5 ms·

It drives me insane when in Europe the link between Google Search and Google Maps is broken and I often have to copy paste an address between the two. Thanks EU

It drives me insane when in Europe the link between Google Search and Google Maps is broken and I often have to copy paste an address between the two. Thanks EU, what if I like Google's integrations?

plufz 2mo ago
Im sure you are right, but I’m not sure what you mean. I can search for an address fine in search and I get an embedded map that I can click to open Google Maps. How does it work in the US?
- arka2147483647 2mo ago
  Does not work for me. Presumably there is some popup you have to accept somewhere for it to work.
  - disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
    If you click on the address result (the button in the map), it will normally work. Mostly tested on Firefox on Mac in the EU.
ktallett 2mo ago
This is unrelated to Google's apps being integrated and working together which should not be affected by that.
globular-toast 2mo ago
Instead of going insane, why not try to think about how to solve this problem? With the correct markup, your browser could recognise the address as a physical location and ask you how you would like to handle the address. You would choose Google Maps. We need to stop being so helpless. A proper user agent should be able to do what you want it to.
ricardobayes 2mo ago
If you click the "address" link in the Google Maps sidebox in Google Search it will show you on Google Maps -> even in EU.
baxtr 2mo ago
similar with video. No, I don't want to watch the Facebook video, I want the YouTube version!
phiresky 2mo ago
The EU told them they can not by default prefer their own maps product when linking from their search product, they have to allow the user to choose. They could have simply added a selector when a user first clicks on the maps preview in the search result, and then remembered it on device or across that user's account. But of course, then the user could choose a competitor's product and Google would have to honor it. That would be horrible, so instead they just made the user experience worse for everyone and elegantly made people blame the EU.
- nolok 2mo ago
  It's malicious compliance with the intent of having the users misunderstand what's happening (that you don't have to do that but do it on purpose, and instead blame the law protecting them). And eh, it works for the cookie banner so why change the strategy ? The comment you're answering to prove it still works. As long as people can't be bothered to think and inform themselves for a second about it, they won't stop. Same with the purposefully annoying and unclear and user hostile 'gdpr popup' about third party consent. I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm saying from Google POV that's the correct move given their intent, the issue then become people like parent.
  - darkwater 2mo ago
    Yes, but by the time you are sued and fined into compliance again, you already made a ton of money to pay 10x the next fine.
    - nolok 2mo ago
      Yes and no, it's true now but the EU fines are not just "you did that" but "you did that we're going to assume you're going to be better and if you do again next time it will really hurt". Which I think is a fair point of view. You might still answer too little to late, but given that we're at the starting point to a massive sovereignty push here thanks to the current US admin being proved as a possibility rather than a novelty, I think this matters a lot.
  - 2mo ago
rnnr 2mo ago
US's DoJ fined Microsoft for bundling a web browser into its own OS. EU is the apprentice.
- TeMPOraL 2mo ago
  What's surprising here is that people still cheer on this, but no one is suggesting to do the same on mobile today. I honestly am confused by this. Obviously, the current situation warrants it 100x as much.
  - NekkoDroid 2mo ago
    > but no one is suggesting to do the same on mobile today. I am unsure what you you mean with this? If you are talking about choosing a different browser on mobile I will point you to the DMA Browser Choice Screen page for Android[1], it has been a thing for a while as far as I can remember. [1]: https://www.android.com/choicescreen/dma/browser/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen/dma/browser/
    - TeMPOraL 2mo ago
      AFAIK it doesn't affect the System Webview, and IIRC Microsoft was in hot water not merely over the IE the app, but rather over embedded browsers.
mrtksn 2mo ago
I share the frustration but maybe if Google hadn't gained a monopoly status Google Maps wouldn’t have been in its current sorry state. My assessment is that EU is doing too little too late, the fine should have been something like 20B and used towards creating a non-profit, open and extendable map service ideally with the people who already do great mapping tech that don't show up in Google search results at the top. EU is too vanilla, too unopinionated towards the tech, they go over the problem after the damage is done, take the money for themselves and force a non-solution that doesn't fix the problem and often makes it worse because they leave the implementation to the convicts who make sure to make it maliciously compliant.
- nolok 2mo ago
  Eh, on the other hand the EU has now effectively forced usb-c for devices after apple refused to play it clean for years and they still got people who complained (how dare the regulator be opiniated toward tech !). The EU loves to play it the european way, and while on the surface it seems "oh that means regulations" in reality it's a "figure it out yourselves and please behave like adult, we don't want to deal with that" and we ask for some sort of regulatory association or whatever that we can refer to to talk to them all. It's worked in a ton of industries including ones where we have no moat but somehow tech companies are always incapable to behave. At least the US ones, eg for the phone thing it ended up being Samsung who told the EU "hey I've been playing ball for years and Apple isn't , make them or I stop too".
