Google Maps' Moat
justinobeirne.com
justinobeirne.com
You could give millions or billions to TomTom, which is what Apple has been doing, or you could pour the same amounts into creating your own datasets, allowing you to do a lot more than navigation, i.e. anything.
Prime video is their main competitor. It’s like UPS renting its trucks from fedEx.
What you say already happens for MVNOs and it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...
They have a gentleman's agreement with Amazon–like Apple does with Samsung. It's mutually beneficial for both parties so there's no point antagonizing each other.
instead, they've spent all their energies since on amassing the most lucrative content they can. this is why they started making their own original series and why disney has (implicitly) made the argument that they should be allowed to buy fox.
same as in the UPS & fedex example. the trucks are not core to the business. efficient logistics is.
Don't they still do?
it seems like ages ago that anyone has mentioned getting a netflix dvd in the mail.
If AWS kicked them off tomorrow, that would definitely be disruptive, but the chances of that happening are almost nil as Amazon would lose significant revenue, goodwill, and almost certainly face a lawsuit and maybe even an anti-trust investigation.
On the other hand, Netflix's partnerships with movie studios is very one-sided one for them - there is no substitute for a blockbuster movie, so movie studios have a lot of leverage when talking to Netflix. Generally speaking, in this kind of relationship, the content providers will raise their prices to squeeze all profit out of the transaction with the customer. See also the difficulty with music streaming - the record industry has done the exact same thing already, the video industry is only a few years behind. Netflix saw the writing on the wall quite some time ago.
For maps, they are rumored to have cars driving around to collect data, but they clearly aren’t there yet, and even if they are investing heavily, may never catch up with Google.
They don't really exist to show more ads, and they're becoming a larger part of their profit every year.
What about their open source stuff? Kubernetes, Go etc?
I'll readily admit that advertising is still their primary source of revenue, but painting Google as a purely advertising company is getting less accurate every year
Websites that show ads, of course!
It is rumored that TomTom and Apple have a data deal. Apple gets maps from TomTom (for free, or a strongly reduced price), TomTom gets Apple maps user location data which they use for their traffic service.
How the deal works exactly isn't known (financial details are not public). But it's quite clear Apple doesn't pay a lot to make use of or improve TomTom maps.
Not the best example. McDonalds is so much more than food:
http://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-beyo...
I don't expect Google to pull its map app from iOS because it is a very valuable demographic to collect data from and target. Also, Apple already has a large hole on its balance sheet trying to catch up to Google in mapping. It started around the time they very publicly fired Forstall for the whole iOS 6 maps fiasco.
Google Maps was more ready than anyone else to ride the smartphone explosion. I guess they will also be more ready than everyone to cash on self-driving cars, Advanced AI, VR, and maybe youth-enhancing drugs too.
Hmmm, wasn't this Microsoft's business strategy too, until the regulators got involved?
This kind of anticompetitive behaviour would be news. A big bank account all by itself is not.
"Regulators" only got involved with browsers, once. You can't use that as an excuse for all the subsequent blunders by MS management. Their big tech bet was tablets and PDAs and they still got pipped by Apple and Google, without any involvement by lawyers.
In what way? Google didn't invent search, mail, banner ads... nor maps.
Google Mail was leaps and bounds better than anything in the webmail space at the time (more space, better spam filter, better UI, imap support...).
The pagerank intuition (and the technical way of achieving it, with clusters of cheap PCs) was original in search at the time, which is how they built their lead.
Ads they mostly got from the Doubleclick acquisition, but the intuition of serving more palatable text ads on a mass scale was original.
Android they acquired, but the intuition of keeping it opensource was original in embedded systems at the time.
Whereas MS Office was just another office suite. Xbox was just another console. Windows CE was a hacked-down Windows that struggled vs real mobile systems. .Net was a Java clone. Bing was a Google clone. IIS was a clone of existing webapp servers, with the only advantage being that it came preinstalled. SQLServer they acquired and made it slightly easier to use than competitors. After Windows, IE was probably the only major project where they innovated substantially, and they let it die.
The XBox's innovation (according to developers) was in making game development easier (DirectX) - heck, it was called DirectX Box originally!.
.Net started as a Java clone, but outpaced it significantly (LINQ, Lambdas, Generics, extensions, anonymous types) mostly thanks to Anders Hejlsberg.
I agree they had their share of high-profile failures, Windows CE and all of Microsoft's mobile forays failed, the current Windows Mobile was starting to get good but they had to kill it.
Excel was better than anything that came before and was a category-killer, so not "just another office suite" (although they did use their monopoly to force it).
They did have some wins (Azure) and they still have their cash cows to fall on.
For street data and navigation. Apple Maps in Australia is pretty much the same as Google Maps, so I mainly just use Apple Maps because I can command it via Siri while driving.
Google Maps has better search though if you don’t know the address, and the building outlines and street view are nice.
I wouldn't be so dramatic. My roommate uses mostly Google products but she gets by with apple maps because her car only speaks that over Bluetooth. It's not the worst experience in the world.
I'd take Nokia's Here anytime instead of Google Maps (offline maps alone are worth it). Also, I honestly don't understand a logic behind crediting something as complex to a single person ("a hero") -- "S. Jobs created iPhone", "M. Mayer created Google Maps" etc., there were whole teams of smart people working on these projects, I'm sure they would have been fine with any other reasonable leader and enough resources. The key point of technological success is the right time and place, so Google Maps were successful mostly because there was a huge need for them during smartphone and cheap cellular data surge, M. Mayer just happened to be a leader then and did her job (just as probably hundreds of engineers and lower ranking managers).
EDIT: Seems like my knowledge on Google Maps is a bit dated as I stated Here's offline map capabilities as an advantage. Still, the point stands and I still use Here as my go-to maps.
