18 ms·

The Huge, Unseen Operation Behind the Accuracy of Google Maps

340 points by dreamweapon 12y ago

calinet6 12y ago
I dunno, there's been a Starbucks open a couple blocks from me for six months now. Wasn't on Google Maps until I went and added it myself!
- cryptoz 12y ago
  Well, they only re-drive most places every few years (Toronto seems to have 1-2 year gaps), so their own image sources won't necessarily have that data yet. Although, you'd think that local business listings would also be a data source and would probably be up-to-date. Do they scrape retailers' sites to learn about store locations? Guess not but would have assumed so. Just wait for the self-driving car tests to ramp up. I think one of Google's early deployments will be a fleet of self-driving cars equipped to take streetview photos - this should enable something like weekly redrives of cities.
- hnriot 12y ago
  Keeping up with starbucks opening/closing stores would be impossible without the distributed power of their users, they pop everywhere, move regularly and aren't really critical for mapping. Luckily in SF you can't throw a stone without hitting a coffee shop, and of course, people here only use starbucks to meet people for craigslist transactions, no self respecting hipster would ever go in one.
  - gniv 12y ago
    To play devil's advocate: The starbucks.com store locator is presumably up to date, so one can find openings and closings relatively easily. Additionally, Google is now providing wi-fi for Starbucks, so they really should have all the locations. The hipster cafes, though, seem harder to find automatically.
- beering 12y ago
  It's incredible how Google can get so many people to work for them for no pay. Would you similarly contribute to closed-source proprietary software if given the opportunity?
  - zaphoyd 12y ago
    I'd put that sort of contribution in the detailed bug report category, something I'd absolutely contribute to closed source proprietary software if I thought there was a good chance it would get fixed and that I wouldn't have to deal with it being broken anymore.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    I've filed many bugs on IE, Safari, and Chrome (for the last two not just on the Webkit/Chromium side, but also on the proprietary Safari/Chrome side). I see your point, but the reality is that my users are there and these are also products I use every day. It's in my interest to have them work correctly.
  - calinet6 12y ago
    It makes it more useful to me when others contribute, and more useful to others when I contribute. So, yes. Quite uncomplicated.
- cdr 12y ago
  Google Maps still does poorly in small towns, as far as I've seen. Not that you can really expect any better. The data in my hometown has clearly never been ground-checked (or even sanity checked by a remote employee), it's all clearly culled from webcrawelers and corrections by locals. There are businesses marked that haven't existed in a decade or more, and businesses that have existed for a decade aren't on the map. Yet another good reason to have a decent website as a small business I guess, when it's potentially the primary source of data for mapping/"local" services.
  - calinet6 12y ago
    This is in a major city with a young tech-aware population, but point taken.
koenigdavidmj 12y ago
Their screen capture of the Seattle Center area is particularly amusing given that their competitor Apple Maps still hasn't figured out: 1. That Broad St no longer exists for a significant portion of its length. 2. That Mercer St has been two-way for months now. This is the major east-west road in that area, and they can't even get that right. Yes, I've reported it regularly for months now.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  I can't believe people use it, it's embarrassingly bad. It's impossible to trust.
  - skygazer 12y ago
    In the car, I generally alternate between Google Maps, Apple Maps, TomTom and Navigon. After years of doing this, I've rarely noticed a difference in route accuracy -- in my experience they're equally likely to give a slightly faulty route, and there are better than 50/50 odds that a flaw will be shared across apps. TomTom seems to be the winner with realtime traffic data accuracy, besting Google, and Google beats Apple, although not by much. Google has lead in POI info, but that lead has diminished to the point of irrelevancy in the last year. Apple and Navigon have the best visuals. Google has the most naturally conversational voice guidance. And while those are nice, I still tend to prefer TomTom's accurate traffic data.
- evmar 12y ago
  In the pre-Ground Truth days, Google Maps in SF used to think you could take a right from northeastboound Market street onto the 101 onramp, which is both obviously the best route for a wide variety of routes and also not actually allowed. The combination meant that many route plans didn't work. In looking into getting it fixed I heard that the contract for getting the map data prevented Google from making any modifications to the map data. Apple Maps might be in a similar situation -- aware of the problem but with their hands tied. Map data has a lot of legal restrictions for reasons I don't really get.
  - 12y ago
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
It's wonderful what Google are doing with Google Maps, but I can't help but wish these maps were open to use by their competitors. Imagine a world where all the effort Google, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia put into their maps all went into OpenStreetMap instead.
- cylinder 12y ago
  Can't understand the reasoning behind expecting a company to pour hundreds of millions of dollars and resources into something for free / no return at all.
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    Because once you get the incentives correctly aligned it's a massive boost in global wealth?
    - melling 12y ago
      But the company that invested the billions essentially gets no added value. That's not an effective business model. You are right because there would be a huge boon. This could be said for many other things too, like drug research for instance. Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them.
      - zo1 12y ago
        >"Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them." Here you go, one method for crowd-sourcing map data: www.openstreetmap.org
        melling 12y ago
        I already know about that. I think you misunderstood my point. If the poster was satisfied with the current solution then he wouldn't be pining for his wish. I was addressing the generalization. People often wish that company X would donate their efforts
mempko 12y ago
