo ago
        It would be nice if they'd fix the missing labels on roads, even at the highest zoom with no clutter. Likewise, highway speed limits that were changed over a year ago.
      • liveoneggs 10mo ago
        yeah but I'll bet it showed you the closest starbucks
• kccqzy 10mo ago
  A lot of these place names are user-created and I’ve definitely seen completely wrong and bogus place names on Google Maps. It seems that they hide a lot of these when the business owner doesn’t actively take control of the business page. I suppose it’s partly for accuracy, partly to encourage businesses to verify the listing on their maps.
• bschne 10mo ago
  information density of online maps is, in general, quite low compared to old paper maps: https://x.com/patrickc/status/1738646361128792402 https://x.com/patrickc/status/1738646361128792402 I guess there's various reasons, ranging from "it's hard to make auto-layout algos produce stuff as dense as painstakingly handcrafted maps" to "let's make it harder to scrape/copy data"
  • tokai 10mo ago
    Back then it was dedicated map makers that created maps. Now it's mainly programmers. So its not surprising that quality tanks when you go from disciplinary expert staff to IT day laborers.
• wlesieutre 10mo ago
  A few days ago I was trying to see if a anything new had taken over a vacant restaurant space yet, previous occupant had closed in July. When I zoomed in, it would still only show me the Permanently Closed business listing for the old restaurant. Searching by address, they do have a listing for its replacement. But they were prioritizing the dead restaurant on the map because why would I want to know current info from a map when they can be useless instead? And it's not like this is a restaurant in the first floor of a tower with a bunch of businesses stacked on top of it competing for map space. It's a single floor, there's only one occupant.
• vladvasiliu 10mo ago
  Even trying to see the street name has a very high probability of failure, so I don't know what you expect.
• Perepiska 10mo ago
  There are two 40-floors buildings nearby to each other in Tbilisi, Georgia, that are missing on Google Maps. All businesses have to put POI just "somewhere". One man from Google told me that there are staff members responsible for Georgia maps but they are chilling :)
• SomeUserName432 10mo ago
  > It's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there. It's actually much worse than that. I will often see the business name as I'm zooming in, but if I zoom too far, it's no longer available. You have to find "just the right zoom level" for displaying the given business. As if it were some weird mind game they were playing with you.
• glandium 10mo ago
  I don't know about other countries, but in Japan, maps will show underground passages from e.g. the metro, with exit annotated with their numbers... Unfortunately, not all numbers are shown, even when all the exits are non-overlapping at the displayed zoom level.