The last time I tried/was allowed to save Google Maps offline (it's not available in all regions) you could not navigate or search for POIs while offline.
Here allows both navigation and POI search using an offline map. This is incredibly useful if you are in a country without service or where roaming data is very expensive.
Must be only in certain regions. I went on a road trip in Western Europe this summer and the offline maps did not contain POIs an offline Navigation was not possible.
Actually, Navigation itself was impossible as the app crashed every minute on my Android 7 phone.
Meanwhile HERE Maps worked just fine offline and didn't crash my phone.
Last year I was travelling in Japan and Google Maps refused to let me download the maps to use offline. I installed OSM and downloaded the maps and it worked perfectly again. I was very surprised at the quality of OSM in Japan, it was fantastic! Even showing walking paths through temples.
To be fair, HERE Maps only supports offline navigation for driving, biking, and walking. You cannot get public transportation navigation in offline mode.
Also HERE Maps driving navigation includes speed limits and a speeding warning based on GPS measured speed. Very useful for when there are speed cameras installed (as is the case in most of Europe). I have never seen Google Maps Navigation showing the current road's speed limit.
The main barrier is getting contributors to add data to OSM. Some cities like Boston / Somerville seem to have hired office staff to improve OSM, as I see a lot of edits from usernames relating to the city in those areas. Another barrier is that the GIS system can be hard to work with, a lot of the programs being expensive and comercial. I managed to compile QGIS from the AUR but got confused by the thousands of coordinate systems and the exporting process, so my hometown will have to go without subdivision labels until someone more experienced can add them.
I'm really hoping that more people can make maps apps using OSM data, since OSM is often up to date enough for my needs in the areas I am in, but the best app I've seen so far (Maps.me) has a kinda old interface as well as map rendering that feels too cluttered to me compared to google maps (details shown at various zoom levels).
I think that might actually be part of the issue. Here is much better in Europe, Google and friends have always been better in US.
Of course there were smart people working on it. But someone has to have long term and execution vision to make these happen
Today it's obvious that was the path, at the time, not so much
Nobody else's business data is even close. Like not even 15% close.
They expired after 30 days (not 30 days of being offline, just 30 days from when you downloaded the map). If you had internet when they expired, the map would refresh and you'd be good for another 30 days. If the 30th day happened to be the first day of your trip, you were SOL until you found wifi.
Some of the other annoyances have been fixed (initially they only supported navigating to addresses, not business names). Some of them haven't (still no walking directions). But if I can't count on the maps to actually be there when I need them, nothing else matters.
HERE was sold by Nokia in 2015
Absolutely not true. I don't use Google Maps in Czech Republic at all as there is a solid local map provider[1] - (they offer whole world through OSM, so I use that on phone as well[2], but it's not that great). They lost some edge with Google going full-textured 3D few years back (actually the Czech map had it sooner, just not as useful). But other than that much cleaner rendering, equally good aerial or street view, better routing, POIs, richer layers ...
(edit: and two huge UX advantages over GM: no stupid random rotation - North is UP, and a very quick and precise zoom by holding control)
Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar stories in other countries.
2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy or recently released as https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind... (haven't tried it)
Compare this section of a Dutch city:
Google: https://www.google.nl/maps/@53.1983621,5.767509,16z?hl=nl
OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/53.1986/5.7679
Apple: (I guess Apple maps can't be linked to on the web?)
It also helps a lot if your government can be persuaded to open up their geographical data. All the building outlines are right there on the map in the Netherlands, up to date to within weeks, because the Dutch OpenStreetMap volunteers work with government data that is permissively licensed and cleared for use with OpenStreetMap. In fact, mistakes in that data set are also picked up by the local OpenStreetMap mappers, and reported back to the government cadastral map. Everyone benefits.
Trying to open that link on macOS from either Firefox or Safari shows a modal asking if I want to open it with the Maps app. I'm not sure what happens on iOS, but I'd expect something similar.
IMO, the lack of web client for Apple Maps makes it the worst of the bunch. Vendor lock-in is a tragedy.
I've been trying to use OSM more over the last few months, but it's hard to compete with Google on their home turf. Although OSM started to become more appealing as Google began requiring you to enable all sorts of data tracking for many or its features to work. If you disable location tracking you run into all sorts of bugs.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/featuredarticles...
Yeah, on any other OS your [1] just redirects to Google Maps:
And even where the actual map data is superior, the "we know better what you want than yourself" approach to UI is infuriating: Hiding of map detail/information based on zoom level is LCD design - you have to zoom in ridiculously close to get most of the info you want, and even then you usually can't be sure that the POIs shown are complete. And don't get me started on "Oooh, you cleared this text field? Lets zoom/move around like crazy!1"
It's probably caused by some third party app or rarely-tested phone model. They take in app feedback into account when deciding what to work on next.
To find a one-way street that applies to cyclists would be an exception.
It's actually super annoying, and I don't think I've seen a road done like this in last 2-3 years.
Edit: but yeah, that is _slightly different_.
WAG: is Google preparing to be Amazon's drones mapping service that thy care so munch to even know each and every building/caravan is?
If this were a feature for something like drone landing, it wouldn't show up in the public rendering of maps. Google has boatloads of mapping information they don't show, such as travel times, detailed scenic values, allowed turns etc. And building shapes alone are both too little for landing a drone (it doesn't show detailed vegetation or power lines), as well as too much (you only need flat/not flat to land, not the detailed roof shape of different sections of a building).
Insider perspective: I don't know why building shapes were added specifically, but you can honestly get away with basically justifying a project at Google with "because it would be cool".
There's a lot of reasons you can get away with it: Google has lots of internal tools and resources and data which makes it easy to do cool things, Google is pretty well off and can afford to not be particularly "lean", and Management can justify cool things because cool things are like basic science (as the article points out) and lets you build more cool things and because users like cool things ("magic moments").