This is a very detailed article. Most people do not appreciate how much work is put into building these digital maps, so it is great to see these kinds of articles. While not as detailed, for contrast I want to post how Nokia's HERE maps builds their maps. http://360.here.com/2014/11/17/made-usa-people-fargo-make-maps/ http://360.here.com/2014/11/17/made-usa-people-fargo-make-ma... That is from the company blog. It shows a couple of our tools, but not nearly all. I work for HERE maps and my opinion is my own. I just thought that people might be interested in how other companies like HERE build maps. Despite all the automation (at both google and HERE), it is still a human intensive process and there are people on the other end making it as correct as can be. Also, I can't go beyond what is written on the public blog as I am not a company spokesperson.
- fs111 12y ago
  Similar articles about TomTom from 2 years ago: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/115883-how-tomtom-maps-are-made http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/115883-how-tomtom-maps-are-m...
  - mempko 12y ago
    Awesome. That should be interesting to people who use Apple's maps.
    - Y-bar 12y ago
      TomTom is one of Apple's primary data sources. Source: http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html
- bostonpete 12y ago
  I can't imagine the amount of ambiguity that comes up in every day conversation when the name of your project/division is "here". Do you have internal language that's used to avoid such ambiguity?
  - mankyd 12y ago
Someone1234 12y ago
Google Map's data keeps getting better and better, they now have lane warnings (e.g. "right two lanes," etc) and traffic warnings with the offering to re-route (if they can find a quicker route). Although Google Map constantly offering to re-route me onto a slower route is a little odd (e.g. "want to re-route? It will be a 5 minute longer trip!"). That all being said, while Google Maps as a data source is amazing, Google Maps as an app and or web-site has a lot to be desired. Up until a few versions ago they had a way to add "My Places" but no way to actually access those places from the app (what?!). They have no search history (still, today), they do have suggestions but they are just somewhat useful, they have no compass (got removed), plus they went all "minimalist" and hide all the UI elements (and removed things like offline maps, for nearly a year). I've actually been forced to stop using Google Maps as GPS as the app keeps closing during navigation and when re-opened it has "forgotten" what I was navigating to or previously searched for. So now I am forced, mid-journey to exit the freeway just to re-open Google Maps, re-search for my destination, and then re-start navigation just hoping it won't re-close-randomly before I get there... It doesn't crash. It just closes. It is just gone. Like "poof." Then of course the phone goes into standby as nothing is keeping the screen on. At least if it had search history the situation MIGHT be recoverable, but nope...
- ParadoxOryx 12y ago
  You can access your Maps search history here - https://history.google.com/history/lookup?hl=en&st=maps https://history.google.com/history/lookup?hl=en&st=maps
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    That's not a lot of help when I'm driving down the freeway at 65 MpH. It needs to be within the app.
- tim333 12y ago
  >They have no search history An odd thing is that if I've searched for something on Google Maps on the laptop and then open their phone app I only have to type one letter and then the name pops up of what I'd searched so there's evidently some sort of history, just not very well implemented. Another funny glitch I had with driving directions is it quite often says 'turn left' about 4 seconds after you have passed the turning which is not quite as it should be. I sometimes switch to Apple Maps of all things though I don't think their traffic info is as good.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
efalcao 12y ago
There was a great talk on this at Google I/O 2013. Recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsbLEtS0uls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsbLEtS0uls
plg 12y ago
difficult to imagine why apple would have even attempted to get into this space ... they must realize they can only be a second rate player. maybe that's good enough for them? doesn't fit with their story/ethos though
- stephenr 12y ago
  Why do you assume an advertising company is better equipped/able than a technology company to run a maps/routing service?
  - commandar 12y ago
    You're asking the wrong question. Why would an AI and automation company be better equipped/able than a commodity hardware company to run a maps/routing service?
  - spinchange 12y ago
    Setting aside how one views/classifies the companies, you don't have to assume anything: Google's maps have qualitatively better data than Apple's because they've literally been driving & photographing much of the world's roadways. Apple shows no indication of having this kind of commitment and even if they did, Google has a significant, years-ahead lead.
    - stephenr 12y ago
      So your theory is that Google must have better data about what is in a specific place, and how to get there from somewhere else, because they have a photo of that place, from the street?
      - spinchange 12y ago
        Well, according the featured article we're commenting on, yes, that's about half of it in a nutshell. The other half is the algorithms they're running on all this street view data they're collecting. Is it really that crazy a notion that actually driving the roads and collecting all kinds of data from it yields higher accuracy maps than just licensing less robust data sets from others?
th0ma5 12y ago
Anyone have resources for mitigating the web map zoom level inaccuracy bug? I guess I know this only as the OSM bug, but it is the reason web mapping like OSM and Google Maps isn't used much by true GIS analysis. You can see this most easily by having your GPS on with your phone and using Google Maps on the web. When you zoom out your location accuracy decreases the more zoomed out you are. This doesn't seem to happen on the Maps app on my phone.
- rmc 12y ago
  What do you mean? OSM is open data, you can display it anyway you want.
- aw3c2 12y ago
  What are you talking about?
  - th0ma5 12y ago
    http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmarender_bug http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmarender_bug
    - Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
      Osmarender is an outdated piece of software that hasn't been used for years. It's not at all relevant to the OSM maps you see today.
    - rmc 12y ago
      Osmarender hasn't been used in years. A new and faster tile service on the main openstreetmap.org website was deployed and that makes osmarender unneeded. Try OSM now, it might be good for you.
      - th0ma5 12y ago
        So the problems this article brings up about the Google Mercator projection have been solved? Do you have any links to more readings about the issues? >"We have reviewed the coordinate reference system used by Microsoft, Google, etc. and believe that it is technically flawed. We will not devalue the EPSG dataset by including such inappropriate geodesy and cartography."
spinchange 12y ago