  - murderfs 2mo ago
    > Eh, on the other hand the EU has now effectively forced usb-c for devices after apple refused to play it clean for years and they still got people who complained (how dare the regulator be opiniated toward tech !). They almost forced micro USB for devices, which would have been far worse: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/06/10-companies-agree-to-standardized-mobile-phone-charger-in-eu/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/06/10-companies-agree-t...
    - Timon3 2mo ago
dns_snek 2mo ago
Why are you blaming the EU and not Google's malicious compliance? They could simply ask you which map provider you'd like to use.
- f6v 2mo ago
  > They could simply ask you which map provider you'd like to use. Yeah that's why EU isn't producing capable tech competitors. If other map services want my business they need to work on that. Instead, someone who built a search infrastructure is supposed to do a free promotion for competitors.
  - bilekas 2mo ago
    > Yeah that's why EU isn't producing capable tech competitors. Actually its how the EU avoids monopolization. > If other map services want my business they need to work on that. Yeah.. Because a startup is going to meaningfully compete against a company who uses forced internal integrations? DropBox is a good example I heard about recently, iCloud, OneDrive, lesser products maybe, was able to basically make Drop box irrelevant because of in-house integration with systems.
  - Gud 2mo ago
    There are many amazing tech companies in Europe. Siemens, Sulzer, ABB, Rolls Royce and so on. Or perhaps you meant advertising companies like Google and Meta when you said "tech"?
    - f6v 2mo ago
      It's kind of obvious that when someone says "Europe can't into tech" what they mean is when the EU officials fly to the US and beg "Please give us Mythos access".
- kandros 2mo ago
  Nobody is forcing me to use Google search, regardless of all the browser and search engine selection clown show, so much wasted money and time for nonexisting problem
atwrk 2mo ago
This is intended to drive you insane on purpose. It is just malicious compliance intended to make users blame the anti-monopoly regulators instead of the monopolists. This is a corporation with tens of thousands of software developers. If they wanted to do better, they could. As always: If the UI is bad for you, that probably means that particular implementation is good for the corporation.
cromka 2mo ago
What drives you nuts is Google's malicious compliance and your ignorance: what EU forbidden is defaulting to it in a way that they can't be decoupled. What Google was allowed to do was adding a option to enable it. They didn't. That's specifically to piss you off on EU.
geokon 2mo ago
I think this is a larger web-standards problem. There is no standard clickable "link" for physical locations. There is no URL-equivalent you can send to someone, they click it, it open up their map viewer of choice. You can send Lat Lon coordinates and then have the recipient copy and paste them. It generally works though there isn't a standard format and no service will make it clickable like an email address, so the whole process remains clunky. When you "Share" a location in Google Maps or OSMand, you get back a URL link to their service and not an service agnostic "link" to the geographic location.
- master-lincoln 2mo ago
  There is a standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme I have it working on my Android phone. It's clickable links that open my map app of choice (or rather a selection dialog). It's just that the big players do not want to use it.
  - bmordue 2mo ago
    I'm a bit surprised this doesn't have more traction. It doesn't seem to have been designed with POIs in mind, which is unfortunately a limitation.
kandros 2mo ago
yes, everybody lose here
radres 2mo ago
Good god. That was an EU thing?
- RugnirViking 2mo ago
  as with all of these laws, its EU writing a reasonable law, and the companies throwing their toys out the pram and complying as maliciously as possible
whateverboat 2mo ago
Google can give you an option to set in your settings which maps can be linked directly, and they can provide an API for map providers.
ta8903 2mo ago
And I hate when someone sends me a goo.gl link, which I need to first open in a browser and then open in my maps app just to be able to see the coordinates they're sending me.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
surgical_fire 2mo ago
You are thanking the wrong entity. You should thank Google for their shitty product due to malicious compliance. A daily reminder that they don't care about their users.
beAbU 2mo ago
When I search for a place on google, and I click on the 'directions' button, I'm taken to maps, ready start navigation. I'm in Ireland. What's your experience?
vphpersson 2mo ago
After I noticed the Maps button no longer showed up, I installed a browser extension called "Google Search Maps Button". I haven't had any problem since then. (Or even better, make one with AI to avoid potential security concerns)
BrenBarn 2mo ago
I've come to see this kind of response as sort of akin to "but what if I like driving my old clunker car that gets 15mpg and spews smog"? It's not wrong exactly, but it just amounts to saying "I became accustomed to receiving certain benefits before we as a society became fully aware of the accompanying costs, and I just want to maintain the lifestyle I've become accustomed to". I think in the end the costs of the convenience provided by these kinds of things simply aren't worth it and are a net negative for our world.