So it's very possible that the reason building shapes were added were because someone realized it wouldn't take that much work to do using Google's existing data, machine learning & computer vision research, and computational infrastructure and thought it would be cool, they convinced someone in middle-management it would be cool and a half dozen people worked on it for a year or two.
[It could have also been a calculated, top-down decision and required hundreds of people working for a decade with laser focus; that happens too sometimes, I don't actually know.]
Now that there’s some money floating around again for a couple years, mew bridges and joins and larger road works look more common everywhere.
From here it looks like that google mapping quality is more or less the same, but the rate of change of the urban landscape increased leaving a larger gap between actual and mapped.
(That is for maps alone, street view is extremely outdated across all Italy)
While Apple is still playing catch-up, it appears to me that cycling, and all other features mentioned in the article, are exceptionally ameliorable to machine learning, and its advances over the last few years.
Apple being the only other company in the world with access to the wealth of position data on users' phones, and the financial muscle to purchase any satellite images they want to get their hands on, shouldn't have too much of a difficulty of replicating these.
I seem to remember discovering Google's bike directions, including the height profiles, a few months later and being slightly miffed that it wasn't available for my trip.
Or that cycling doesn't offer referrals…
Close, but imho is has more to do with liability, a fear common at all american companies. Car drivers are licensed. They can be expected to obey traffic laws. So when google sends them down the wrong way on a one-way road, nobody blames google. They blame the adult who listened to their phone rather than the signs. But bicyclists are not licensed. If google says that a road is open to cyclists when it isn't, and something bad happens, few will blame the 12yo unlicensed cyclist just following their phone's directions. This is why google, imho, seems to be limiting bicycle routes to those areas with the most clearly defined paths, preferably separate from roads.
And the one-way thing for bike routes is likely based on the widespread understanding that bicycles on roads must obey all the rules that cars do. Going the wrong way on a one-way road is illegal in many areas no matter what vehicle you use. This may never be enforced, but google's legal team probably isn't willing to depart from the letter of the law.
It also presents an alternate route, but the traffic environment here isn't such that the route under the viaduct makes any sense.
(this is in small town usa)
It routes me onto a dangerous arterial road rather than the pleasant multiuse park path that is directly adjacent to the arterial road (and which is my normal cycling route). The Google Maps recommendation here is quite bad and possibly dangerous. The alternate route goes on another heavily-trafficked road rather than the quiet surburban street a block away that is a designated cycle route marked with bicycle signs and sharrows (which was my previous cycling route).
There are many examples of one-way roads with two-way bike lanes, ie San Francisco:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco+City+Hall/@3...
Well of course we were explicitly not talking about the other closed, US corporate-owned map datasets, but the open one.
Who cares if they have options for cycling or not.
But thanks for bringing the topic back to Apple, mr "iNerdier".
In France, it is legal:
* in all "30 km/h zones" (which are a bit different from a single street with a 30 km/h limit), unless specifically disallowed in a specific street;
* in all "'meeting' zones" (where the speed limit is 20 km/h and pedestrians have special rights);
* and of course anywhere where it is specifically allowed.
[1] free to set up a rendering database that is
but yeah, google approves them occasionally as well
And it doesn't have any buildings at all in my friends' neighbourhood, because it was fields when their aerial images were taken under construction when their StreetView cars passed through 4 or so years ago. OpenStreetMap has accurate buildings. Apple Maps doesn't, but you've got a complete street layout and can overlay its more recent aerial imagery to see the buildings. Google Maps has no buildings, no aerial imagery from the last seven or more years, gets the street layout wrong and mislabels some of the few streets it actually shows. It's fun taking a 3D drive through the first roads when they were still lined by bare earth and areas about to start construction, but I got lost using their map...
Any mapping service's "moat" depends more on whether it's remotely adequate for the areas an individual cares most about than its ability to superbly render famous features of priority US cities.
One thing that I am wondering is: as much reluctant as I am in using Google services, I must admit that Google Map is unbeaten -- in my own experience -- in finding the quickest route in traffic. Is there any alternative service for this purpose?
In the general sense, Wave greatly prefers higher average travel speeds over distance to the point of being comical. Going between my two most frequent destinations can be 34 miles on a bunch of super highways or 21 miles of surface street with a long stretch state highway that is mostly posted 55mph. The calculated ETAs are usually within 3 minutes of each other but Waze almost always wants me to travel the longer distance -- burning a bunch more gas and making the drive more stressful.
Then there's all the screwy stuff it does with side streets. Having to enter busy arterial roads from uncontrolled intersections is probably not saving me time and is certainly not making my travels safer or less stressful. Especially when it wants me to turn left.
Waze is a nice substitute for shuffling my Valentine One between vehicles.
You don't even know if towns will be on the map with Google, but with OSM, there's always at least something.
A) Wrong/Outdated/Missing
B) Just plain Vandalism
Besides, I don't see any reason why Google can't add OpenStreetMap as an additional data source in some or all areas (right in the spirit of the article). It will be interesting to see how the usage and development of OSM changes if that really happens.
The OSM licence requires that if you merge another database with it, you need to release the other database under the same licence as OSM.
I can't see Google doing that.
There is so much more information at a glance on OSM, whereas for Google you have to go to the highest zoom level to see all POIs. Smaller, local shops are often hidden by large chain brands that Google deems more important, and they don't show up until the shop's building almost covers your whole screen. Rather than showing the icon without a name, so you know what's there just not which specific brand, it just shows you nothing.