It's little wonder that Google Maps is such an amazing application given all the time, intelligence, resources and just the sheer commitment Google's shown to it. I know business considerations are what they are and often independent from others, but nothing shook my belief in Apple's commitment to quality as a defining principle more than the decision to replace Google Maps with Apple's own half-baked beta offering. Does anyone think they'll ever give maps & cartography the kind of attention to detail that Google's given it?
- visarga 12y ago
  > Google Maps is such an amazing application Not so amazing. Just the data is amazing. The app sucks.
  - brandonwamboldt 12y ago
    The app may not be great, but it's pretty good, especially for the vast majority of users. From Google's perspective, I doubt it makes sense to add features that many of their users don't need and won't use.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      From Google's perspective, I doubt it makes sense to add features that many of their users don't need and won't use. Which is exactly what they've been doing, all while hiding as much of the interface as they can and obscuring as many affordances as they can.
    - visarga 12y ago
      I only need the "feature" that when it crashes, it should remember the route so as not to have to use (often missing) data connection in the middle of the trip. It's such a simple concept - save all routes for later recall, even if offline.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I'm still waiting for smartphones to be more fully crowd sourced into maps. I badly want real-time traffic data to come from smartphones.
- beering 12y ago
  This already happens on Google Maps. Or do you mean in an open-data way?
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    Is the data gathered from crowdsourced smartphones? If it is then the precision is shit. Waze has been continuously unimpressive in dense urban environments. It can sometimes take 15 minutes to go two blocks through two lights. And neither Waze nor Google Maps correctly show that. Using the GPS drains battery and there are huge privacy concerns. It's not an easy thing to do right. But I think it can be done.
    - wmeredith 12y ago
      >>Is the data gathered from crowdsourced smartphones? Yes. Google deduces traffic congestion by the speed of Android devices in cars.
- alxndr 12y ago
  Have you looked at Waze?
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    Yes. It's several steps in the right direction. The god damn achievements and items and ads are incredibly annoying. But it's a good step. It also isn't used by enough people. How many drivers have smartphones? How many of those are contributing traffic data? The answer is, respectively, a lot and almost none.
    - 12y ago
amoshag 12y ago
This article shows that Waze's method of crowd sourcing maps is the right way to go. Waze is able to have realtime detailed information about every street, building, directions, etc. including all the details that were discussed in the article + much more (e.g. future road changes), and most importantly it does that in a fraction of the cost. Now it seems that the 1.3B that Google paid for it is probably a bargain
erjiang 12y ago
If you're fascinated by maps and digital cartography and haven't done so yet, do check out OpenStreetMap! It's competitive to Bing, HERE, etc. but everything is open, and the data is yours to play with. There are projects based on OSM for routing, geo search, map editing, etc. that are also free. Definitely a lot of room for both programmers and non-programmers to contribute. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page
- MCRed 12y ago
  I've had a great experience with Apple Maps, which are based in part on Open Street Map (giving data back too) and TomTom. I've found it's accurate enough to just trust it, and it's excellent at detecting and rerouting when I can't do what it wanted me to (eg: traffic in the way, or I just miss the turn.)
  - rmc 12y ago
    I didn't think Apple Maps gave any data back to OSM, do you have a link? I thought it was just one dump file from a few years ago that they used.
    - Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
      There's a suggestion that Apple is now using current OSM data (the latest Apple Maps copyright notice has ©2014, which it didn't before) but, that said, I've not seen any indication of it here in the UK.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - thomersch_ 12y ago
    Apple has no official contributions to OSM. We are not even sure in which cases they use the data.
  - ris 12y ago
    "which are based in part on Open Street Map (giving data back too)" I know for a fact this isn't true. What was your source for this?
ChuckMcM 12y ago
They started Ground Truth when I was there and it really opened my eyes to just how "broken" a lot of map data sources were at the time. Something I considered to be a 'solved' problem (take aerial photograph, pull out streets, poof map!) was no where close to solved. Some folks have said that Ingress, the Android and now iOS, real world geo game. Was in part an exercise in data collecting. Get people to photograph land marks in the real world to make "portals" while collecting GPS data associated with public landmarks for maps. And then use that data to localize things in satellite imagery, etc. Makes for an interesting data set.
matt_kantor 12y ago
> The majority of buildings in the U.S. are now on Google Maps. I doubt this. Out of curiosity I looked at my family's farm and Google Maps is missing most of our outbuildings. More generally I'm sure that they come up short on backyard sheds, pool buildings, structures in dense forests, etc.
- jameshart 12y ago
  Where do you think the majority of buildings are? I mean, there's a long tail, but more than 80% of the US population lives in urban environments; the head of that density graph is massive.
- Retra 12y ago
  As a point of fact, most buildings do not exist where there are currently such things as trees, pools, and sheds... Most people, it would seem, tend to live in houses and complexes, work in factories and offices, or shop at stores and shopping centers.
cjensen 12y ago
Despite all of Google' effort, they still rely too much on USGS published maps. For example, just 6 miles from the GooglePlex is a road in Newark with a gate [1], but Google doesn't know you can't drive on it. They're doing a good thing, but unless you can see that Google has driven the route and has published street view, you can't entirely trust them. [1] 37.515696 -122.050873
rickdale 12y ago
Google maps is amazing. I was on my way to Detroit Airport, I live about 1.5hours away. Anyways, I wanted to double check directions so I used google maps, and it came up with directions that were going to take me 2 hours. I laughed thinking, 'oh technology, 2 steps forward, 1 step back'. So I drove down the way I already knew and was just double checking. With twenty minutes left in the drive, theres a deadstop traffic jam. Highway is closed. Turns out entire highways flooded in Detroit around 6-7am, and when I googled directions around 830am, google knew not to go that way, but I didn't. Made it to the airport 3 hours later, with a flight 6 hours after that. I had never been so impressed with google maps before this though. How did it know not to go that way so fast? I literally just drove right into it no warning or detour signs.