It drives me insane when in Europe the link between Google Search and Google Maps is broken and I often have to copy paste an address between the two. Thanks EU, what if I like Google's integrations?

plufz 2mo ago

Im sure you are right, but I’m not sure what you mean. I can search for an address fine in search and I get an embedded map that I can click to open Google Maps. How does it work in the US?

arka2147483647 2mo ago
Does not work for me. Presumably there is some popup you have to accept somewhere for it to work.
- disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
  If you click on the address result (the button in the map), it will normally work. Mostly tested on Firefox on Mac in the EU.

ktallett 2mo ago

This is unrelated to Google's apps being integrated and working together which should not be affected by that.

globular-toast 2mo ago

Instead of going insane, why not try to think about how to solve this problem? With the correct markup, your browser could recognise the address as a physical location and ask you how you would like to handle the address. You would choose Google Maps. We need to stop being so helpless. A proper user agent should be able to do what you want it to.

ricardobayes 2mo ago

If you click the "address" link in the Google Maps sidebox in Google Search it will show you on Google Maps -> even in EU.

baxtr 2mo ago

similar with video. No, I don't want to watch the Facebook video, I want the YouTube version!

phiresky 2mo ago

The EU told them they can not by default prefer their own maps product when linking from their search product, they have to allow the user to choose. They could have simply added a selector when a user first clicks on the maps preview in the search result, and then remembered it on device or across that user's account. But of course, then the user could choose a competitor's product and Google would have to honor it. That would be horrible, so instead they just made the user experience worse for everyone and elegantly made people blame the EU.

nolok 2mo ago
It's malicious compliance with the intent of having the users misunderstand what's happening (that you don't have to do that but do it on purpose, and instead blame the law protecting them). And eh, it works for the cookie banner so why change the strategy ? The comment you're answering to prove it still works. As long as people can't be bothered to think and inform themselves for a second about it, they won't stop. Same with the purposefully annoying and unclear and user hostile 'gdpr popup' about third party consent. I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm saying from Google POV that's the correct move given their intent, the issue then become people like parent.
- darkwater 2mo ago
  Yes, but by the time you are sued and fined into compliance again, you already made a ton of money to pay 10x the next fine.
  - nolok 2mo ago
    Yes and no, it's true now but the EU fines are not just "you did that" but "you did that we're going to assume you're going to be better and if you do again next time it will really hurt". Which I think is a fair point of view. You might still answer too little to late, but given that we're at the starting point to a massive sovereignty push here thanks to the current US admin being proved as a possibility rather than a novelty, I think this matters a lot.
- 2mo ago

rnnr 2mo ago

US's DoJ fined Microsoft for bundling a web browser into its own OS. EU is the apprentice.

TeMPOraL 2mo ago
What's surprising here is that people still cheer on this, but no one is suggesting to do the same on mobile today. I honestly am confused by this. Obviously, the current situation warrants it 100x as much.
- NekkoDroid 2mo ago
  > but no one is suggesting to do the same on mobile today. I am unsure what you you mean with this? If you are talking about choosing a different browser on mobile I will point you to the DMA Browser Choice Screen page for Android[1], it has been a thing for a while as far as I can remember. [1]: https://www.android.com/choicescreen/dma/browser/ https://www.android.com/choicescreen/dma/browser/
  - TeMPOraL 2mo ago
    AFAIK it doesn't affect the System Webview, and IIRC Microsoft was in hot water not merely over the IE the app, but rather over embedded browsers.

mrtksn 2mo ago

I share the frustration but maybe if Google hadn't gained a monopoly status Google Maps wouldn’t have been in its current sorry state. My assessment is that EU is doing too little too late, the fine should have been something like 20B and used towards creating a non-profit, open and extendable map service ideally with the people who already do great mapping tech that don't show up in Google search results at the top. EU is too vanilla, too unopinionated towards the tech, they go over the problem after the damage is done, take the money for themselves and force a non-solution that doesn't fix the problem and often makes it worse because they leave the implementation to the convicts who make sure to make it maliciously compliant.