As for search... yeah that company owns search. I'm not surprised they excel at that one :)
Last year, when SVP of Engineering at Google left for Uber, I suggested[1] here on HN that Uber getting into mapping (for exactly the reasons in the article) with OSM would be mutually beneficial (in the same way as outlined in another comment from today[2]). It didn't get a warm response. (IIRC, at first it was even downvoted into the gray.)
https://www.google.de/maps/@53.6402644,10.0622627,17.38z
https://www.openstreetmap.de/karte.html?zoom=17&lat=53.63958...
Street View is so amazing, it's a huge game-changer from Google.
They seem to be starting back.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Google-Street-View-not-in-Germa...
I had the fun experience last week to discover that this was one of the cities in north Texas.
https://i.imgur.com/BkBcuzN.png
The "Boy's Bathroom Tascosa Drive In" Residents are hopefully not going to look at my app any time soon. I am now a bit concerned about the quality in the states as a whole.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1698922081/history
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/1652
Of course as a practical matter the block only applies to an account rather a person, but it makes the point to the person that the vandalism isn't welcome.
I mostly mean to expand on how OSM deals with such things, not to argue whether or not that makes it suitable for your purposes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/05/19...
But OSM has some advantages over the others. You can do Simple Indoor Tagging of your building, say for accessibility reasons, and you can even modify it later.
I really hope that one day OSM will be able to better compete with Google maps. I feel like there is a serious lack of OSM mobile apps. The only one I know of (that is acceptable) is Maps.me, but I find it too cluttered compared to Google maps.
Back in the 80ies when we started working on these kind of mapping techniques Microsoft was the first to work on it (i.e. buy those companies, partner with institutes), and was the first to get the local government contracts for the flyover photos.
Google had only access to the US satellite data, with a much lower resolution, Microsoft had access to the yearly 2D government overflights and even to the local stereo camera 3d images. 4x a year on 1000m. Very good data. Paired with streetview-like cars photographing the facades this was the future. Google didn't invent this, Microsoft partners (also working for NASA) did this.
Some cities still only work together with Microsoft, they do have long contracts. So streetview is not public, 3d images are government only and 2d maps are behind.
OpenStreetMaps solved this problem with crowdsourcing. More accurate, but not scalable. Google solved it technically, Microsoft politically.
When I worked in city planning, I used to write such a 3d image software, which detects roofs, trees, cars, streets, and build an automatic 3d model out of it. These models were used to detect illegal buildings or enhancements, which brings in more taxes. They had no interest in making these maps public, only for certain architectural or city-planning contests.
Really have to chime in here to echo other comments - this statement is astounding. Given the resources that have been available to them, and the time they've spent on developing their platform and data, it's amazing how bad Google maps is compared to everything else.
Google Street View has unparalleled photographic data, and their very cool 3d extrusion of satellite data are nice features that still give them a competitive edge, but otherwise, on a purely cartographic level, Google Maps is really bad. Aside from Nokia and Apple, OSM's data through well-made interfaces by Maps.ME, Mapbox, Mapzen, etc. (intermediates necessitated by OSM's lack of financial resources for maintaining hosted tileservers) are all far better than Google's.
If you want a real map, then Bing is the best solution in the UK because they partnered with the Ordnance Survey. OS maps are the civilian gold standard.
[0] https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/pro...
Have a look at https://binged.it/2BFM0UA
And compare to the OS 1:25k example image: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/pro...
Nobody else has the amount of data Google has, that could, with good design, potentially contribute to a good mapping experience.
Even so, to go through the things you list (ignoring Street View and satellite which I already mentioned above):
- Nokia maps has much better business listings, up to date opening hours and reviews than Google
- Maps.ME has far superior walking directions - their pathfinding algorithms can be a bit iffy, but OSM data has, in my experience, far better pedestrian- and walker-oriented trail data than Google. Particularly in remote areas, on mountains, etc. If by "terrain view", you mean the 3d visualisation, then Google's is quite pretty, but not as useful as more accurate and complete trails with graphed route altitudes.
- I'm not in the US, so Google's public transit data is likely better there, but here in Ireland it really isn't. This despite the fact all of our public transit services provide open real-time APIs. I'm not aware of any mapping service here that gets public transport integrate right, but OSM at least has better stop data than Google, which can be fed to RTPI APIs. Google's EU headquarters is here, which includes their Google Maps team...
- I find OSM coverage in is higher quality than Google in more than "dozens of countries".
I'm aware that all of the above is anecdotal, and much of it being from a non-US perspective, I guess some of this could just be an overly strong focus on the US on Google's part.
However, most of my issues with their Maps service is down to UX, performance (their web-based maps are particularly awful here), accessibility, and general consistency (e.g. their Android Street View app is really limiting and doesn't seem to integrate with anything else - the switching between it and the Android Maps app is unintuitive and generally makes very little sense in terms of actual use-cases). So I think this is somewhat independent of geographic focus.
OpenStreetMap wins on street numbers and other, because they're maintained by the municipal government.
I grew annoyed at Google maps. It didn't show street names and numbers, and overall little detail, meaning that even if I (with GPS) easily found my location, it was hard to orient myself, and discover things around me. Things like "I know ABC is close to XYZ, I just need to find it by looking around XYZ" is really hard.
edit: and by small, I mean small. Nothing like the TFA, but grounded in a Swedish suburb (50k inhabitants), which is more meaningful to me. Also, I didn't have an apple-device at the time so no Apple maps included.
"The maps are completely separated. Waze and Google do share traffic info and reports.
Waze uses Google maps database for search (besides our own db ofcourse).
Sometimes Google maps data is imported into Waze. Streets, streetnames, parking lots.."
When searching for places in European cities large and small, Google is missing a ton of information and much of what it has is wrong. Opening times, for instance, or which thing is a bar or a restaurant or a bakery or a shop.