- bhousel 12y ago
  They have gotten really good at this since acquiring Waze, which crowdsources traffic data.
juliendorra 12y ago
An interesting anecdote: the "promenade claude lévi-strauss" is a new street in Paris (around 1 year old, pedestrian only). It doesn't exist in Google Maps yet, which make Uber fail when you try to go there as Uber rely on google maps. (many people might want to go there, as it is now where all the paris urban planning administration is. I had to for a permit.) Actually last I tried Uber/Google Maps sent you at the directly opposite corner of Paris, to the Quai Branly Museum, probably because there is something related to the anthropologist there (?). Both Apple Maps and more interestingly the crowd sourced OpenStreetMap know about the "promenade". I'm curious to see how long it will take Google to discover this new street.
- magicalist 12y ago
  The Uber driver app uses Apple Maps...
- rmc 12y ago
  > more interestingly the crowd sourced OpenStreetMap know about the "promenade". Not too suprising really. OSM can be updated in a minute to add new features.
- robk 12y ago
  why not add it yourself in Map Maker?
civilian 12y ago
I worked as a contractor in Kirkland on this project for about a year. Just for context, the first image with the red and green dots--- each dot represents a 360-degree "street view" image. While consumers only get half-a-dozen a block, the operators got access to all of them. (Green are HD, red are normal def.) It was really useful for verifying that businesses had closed because the streetview dots also had the exact time that they were taken. There was also deeplinking in Atlas to a specific dot and direction vector. So when I was submitting a change to a business, I could link to the exact sign that I saw to prove that "Mama's Teriyaki is on _that_ corner", which helped whoever QA'd my change. It was a great first job out of college given that my degree wasn't very relevant to anything. (A lot of my coworkers in the same spot--- young, a degree that wasn't too useful, trying to find anything to do.) Out of the 400 contractors in that first Kirkland "class", I see tons of them around the Seattle tech industry now. It's been a surprisingly good network to have. At the end of the day it was still data-entry / data-validation, and mind-numbingly boring.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  This is actually very fascinating. About how many businesses a day would an average person versus a prolific or slow person manage to update? Did you mostly work off of business signs to determine information about businesses? What if no recent pictures had been taken?
  - civilian 12y ago
    We'd also use the internet and, reluctantly, call them. We would identify ourselves as google maps, calling for info about their business. I don't quite remember the numbers, but it was something like 40 a day? The slower and new peeps would be around 25, and the fast people could do like 80 a day. But there weren't any productivity bonuses besides not being let go, so me and my buddies would do about 10% more than the average and then goof off on the internet or do homework for our python night class.
- blissfulight 12y ago
  Can you use the Atlas tool to correct business and other E/POIs (establishment/points of interest), or is limited to roads and other base map data? How do they evaluate spam POIs (say, locksmiths, who are prolific on Maps) in comparison to other Maps RAP (Report a problems)? Do all the teams (Places Listing Editors, Map Maker Google Reviewers, Maps Editors, etc.) use the same Atlas tool, or do they all have different tools? I use MM (Map Maker) quite a bit, and I'm curious how Google's tools work in comparison. Thanks.
jedberg 12y ago
And yet, when I want to go from SFO to Cupertino, it absolutely refuses to offer taking 380 to 280, even when it is 10 to 15 minutes faster according to Google itself. Apparently they still haven't fixed the whole "we have to go directly away from the destination for a little while" problem.
danellis 12y ago
So they have speed limit information? It would be handy if you could have that information on the navigation screen, maybe even with a warning when you exceed it.
shutupalready 12y ago
St. Louis streetwalker serial killer, Maury Travis, sent the local newspaper a computer generated map giving the intersection where he left a body. Investigators determined that web-based mapping software Expedia was used--based on symbols used to mark highways and such--ruling out Mapquest, Yahoo, and others. A single person had clicked on that intersection in Expedia in the 5 days before the map was received by the newspaper. They traced the person presumably using the IP address. This was back in 2001. It's odd that we still have unsolved street crime given that everyone today carries a tracking device sending back real-time geolocation data.
sytelus 12y ago
Another similar article appeared two years ago: How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go... I think most interesting point is not covered in either of them: How much of this effort devoted towards human curation? The numbers are believed to be ~1100 full time employees and 6000 contract workers[1]. These are huge numbers compared to most competitors in the market. Assuming each correction to a map can take 15 mins on average, you can easily make 100,000 corrections a day. Again, assuming there are top 2000 cities in the world where most of the queries originates, this is about 100 corrections per city per day. This would guarantee Google maps best of the best freshness, precision and recall on most metrics. With about 10X-20X larger curation force plus algo engineering, likes of Apple or HERE have no chance. In a way this also shows Google's leadership wisdom. Maps are the most important thing on mobile and even on web. Most companies don't get this and provide minuscule budgets citing no potential revenues (for instance Ballmer cancelled Street View like effort at Microsoft). By the time they wake - if they wake up - it would be to only find that they have been outrun by such a huge gap that even a decade won't be enough to catch up. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-maps-apple-would-have-to-hire-7000-people-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-map...
lingoberry 12y ago
After relying on Google Maps a lot for many years living in the US, I have (maybe unsurprisingly) noticed that it doesn't work nearly as well in Europe. As in, I'd zoom in on central Stockholm and search for something common, like the name of a restaurant, and Maps would promptly swoosh me to Nicaragua where it found a place with that name. It's doing stuff like this so often that I rarely use it anymore.