nolok 2mo ago
Eh, on the other hand the EU has now effectively forced usb-c for devices after apple refused to play it clean for years and they still got people who complained (how dare the regulator be opiniated toward tech !). The EU loves to play it the european way, and while on the surface it seems "oh that means regulations" in reality it's a "figure it out yourselves and please behave like adult, we don't want to deal with that" and we ask for some sort of regulatory association or whatever that we can refer to to talk to them all. It's worked in a ton of industries including ones where we have no moat but somehow tech companies are always incapable to behave. At least the US ones, eg for the phone thing it ended up being Samsung who told the EU "hey I've been playing ball for years and Apple isn't , make them or I stop too".
- murderfs 2mo ago
  > Eh, on the other hand the EU has now effectively forced usb-c for devices after apple refused to play it clean for years and they still got people who complained (how dare the regulator be opiniated toward tech !). They almost forced micro USB for devices, which would have been far worse: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/06/10-companies-agree-to-standardized-mobile-phone-charger-in-eu/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/06/10-companies-agree-t...
  - Timon3 2mo ago

dns_snek 2mo ago

Why are you blaming the EU and not Google's malicious compliance? They could simply ask you which map provider you'd like to use.

f6v 2mo ago
> They could simply ask you which map provider you'd like to use. Yeah that's why EU isn't producing capable tech competitors. If other map services want my business they need to work on that. Instead, someone who built a search infrastructure is supposed to do a free promotion for competitors.
- bilekas 2mo ago
  > Yeah that's why EU isn't producing capable tech competitors. Actually its how the EU avoids monopolization. > If other map services want my business they need to work on that. Yeah.. Because a startup is going to meaningfully compete against a company who uses forced internal integrations? DropBox is a good example I heard about recently, iCloud, OneDrive, lesser products maybe, was able to basically make Drop box irrelevant because of in-house integration with systems.
- Gud 2mo ago
  There are many amazing tech companies in Europe. Siemens, Sulzer, ABB, Rolls Royce and so on. Or perhaps you meant advertising companies like Google and Meta when you said "tech"?
  - f6v 2mo ago
    It's kind of obvious that when someone says "Europe can't into tech" what they mean is when the EU officials fly to the US and beg "Please give us Mythos access".
kandros 2mo ago
Nobody is forcing me to use Google search, regardless of all the browser and search engine selection clown show, so much wasted money and time for nonexisting problem

atwrk 2mo ago

This is intended to drive you insane on purpose. It is just malicious compliance intended to make users blame the anti-monopoly regulators instead of the monopolists. This is a corporation with tens of thousands of software developers. If they wanted to do better, they could. As always: If the UI is bad for you, that probably means that particular implementation is good for the corporation.

cromka 2mo ago

What drives you nuts is Google's malicious compliance and your ignorance: what EU forbidden is defaulting to it in a way that they can't be decoupled. What Google was allowed to do was adding a option to enable it. They didn't. That's specifically to piss you off on EU.

geokon 2mo ago

I think this is a larger web-standards problem. There is no standard clickable "link" for physical locations. There is no URL-equivalent you can send to someone, they click it, it open up their map viewer of choice. You can send Lat Lon coordinates and then have the recipient copy and paste them. It generally works though there isn't a standard format and no service will make it clickable like an email address, so the whole process remains clunky. When you "Share" a location in Google Maps or OSMand, you get back a URL link to their service and not an service agnostic "link" to the geographic location.

master-lincoln 2mo ago
There is a standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo_URI_scheme I have it working on my Android phone. It's clickable links that open my map app of choice (or rather a selection dialog). It's just that the big players do not want to use it.
- bmordue 2mo ago
  I'm a bit surprised this doesn't have more traction. It doesn't seem to have been designed with POIs in mind, which is unfortunately a limitation.

kandros 2mo ago

yes, everybody lose here

radres 2mo ago

Good god. That was an EU thing?

RugnirViking 2mo ago
as with all of these laws, its EU writing a reasonable law, and the companies throwing their toys out the pram and complying as maliciously as possible

whateverboat 2mo ago

Google can give you an option to set in your settings which maps can be linked directly, and they can provide an API for map providers.

ta8903 2mo ago

And I hate when someone sends me a goo.gl link, which I need to first open in a browser and then open in my maps app just to be able to see the coordinates they're sending me.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

surgical_fire 2mo ago

You are thanking the wrong entity. You should thank Google for their shitty product due to malicious compliance. A daily reminder that they don't care about their users.

beAbU 2mo ago

When I search for a place on google, and I click on the 'directions' button, I'm taken to maps, ready start navigation. I'm in Ireland. What's your experience?

vphpersson 2mo ago

After I noticed the Maps button no longer showed up, I installed a browser extension called "Google Search Maps Button". I haven't had any problem since then. (Or even better, make one with AI to avoid potential security concerns)

BrenBarn 2mo ago

I've come to see this kind of response as sort of akin to "but what if I like driving my old clunker car that gets 15mpg and spews smog"? It's not wrong exactly, but it just amounts to saying "I became accustomed to receiving certain benefits before we as a society became fully aware of the accompanying costs, and I just want to maintain the lifestyle I've become accustomed to". I think in the end the costs of the convenience provided by these kinds of things simply aren't worth it and are a net negative for our world.