And we found the main party bar in three different (smallish) cities, totally unknown to Google. Thank God we're still social enough to ask the locals. :-)
My sense is that the map data that can be acquired programmatically is very good on Google, and anything requiring human input or verification is relatively weak, especially outside the USA.
This is presumably a big opportunity, long-term, since it's getting easier to have robots acquire data but anything high-touch seems uninteresting to AlphaGoo.
I think you've described Google as a whole with this one sentence. YouTube content classification. Web site content identification. Account abuse. Their porn filters. There are as many examples as there are Google data products.
Their Local Guides program in Maps is clearly a direct reaction to this, they even explicitly ask you to sign up with a message saying "we need help from a human". Once you're signed up you'll occasionally be asked a series of yes or no style questions about places you've visited, ranging from "Does this place have disabled access" to "Would you consider this a classy place". They also encourage you to do things like adding the opening hours of places they don't know about, or confirming that places are still in business.
I am basically counting down the days until Google is the recipient of a major FTC enforcement action. It's going to happen in the next decade, and it will make Microsoft look like peanuts.
This come from an admittedly from the PoV of not using a smartphone with google service, so it's either fully offline maps or online vector maps in the open source, well supported OsmAnd app or using the sluggish google maps website. Also I'm in Germany which has by far the best OSM map quality I have seen so far. And I almost exclusively cycle everywhere and every time I tried using google maps It sent me through some 2km cobblestone road 5 min after starting.
But I still find the Mapnik default rendering style very pleasant to look at.
As an additional benefit I can just fix OSM error on the fly, on my Phone, whether I'm online or offline and queue the update for later. There is really no competition here...
Edit: I forgot one of my main criticism of google maps. I mainly stopped using it in the webbrowser because it was getting sooooo slow. openstreetmap.org loads almost instantly.
It used to be very good with the previous user interface. Now I use my national map provider (when I do not need Streetview) or Openstreetmap (when I do not need aerial pictures or Streetview). And for routing, I may use some cycling map, or Google maps when I hope I won't have to move any point (starting and ending point specified by address, and no change of route).
[1] https://www.strategyanalytics.com/strategy-analytics/news/st...
However, Google has comprehensive streetview and more up-to-date aerial photography.
However, Bing and Apple maps get the correct location and have the right visualizations for the same area.
Sorry but that's almost comically out-of-touch with today's reality. If you've been paying any attention you know exactly what Google takes from its users in return for this "social charity".
Honestly, even calling it a "social charity" is kind of offensive to actual social charities. They're not giving away this data, or opening it up, it's entirely Google's property and they're actively putting up multiple barriers to discourage people from using the service without giving up their privacy, location data and everything.
Imagine a corporation using a "social charity" as a lure like that.
If that's a "social charity" then so is Facebook's thing with the "free internet" in India.
The second thing was that Google owns all of their data. When I was there Maps was pretty new, Google was digesting the acquisition of the Keyhole folks (who became Google Earth) and was complaining bitterly about how restrictive the usage rights were for the map data from a major mapping company. They kicked off a program to become independent of third parties for map data and to have the most accurate data in the world.
And if you turn the problem into an algorithm that can be parceled up between machines, you have way more of that than people. It's the one thing that the previous generation of computer companies didn't get, when computers are cheap having 50,000 of them isn't all that much different than having 5,000 especially if you can code up ways for them to route around damage. I think Maps is a good indication of what you can do when you think like that.
We can get some satellite imagery for free from weather satellites, but it's nowhere near the resolution needed for street maps.
https://hackaday.com/2017/12/05/grabbing-raw-images-from-a-n...
I could easily see Google making turn by turn or map detail a "small" $4.99/month service rather than having it be free.
And some open source data initiatives. Open Street Map, for all it's glory, is surprisingly anti-automation. There's a lot of stuff that could probably be done with programs that they refuse because it's too hard to peer review the massive resulting changesets. Which is unfortunate, because there's a huge potential for processing images from places like Planet to provide new data and annotations that we'll just straight up miss out on.
We might disagree on some points but his work is truly amazing and always interesting.
I agree with you over his previous blog and about his position at Apple Maps, great to see him doing what he does best.
It's wonderfully written too, easy to follow through his logic without having to re-read sections.
??? He writes a lot of this article like he's trying to guess from press and outside observation what Apple is doing / planning. If he was JUST working there, wouldn't he know all this? Should his 'outside observations' be considered to be him fitting outside information to what he already knows?
As a side note this gives me great confidence that Waymo will come out of the self driving car race in pole position.
Not to sound like a jerk, but I would be shocked if there were anyone working on this that was not pursuing things in this way. It just seems kind of obvious that you can't have some big hunk of metal rolling around, following some abstracted track from a map, without "looking" where it is going.
But hey, that's not a realistic danger in the city, right? Well, look up the sinkhole named "Steve" that opened up in the middle of an Oakland, CA freeway.
Then there's Highway 1, which is known for landslides. Not to mention that little incident with the Bay Bridge back in '89...
Then think of what percentage of the time they're right.
Another interesting thing to consider, should there be widespread use of autonomous vehicles is the absolutely massive deployment of digital sensors that would entail, and who would use this data and to what ends? It would basically be realtime Streetview.
As a hypothetical, what if autonomous driving is seen to depend on what many would see as invasive data collection and monitoring? Should it be permitted? That's a hypothetical, but I don't think there's an obvious answer to the question as posed.
Does it get sent back to the mothership? How is it processed? Is it discarded? Who has access?
When data is the new oil, these questions answer themselves if there is not legislation to prevent it.
Such data would be hugely attractive for commercial interests.
Hedge-funds and the like, use aerial imagery to get data like the amount of cars in parking lots at shopping areas.
With a fleet of cars with 360 degree cameras driving around, not only could the number of people on the sidewalks be counted, but it would be technically possible to identify most of them.