340 points by dreamweapon 12y ago

I dunno, there's been a Starbucks open a couple blocks from me for six months now. Wasn't on Google Maps until I went and added it myself!

cryptoz 12y ago
Well, they only re-drive most places every few years (Toronto seems to have 1-2 year gaps), so their own image sources won't necessarily have that data yet. Although, you'd think that local business listings would also be a data source and would probably be up-to-date. Do they scrape retailers' sites to learn about store locations? Guess not but would have assumed so. Just wait for the self-driving car tests to ramp up. I think one of Google's early deployments will be a fleet of self-driving cars equipped to take streetview photos - this should enable something like weekly redrives of cities.
hnriot 12y ago
Keeping up with starbucks opening/closing stores would be impossible without the distributed power of their users, they pop everywhere, move regularly and aren't really critical for mapping. Luckily in SF you can't throw a stone without hitting a coffee shop, and of course, people here only use starbucks to meet people for craigslist transactions, no self respecting hipster would ever go in one.
- gniv 12y ago
  To play devil's advocate: The starbucks.com store locator is presumably up to date, so one can find openings and closings relatively easily. Additionally, Google is now providing wi-fi for Starbucks, so they really should have all the locations. The hipster cafes, though, seem harder to find automatically.
beering 12y ago
It's incredible how Google can get so many people to work for them for no pay. Would you similarly contribute to closed-source proprietary software if given the opportunity?
- zaphoyd 12y ago
  I'd put that sort of contribution in the detailed bug report category, something I'd absolutely contribute to closed source proprietary software if I thought there was a good chance it would get fixed and that I wouldn't have to deal with it being broken anymore.
- magicalist 12y ago
  I've filed many bugs on IE, Safari, and Chrome (for the last two not just on the Webkit/Chromium side, but also on the proprietary Safari/Chrome side). I see your point, but the reality is that my users are there and these are also products I use every day. It's in my interest to have them work correctly.
- calinet6 12y ago
  It makes it more useful to me when others contribute, and more useful to others when I contribute. So, yes. Quite uncomplicated.
cdr 12y ago
Google Maps still does poorly in small towns, as far as I've seen. Not that you can really expect any better. The data in my hometown has clearly never been ground-checked (or even sanity checked by a remote employee), it's all clearly culled from webcrawelers and corrections by locals. There are businesses marked that haven't existed in a decade or more, and businesses that have existed for a decade aren't on the map. Yet another good reason to have a decent website as a small business I guess, when it's potentially the primary source of data for mapping/"local" services.
- calinet6 12y ago
  This is in a major city with a young tech-aware population, but point taken.

koenigdavidmj 12y ago

Their screen capture of the Seattle Center area is particularly amusing given that their competitor Apple Maps still hasn't figured out: 1. That Broad St no longer exists for a significant portion of its length. 2. That Mercer St has been two-way for months now. This is the major east-west road in that area, and they can't even get that right. Yes, I've reported it regularly for months now.

serve_yay 12y ago
I can't believe people use it, it's embarrassingly bad. It's impossible to trust.
- skygazer 12y ago
  In the car, I generally alternate between Google Maps, Apple Maps, TomTom and Navigon. After years of doing this, I've rarely noticed a difference in route accuracy -- in my experience they're equally likely to give a slightly faulty route, and there are better than 50/50 odds that a flaw will be shared across apps. TomTom seems to be the winner with realtime traffic data accuracy, besting Google, and Google beats Apple, although not by much. Google has lead in POI info, but that lead has diminished to the point of irrelevancy in the last year. Apple and Navigon have the best visuals. Google has the most naturally conversational voice guidance. And while those are nice, I still tend to prefer TomTom's accurate traffic data.
evmar 12y ago
In the pre-Ground Truth days, Google Maps in SF used to think you could take a right from northeastboound Market street onto the 101 onramp, which is both obviously the best route for a wide variety of routes and also not actually allowed. The combination meant that many route plans didn't work. In looking into getting it fixed I heard that the contract for getting the map data prevented Google from making any modifications to the map data. Apple Maps might be in a similar situation -- aware of the problem but with their hands tied. Map data has a lot of legal restrictions for reasons I don't really get.
- 12y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

It's wonderful what Google are doing with Google Maps, but I can't help but wish these maps were open to use by their competitors. Imagine a world where all the effort Google, Apple, Microsoft and Nokia put into their maps all went into OpenStreetMap instead.

cylinder 12y ago
Can't understand the reasoning behind expecting a company to pour hundreds of millions of dollars and resources into something for free / no return at all.
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  Because once you get the incentives correctly aligned it's a massive boost in global wealth?
  - melling 12y ago
    But the company that invested the billions essentially gets no added value. That's not an effective business model. You are right because there would be a huge boon. This could be said for many other things too, like drug research for instance. Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them.
    - zo1 12y ago
      >"Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them." Here you go, one method for crowd-sourcing map data: www.openstreetmap.org
      - melling 12y ago
        I already know about that. I think you misunderstood my point. If the poster was satisfied with the current solution then he wouldn't be pining for his wish. I was addressing the generalization. People often wish that company X would donate their efforts

mempko 12y ago

This is a very detailed article. Most people do not appreciate how much work is put into building these digital maps, so it is great to see these kinds of articles. While not as detailed, for contrast I want to post how Nokia's HERE maps builds their maps. http://360.here.com/2014/11/17/made-usa-people-fargo-make-maps/ http://360.here.com/2014/11/17/made-usa-people-fargo-make-ma... That is from the company blog. It shows a couple of our tools, but not nearly all. I work for HERE maps and my opinion is my own. I just thought that people might be interested in how other companies like HERE build maps. Despite all the automation (at both google and HERE), it is still a human intensive process and there are people on the other end making it as correct as can be. Also, I can't go beyond what is written on the public blog as I am not a company spokesperson.