I don't think that we'll ever justify that massive loss of privacy is more important than massive loss of life and health; especially if the bad consequences of loss of privacy is generally hypothetical and in the future; and the bad consequences of traffic accidents are obvious and immediate.
Each time justin writes a blog post, I feel like a cartographer for a couple of minutes.
I love the attention he puts to the evolution of mapping services.
The only better thing would be the same blog as a post mortem from Google where they discuss the reasoning, design and tech behind these changes.
https://www.drivingdirectionsandmaps.com/traffic-conditions-...
I usually manage to knock a 4.5 hour drive down to 4 hours or less.
Google Maps estimates are wildly off when parts of the drive are along unpaved roads in Australia. It assumes a ludicrously low speed of 30-40 km/h for such roads, when most cars are able to go 80+ km/h, depending on the road. I've beaten Google arrival estimates by more than 2 hours on some drives.
When planning drives involving unpaved sections, we usually ask Google for the estimates for the paved sections (which are generally accurate), then estimate the unpaved sections based on the distance and a guess at a reasonable speed for the road.
I've also noticed that Google is much better at estimating speeds along unpaved roads that have mobile signal coverage. It seems like it uses user-generated driving data for them to some extent, but not at all for the ones without coverage. This leads me to think that they accept real-time user data, but will not "queue" the gathered data on the app for uploading later, when mobile signal is available.
This seems like a strange decision, given that unpaved roads and lack of mobile coverage correlate by nature. I suppose it's probably a security-minded decision, to prevent malicious agents from easily uploading bad data. Or maybe a quirk of the way Waze data plays into this.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/google-maps-digital-trespass-...
Some areas allow lane splitting, others don't. Some riders are on tourers that can't hop through traffic but can maintain highway speeds comfortably, others ride single-cylinder dual sport bikes that can't maintain 60 without taking a physical toll on the rider. And every rider has a slightly different risk tolerance, which translates to different behavior in traffic. I personally don't mind lane splitting between two semi trucks cruising abreast at highway speed, but I get anxious squeezing through cramped city traffic. And I slow down considerably anywhere a SMIDSY might happen, even if I have the right of way.
Also, it may be difficult for Google to identify who is riding a motorcycle from location data alone, which is what they would use to generate the motorcycle estimations. Not sure how they would do it...maybe using accelerometer/gyro data to identify inward leans during turns? The assumption being that cars will lean outwards, while bikes will lean inwards.
Typing in an address, going there by directions, verifying the building front without extra time needed for travel is truly magic.
Not only GM was generally right, the overal intertial refresh rate was smooth .. extremely surprising.
For me it's one or two announcements of the actual destination address at the end of the drive. If it's not an address I'm familiar with and not a business with a sign out front, by the time I get there I've usually forgotten the street number!
But when I arrive all I hear is "your destination is on the right."
It would be so great if the last two announcements were:
"Your destination, 123 Main Street, will be on the right in 800 feet."
"Your destination, 123 Main Street, is on the right."
To his credit, he immediately started thinking through what had gone wrong, but it was so awesome to be a witness to that moment.
"Your destination is on the right, 123 Main Street."
Also, it's not as simple as "Google has a six year lead on Apple in imagery": it's more that Apple can't keep up. As the article correctly states, Apple started collecting aerial imagery around the same time that Google did, they just haven't been able to execute on it as fast as Google did, and by now, they probably never will.
Google is scary, because it's unusually competent for a big company. But apart from that it's the same as usual: The bigcos can devote a big team to build whatever it is you're building and then leverage their existing customer relationships to sell it to many of their existing customers. But they usually don't. They work on their big core products instead.
If you, e.g., have market dominance in operating systems, you can't prefer any web browser, install any browser as default, or advertise any based on the OS. In the same way, if you control web search, you can't prefer one web shopping site, or one web maps service. And you especially can't integrate one, but not the other.
The goal of all this legislation was to ensure that a company like Google can't use their advantage in search to gain an advantage in maps, to avoid exactly the current situation.
At least in the US, I know of no legislation forbidding a dominant OS maker from preferring some browser. Microsoft was put under some rules like that after their antitrust suit, but that's very different from legislation forbidding all companies from having such preferences.
Europe is different. I've not studied their antitrust law as I have that of the US, but I believe they're more aggressive on both the enforcement and legislation sides. I think the average American would be better off if US antitrust policy were more aggressive than it is now.
So, from an EU perspective, it is as clear cut as that :)
That, too, sounds exactly like what would be needed to demand more government regulation of that market.
One of the tasks of the government is to ensure that any market is free to new entrants, and that only the best product wins, and network effects are eliminated.
> You can see a large collection of imagery in Google Earth, including satellite, aerial, 3D, and Street View images. Images are collected over time from providers and platforms. Images aren't in real time, so you won't see live changes. (https://support.google.com/earth/answer/6327779?hl=en)
I am sure they buy some data from a plethora of companies, such as Harris Geospatial(http://www.harrisgeospatial.com/)
Satellite Data They bought and sold a satellite imagery company, renamed it Terra Bella and then it was acquired by Planet Labs.
> On April 14, 2017, we officially welcomed the Terra Bella team to Planet. Over the next year, our new team will work hard to make SkySat imagery available through the Planet platform. This will take a huge combined effort across our entire organization—from our mission operations and software teams to our product, marketing and sales teams. (https://www.planet.com/terrabella/) (https://www.planet.com/pulse/planet-to-acquire-terra-bella-f...)
TomTom on the other hand... different story. They have a map editor tool, that I have yet to get to even load.
I first tried to correct google, and I was told I was wrong.
So I tried again, and they fixed it.
Then a 'local expert' decided it was wrong and now my address is on the wrong side of the road and none of my attempts to change it to be correct has succeeded.
[edit] It looks like I can't even suggest an edit on it as it's a Post Code that's incorrect.
1. Bring up the app menu (tap the icon in the upper right).
2. Tap Settings.
3. Tap Edit Home or Work.
4. Tap the elipsis on the right side of the Home item.
5. Follow the instructions...1) A restaurant in Vancouver was known for their oysters. I went back years later and although the name and reviews remained, the owners completely changed the restaurant. Completely different style of food, seating, service, everything. I reported that their reviews should be wiped clean, and Google didn't change anything. Disappointing.
2) When you hop on a road while navigating and Maps says "follow this road for x kilometers" you expect to be on that road for x kilometers. In my town it seems that google decided that the road should change visual style in the more trafficked part of the city, so it seems they split it up. Now navigation says multiple times "continue on road for x kilometers" but with shorter distances. It's not intuitive. They wouldn't change it.
Try zooming in and zooming out slowly and watch what happens to the labeling of the islands since they are actually a collection.
"... guides who get to level four will now get three months of free access to Google Play Music and 75 percent off rentals in the Google Play Movie store."
Not to mention, I find seeing Googles walking tracks kinda hard, especially if you're new to an area and want to see what tracks are around.
At least in my experience, this is done to keep the view uncluttered. The data is still there, and turning on Satellite view+3D shows the mountains and hills.
I'm not trying to randomly snipe at Apple here, I just know very little about Apple Maps beyond the bad press its gotten and Apple's general software product competency weaknesses.
EDIT: Thanks for the responses, that's all pretty much the kind of thing I was wondering about
But even with all of these reasons, Google's data and search capabilities are so much better than Apple's that they make Apple Maps feel unusable by comparison.
Issues:
- Search results are terrible compared to Google's.
- While the UI is generally smoother, it lags behind (i.e. It shows a turn a good bit after I do). This is especially frustrating when driving through small city blocks and trying to be in the correct lane for the next turn.
- Lane guidance was finally added, but no way to see ahead like in gmaps.
- Day/night mode is very fussy. When I'm driving through the Bay Bridge at night it constantly flips back and forth between day/night due to the overhead lights.
- It is pretty frustrating that the line ahead of me is constantly wobbling around instead of matching the curve/line ahead of me. It feels disorienting and makes it difficult to see if there's an upcoming left/right ahead. Google generally does a good job trying to visually match what you're seeing. https://imgur.com/a/t3Sxm
- If I check traffic when I wake up, then go through my morning routine, then check it again, there's a 90% chance it'll crash on startup.
- No way to add a stop
- No street view
and so on...
You can add a stop, but it's limited to gas stations, coffee shops and restaurants. Why? I don't know.
It's the same (and most recent) version of all these browsers as my other Mac, where it works fine. How does one debug this? I've tried googling (ha) for every combination of words I can imagine. Google's tech support seems basically nonexistent, for their free services.
Or I can just open Maps.app, and it always works. The data isn't as good but it's not terrible, and at least the basics work fine. I'm not a heavy maps user so that's good enough for me.
1. Google’s Material UI is a total dumpster fire and I use it only as a last resort.
2. Apple Maps integrates much better with everything else I’m using, so the experience is smoother (e.g., looking up an address on my laptop and then sending directions to my phone).
I keep Google Maps around as a backup, mostly for places of interest way out in the boonies, like hiking trailheads.
But I always come back to Material's "Up" button when asked for an example: https://material.io/guidelines/patterns/navigation.html#navi...
Google maps, however, knows where everything is, everywhere. Also, you can download offline maps and get navigation in the middle of nowhere.
I switch to Google when traffic is really bad, as I trust its timing estimates more.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2014/12/google-maps-ground-truth/ [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-g...
Back when Apple Maps launched (and probably just after GT had been publicly acknowledged), I had a chat with an Apple journalist, and basically told him that Apple had no idea what they were in for. They'd fix the obvious big public bugs (turning off of highway overpasses) easily enough, but they would remain way behind on data quality. Back then Google was spending something like a billion dollars a year for GT and Street View alone, which is a massive organization that Apple just didn't have, wasn't likely to build, and couldn't license. Add to that a huge lead in satellite imagery, custom flyover data, business data from web search, customer feedback from their incumbent maps app, and I just didn't see any way that Apple was going to come even close to Google's map quality in the next several years. Basically the only question to me was if/how quickly they'd reach "good enough" status for their users to avoid tarnishing their brand.
Story time: Back before GT was used widely, I think some street addresses were placed by just linearly interpolating them along the road. Charleston and Rengstorff are a bit weird near the Google campus, so for a while people looking for directions to the shopping center on the other side of the freeway would find themselves getting directed (embarrassingly!) to the Google Maps building, with its big red pin in front reminding them how they'd been led astray. After giving directions to these lost souls one too many times, I got annoyed enough to rant to someone about how terrible the data was. He agreed, took me over to a what I now know must have been a GT operator, got it fixed, and told me it would be live within a month. So I got to say that I'd personally served some Maps traffic, and reduced load on a low performance server as well (my QPS is pathetic).
According to Apple maps, the doctor's office was literally in the middle of a field. I missed it the first time around (drove past it for a few miles, following my GPSs instructions) and then soon realized that I was already going through residential areas.
Never again, Apple. For context, this was 3 months ago. This doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve. My guess is that Apple just gave up.
Maps are one area where Apple has a "meh, good enough" attitude, but Google really seems to want to really bring the next level of quality.
A few months ago, they introduced 3D buildings, and Earth shows up-to-date satellite imagery now, but still didn’t update the satellite imagery used in the Maps app.
Worse yet are maps and transit – roads and sometimes entire districts missing, data from somewhere between 2005 and 2009, and no transit data at all.