fs111 12y ago
Similar articles about TomTom from 2 years ago: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/115883-how-tomtom-maps-are-made http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/115883-how-tomtom-maps-are-m...
- mempko 12y ago
  Awesome. That should be interesting to people who use Apple's maps.
  - Y-bar 12y ago
    TomTom is one of Apple's primary data sources. Source: http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html
bostonpete 12y ago
I can't imagine the amount of ambiguity that comes up in every day conversation when the name of your project/division is "here". Do you have internal language that's used to avoid such ambiguity?
- mankyd 12y ago

Someone1234 12y ago

Google Map's data keeps getting better and better, they now have lane warnings (e.g. "right two lanes," etc) and traffic warnings with the offering to re-route (if they can find a quicker route). Although Google Map constantly offering to re-route me onto a slower route is a little odd (e.g. "want to re-route? It will be a 5 minute longer trip!"). That all being said, while Google Maps as a data source is amazing, Google Maps as an app and or web-site has a lot to be desired. Up until a few versions ago they had a way to add "My Places" but no way to actually access those places from the app (what?!). They have no search history (still, today), they do have suggestions but they are just somewhat useful, they have no compass (got removed), plus they went all "minimalist" and hide all the UI elements (and removed things like offline maps, for nearly a year). I've actually been forced to stop using Google Maps as GPS as the app keeps closing during navigation and when re-opened it has "forgotten" what I was navigating to or previously searched for. So now I am forced, mid-journey to exit the freeway just to re-open Google Maps, re-search for my destination, and then re-start navigation just hoping it won't re-close-randomly before I get there... It doesn't crash. It just closes. It is just gone. Like "poof." Then of course the phone goes into standby as nothing is keeping the screen on. At least if it had search history the situation MIGHT be recoverable, but nope...

ParadoxOryx 12y ago
You can access your Maps search history here - https://history.google.com/history/lookup?hl=en&st=maps https://history.google.com/history/lookup?hl=en&st=maps
- Someone1234 12y ago
  That's not a lot of help when I'm driving down the freeway at 65 MpH. It needs to be within the app.
tim333 12y ago
>They have no search history An odd thing is that if I've searched for something on Google Maps on the laptop and then open their phone app I only have to type one letter and then the name pops up of what I'd searched so there's evidently some sort of history, just not very well implemented. Another funny glitch I had with driving directions is it quite often says 'turn left' about 4 seconds after you have passed the turning which is not quite as it should be. I sometimes switch to Apple Maps of all things though I don't think their traffic info is as good.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

efalcao 12y ago

There was a great talk on this at Google I/O 2013. Recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsbLEtS0uls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsbLEtS0uls

plg 12y ago

difficult to imagine why apple would have even attempted to get into this space ... they must realize they can only be a second rate player. maybe that's good enough for them? doesn't fit with their story/ethos though

stephenr 12y ago
Why do you assume an advertising company is better equipped/able than a technology company to run a maps/routing service?
- commandar 12y ago
  You're asking the wrong question. Why would an AI and automation company be better equipped/able than a commodity hardware company to run a maps/routing service?
- spinchange 12y ago
  Setting aside how one views/classifies the companies, you don't have to assume anything: Google's maps have qualitatively better data than Apple's because they've literally been driving & photographing much of the world's roadways. Apple shows no indication of having this kind of commitment and even if they did, Google has a significant, years-ahead lead.
  - stephenr 12y ago
    So your theory is that Google must have better data about what is in a specific place, and how to get there from somewhere else, because they have a photo of that place, from the street?
    - spinchange 12y ago
      Well, according the featured article we're commenting on, yes, that's about half of it in a nutshell. The other half is the algorithms they're running on all this street view data they're collecting. Is it really that crazy a notion that actually driving the roads and collecting all kinds of data from it yields higher accuracy maps than just licensing less robust data sets from others?

th0ma5 12y ago

Anyone have resources for mitigating the web map zoom level inaccuracy bug? I guess I know this only as the OSM bug, but it is the reason web mapping like OSM and Google Maps isn't used much by true GIS analysis. You can see this most easily by having your GPS on with your phone and using Google Maps on the web. When you zoom out your location accuracy decreases the more zoomed out you are. This doesn't seem to happen on the Maps app on my phone.

rmc 12y ago
What do you mean? OSM is open data, you can display it anyway you want.
aw3c2 12y ago
What are you talking about?
- th0ma5 12y ago
  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmarender_bug http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmarender_bug
  - Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
    Osmarender is an outdated piece of software that hasn't been used for years. It's not at all relevant to the OSM maps you see today.
  - rmc 12y ago
    Osmarender hasn't been used in years. A new and faster tile service on the main openstreetmap.org website was deployed and that makes osmarender unneeded. Try OSM now, it might be good for you.
    - th0ma5 12y ago
      So the problems this article brings up about the Google Mercator projection have been solved? Do you have any links to more readings about the issues? >"We have reviewed the coordinate reference system used by Microsoft, Google, etc. and believe that it is technically flawed. We will not devalue the EPSG dataset by including such inappropriate geodesy and cartography."

spinchange 12y ago

It's little wonder that Google Maps is such an amazing application given all the time, intelligence, resources and just the sheer commitment Google's shown to it. I know business considerations are what they are and often independent from others, but nothing shook my belief in Apple's commitment to quality as a defining principle more than the decision to replace Google Maps with Apple's own half-baked beta offering. Does anyone think they'll ever give maps & cartography the kind of attention to detail that Google's given it?

visarga 12y ago
> Google Maps is such an amazing application Not so amazing. Just the data is amazing. The app sucks.
- brandonwamboldt 12y ago
  The app may not be great, but it's pretty good, especially for the vast majority of users. From Google's perspective, I doubt it makes sense to add features that many of their users don't need and won't use.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    From Google's perspective, I doubt it makes sense to add features that many of their users don't need and won't use. Which is exactly what they've been doing, all while hiding as much of the interface as they can and obscuring as many affordances as they can.
  - visarga 12y ago
    I only need the "feature" that when it crashes, it should remember the route so as not to have to use (often missing) data connection in the middle of the trip. It's such a simple concept - save all routes for later recall, even if offline.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

I'm still waiting for smartphones to be more fully crowd sourced into maps. I badly want real-time traffic data to come from smartphones.

beering 12y ago
This already happens on Google Maps. Or do you mean in an open-data way?
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  Is the data gathered from crowdsourced smartphones? If it is then the precision is shit. Waze has been continuously unimpressive in dense urban environments. It can sometimes take 15 minutes to go two blocks through two lights. And neither Waze nor Google Maps correctly show that. Using the GPS drains battery and there are huge privacy concerns. It's not an easy thing to do right. But I think it can be done.
  - wmeredith 12y ago
    >>Is the data gathered from crowdsourced smartphones? Yes. Google deduces traffic congestion by the speed of Android devices in cars.
alxndr 12y ago
Have you looked at Waze?
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  Yes. It's several steps in the right direction. The god damn achievements and items and ads are incredibly annoying. But it's a good step. It also isn't used by enough people. How many drivers have smartphones? How many of those are contributing traffic data? The answer is, respectively, a lot and almost none.
  - 12y ago

amoshag 12y ago

This article shows that Waze's method of crowd sourcing maps is the right way to go. Waze is able to have realtime detailed information about every street, building, directions, etc. including all the details that were discussed in the article + much more (e.g. future road changes), and most importantly it does that in a fraction of the cost. Now it seems that the 1.3B that Google paid for it is probably a bargain

erjiang 12y ago

If you're fascinated by maps and digital cartography and haven't done so yet, do check out OpenStreetMap! It's competitive to Bing, HERE, etc. but everything is open, and the data is yours to play with. There are projects based on OSM for routing, geo search, map editing, etc. that are also free. Definitely a lot of room for both programmers and non-programmers to contribute. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page

MCRed 12y ago
I've had a great experience with Apple Maps, which are based in part on Open Street Map (giving data back too) and TomTom. I've found it's accurate enough to just trust it, and it's excellent at detecting and rerouting when I can't do what it wanted me to (eg: traffic in the way, or I just miss the turn.)
- rmc 12y ago
  I didn't think Apple Maps gave any data back to OSM, do you have a link? I thought it was just one dump file from a few years ago that they used.
  - Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
    There's a suggestion that Apple is now using current OSM data (the latest Apple Maps copyright notice has ©2014, which it didn't before) but, that said, I've not seen any indication of it here in the UK.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- thomersch_ 12y ago
  Apple has no official contributions to OSM. We are not even sure in which cases they use the data.
- ris 12y ago
  "which are based in part on Open Street Map (giving data back too)" I know for a fact this isn't true. What was your source for this?

ChuckMcM 12y ago

They started Ground Truth when I was there and it really opened my eyes to just how "broken" a lot of map data sources were at the time. Something I considered to be a 'solved' problem (take aerial photograph, pull out streets, poof map!) was no where close to solved. Some folks have said that Ingress, the Android and now iOS, real world geo game. Was in part an exercise in data collecting. Get people to photograph land marks in the real world to make "portals" while collecting GPS data associated with public landmarks for maps. And then use that data to localize things in satellite imagery, etc. Makes for an interesting data set.

matt_kantor 12y ago

> The majority of buildings in the U.S. are now on Google Maps. I doubt this. Out of curiosity I looked at my family's farm and Google Maps is missing most of our outbuildings. More generally I'm sure that they come up short on backyard sheds, pool buildings, structures in dense forests, etc.

jameshart 12y ago
Where do you think the majority of buildings are? I mean, there's a long tail, but more than 80% of the US population lives in urban environments; the head of that density graph is massive.
Retra 12y ago
As a point of fact, most buildings do not exist where there are currently such things as trees, pools, and sheds... Most people, it would seem, tend to live in houses and complexes, work in factories and offices, or shop at stores and shopping centers.

cjensen 12y ago

Despite all of Google' effort, they still rely too much on USGS published maps. For example, just 6 miles from the GooglePlex is a road in Newark with a gate [1], but Google doesn't know you can't drive on it. They're doing a good thing, but unless you can see that Google has driven the route and has published street view, you can't entirely trust them. [1] 37.515696 -122.050873

rickdale 12y ago

Google maps is amazing. I was on my way to Detroit Airport, I live about 1.5hours away. Anyways, I wanted to double check directions so I used google maps, and it came up with directions that were going to take me 2 hours. I laughed thinking, 'oh technology, 2 steps forward, 1 step back'. So I drove down the way I already knew and was just double checking. With twenty minutes left in the drive, theres a deadstop traffic jam. Highway is closed. Turns out entire highways flooded in Detroit around 6-7am, and when I googled directions around 830am, google knew not to go that way, but I didn't. Made it to the airport 3 hours later, with a flight 6 hours after that. I had never been so impressed with google maps before this though. How did it know not to go that way so fast? I literally just drove right into it no warning or detour signs.

bhousel 12y ago
They have gotten really good at this since acquiring Waze, which crowdsources traffic data.

juliendorra 12y ago

An interesting anecdote: the "promenade claude lévi-strauss" is a new street in Paris (around 1 year old, pedestrian only). It doesn't exist in Google Maps yet, which make Uber fail when you try to go there as Uber rely on google maps. (many people might want to go there, as it is now where all the paris urban planning administration is. I had to for a permit.) Actually last I tried Uber/Google Maps sent you at the directly opposite corner of Paris, to the Quai Branly Museum, probably because there is something related to the anthropologist there (?). Both Apple Maps and more interestingly the crowd sourced OpenStreetMap know about the "promenade". I'm curious to see how long it will take Google to discover this new street.

magicalist 12y ago
The Uber driver app uses Apple Maps...
rmc 12y ago
> more interestingly the crowd sourced OpenStreetMap know about the "promenade". Not too suprising really. OSM can be updated in a minute to add new features.
robk 12y ago
why not add it yourself in Map Maker?

civilian 12y ago

I worked as a contractor in Kirkland on this project for about a year. Just for context, the first image with the red and green dots--- each dot represents a 360-degree "street view" image. While consumers only get half-a-dozen a block, the operators got access to all of them. (Green are HD, red are normal def.) It was really useful for verifying that businesses had closed because the streetview dots also had the exact time that they were taken. There was also deeplinking in Atlas to a specific dot and direction vector. So when I was submitting a change to a business, I could link to the exact sign that I saw to prove that "Mama's Teriyaki is on _that_ corner", which helped whoever QA'd my change. It was a great first job out of college given that my degree wasn't very relevant to anything. (A lot of my coworkers in the same spot--- young, a degree that wasn't too useful, trying to find anything to do.) Out of the 400 contractors in that first Kirkland "class", I see tons of them around the Seattle tech industry now. It's been a surprisingly good network to have. At the end of the day it was still data-entry / data-validation, and mind-numbingly boring.

ghshephard 12y ago
This is actually very fascinating. About how many businesses a day would an average person versus a prolific or slow person manage to update? Did you mostly work off of business signs to determine information about businesses? What if no recent pictures had been taken?
- civilian 12y ago
  We'd also use the internet and, reluctantly, call them. We would identify ourselves as google maps, calling for info about their business. I don't quite remember the numbers, but it was something like 40 a day? The slower and new peeps would be around 25, and the fast people could do like 80 a day. But there weren't any productivity bonuses besides not being let go, so me and my buddies would do about 10% more than the average and then goof off on the internet or do homework for our python night class.
blissfulight 12y ago
Can you use the Atlas tool to correct business and other E/POIs (establishment/points of interest), or is limited to roads and other base map data? How do they evaluate spam POIs (say, locksmiths, who are prolific on Maps) in comparison to other Maps RAP (Report a problems)? Do all the teams (Places Listing Editors, Map Maker Google Reviewers, Maps Editors, etc.) use the same Atlas tool, or do they all have different tools? I use MM (Map Maker) quite a bit, and I'm curious how Google's tools work in comparison. Thanks.

jedberg 12y ago

And yet, when I want to go from SFO to Cupertino, it absolutely refuses to offer taking 380 to 280, even when it is 10 to 15 minutes faster according to Google itself. Apparently they still haven't fixed the whole "we have to go directly away from the destination for a little while" problem.

danellis 12y ago

So they have speed limit information? It would be handy if you could have that information on the navigation screen, maybe even with a warning when you exceed it.

shutupalready 12y ago

St. Louis streetwalker serial killer, Maury Travis, sent the local newspaper a computer generated map giving the intersection where he left a body. Investigators determined that web-based mapping software Expedia was used--based on symbols used to mark highways and such--ruling out Mapquest, Yahoo, and others. A single person had clicked on that intersection in Expedia in the 5 days before the map was received by the newspaper. They traced the person presumably using the IP address. This was back in 2001. It's odd that we still have unsolved street crime given that everyone today carries a tracking device sending back real-time geolocation data.

sytelus 12y ago

Another similar article appeared two years ago: How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go... I think most interesting point is not covered in either of them: How much of this effort devoted towards human curation? The numbers are believed to be ~1100 full time employees and 6000 contract workers[1]. These are huge numbers compared to most competitors in the market. Assuming each correction to a map can take 15 mins on average, you can easily make 100,000 corrections a day. Again, assuming there are top 2000 cities in the world where most of the queries originates, this is about 100 corrections per city per day. This would guarantee Google maps best of the best freshness, precision and recall on most metrics. With about 10X-20X larger curation force plus algo engineering, likes of Apple or HERE have no chance. In a way this also shows Google's leadership wisdom. Maps are the most important thing on mobile and even on web. Most companies don't get this and provide minuscule budgets citing no potential revenues (for instance Ballmer cancelled Street View like effort at Microsoft). By the time they wake - if they wake up - it would be to only find that they have been outrun by such a huge gap that even a decade won't be enough to catch up. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-maps-apple-would-have-to-hire-7000-people-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-map...

lingoberry 12y ago

After relying on Google Maps a lot for many years living in the US, I have (maybe unsurprisingly) noticed that it doesn't work nearly as well in Europe. As in, I'd zoom in on central Stockholm and search for something common, like the name of a restaurant, and Maps would promptly swoosh me to Nicaragua where it found a place with that name. It's doing stuff like this so often that I rarely use it anymore.