Every other map service has it all. Apple, Here, Bing, OSM, everything. Google doesn’t.
And yet people here continue using Google Maps, because "it’s the default", and Google Now can only give you estimates from Google Maps.
That shows just how powerful the advantage of a default app is, and how at this point, Google Maps is entirely without competition just because it is the default.
Not even when Google Maps sucks do people switch away – often because many don’t even know there are alternatives.
(And btw, this issue isn’t just like that in one German city, Google Maps is here like that in many places).
Google does have the better product, but for the most part I can see Apple Maps being at least “good enough” for my use, much the same way that Safari, for me at least, is “good enough” compared to Chrome. Unfortunately, anecdotes of Apple Maps underperforming are all too common, and I think Apple needs to keep investing (and probably a lot) if they intend to win users over.
Would love to see a citation for that. Wouldn't Google want to boost maps usage on iOS?
I didn’t follow all the links, but apparently this was referenced in a court case.
Uhh, it 100% is. The fact that I don't use Google Maps and use Apple Maps instead means that it's in direct competition.
I'm sure Apple would love it if you used Maps so much that it created ecosystem locking, but I doubt Apple is too upset that you downloaded Google Maps on your iPhone.
These limitations are, of course, entirely of Apple's creation.
In the end I can understand the limitations on the lock screen because it can be tricky to figure out the right way to give third-party apps special permissions like that. This is not some kind of tacked-on limitation that Apple added, but instead it's something that didn't exist on iOS until Apple added it. Remember that Google Maps, at the time, didn't give turn by turn directions at all never mind on the lock screen. Given how cautious Apple has been with the iOS permissions model (compared to Android, for sure) this shouldn't be even slightly surprising.
The fact that you can't make Google Maps the default handler is stupid, though.
Interestingly enough, I did some exploring into how Apple was doing this and it seems like there's already an (internal) "API" for bundles of code that work on the home screen and lock screen. Currently it's taken advantage of by apps like Assistant (Siri), ChatKit (I assume this is Quick Reply notifications?), Wallet (which shows up on the lock screen), and the Wi-Fi picker in addition to Maps. Check out /System/Library/SpringBoardPlugins if you're curious.
apple has hundreds of billions in the bank, so they could easily fix the problem if they wanted to. but they (mistakenly, imho) don't see it as core to their business so it limps along like it does.
With Google Maps I feel I'd have greater confidence for its accuracy, but placing complete confidence in any maps app would be a mistake.
Going to the Golden Gate Recreation Area, Google Maps sent me to a trailhead parking lot instead of the visitor's center. And for a small business near the Bay Model, GM directions stopped about half a mile away, and the map pin was on top of the Bay Model building.
here in Texas, different story. Although Google Maps isn't always that great with the parallel service roads that we have all over the place.
How Apple Maps got that wrong, I honestly don’t know. Where did the data come from, and why is it that incorrect?
I reported it, and it’s since been removed, but I can’t do that for everything in my town, and there’s so much missing; I can’t report that, or edit the map like you can on OpenStreetMap.
Honestly, why does Apple Maps exist? Either it needs to be like Google Maps (and just work), or be like OpenStreetMap and let Apple fans edit the map and get more involved.
I gave them a lot of patience and understanding years ago (mapping the world is hardly an easy task), but my patience has run out. It’s been a shit show from day one and I honestly don’t see that changing anytime soon.
https://www.google.com.au/maps/@44.8508646,-93.4259796,3a,15...
Back out of Street View and you'll see I've landed at Prairie Center Dr, Eden Prairie, MN. Is this right?
What's interesting is that if I type "oph chanha" Maps autocompletes "OPH Summerfield Drive, Chanhassen, MN, USA" but then if I hit Enter, it thinks for a fraction of a second then just stops dead. If I hit Enter again it comes up with no results. Interesting glitch!
I did the autocomplete test in incognito to get non-cookie/history-polluted results.
And even then the first response from Apple was a plain source dump with zero documentation on the changes they have made, that made it basically impossible to roll the changes back into Khtml.
Would not surprise me that this was one of the reasons Apple went to work purging GPL licensed code from their offerings.
Amsterdam is a very interesting case. From my own personal experience it's very easy to get lost there. There's even a coffee shop with that name!
Apple under Tim Cook isn't interested in hard problems. But hey, look at their amazing animated poop icon!
What was Google Maps for mobile in 2005? Those were flip phone days for me.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3073/2874464079_0fea1bc0c0_b.j...
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2140/2220421483_f4a2ccea8a_b.j...
My fault of course for using that laptop, but sometimes I forget because it basically works for most other things.
I switch to Apple Maps on mobile when Google stopped letting me search for directions without signing in.
Incredible piece of technology, destroyed by real bad product decisions.
Not just for being one of the first apps to be properly dynamic and AJAX based, but also because it was possibly the first time that we had access to an entire world of satellite maps online, something previously reserved for large corporations and governments.
Lately I have even been wanting an operating system that has maps as the main UI, or a majorly core feature. With the amount that I use maps, it is an absolute pain to have to switch to it all the time.
I pin every place recommendation I find in my social circles online and tag them with who suggested them. When I'm driving I'd like to pin/note places I see without interacting with the phone. When I'm flying I wan't to know what specific features I am seeing from the air (towns, mountains, lakes). When I'm on a road trip I want to hear snippets of info about the small towns that I'm passing through or the things I see out the window. When I'm walking I want to use the camera for input and output to the map to pin and locate myself. When I'm indoors I don't want to feel lost again or ask where the restroom is.
Location has become a core part of my interaction with the world but it still feels rather basic as a 3rd party app on my phone. Or another tab on my desktop.
"Google is creating data out of data ... It makes you wonder how long back Google was planning all of this—and what it’s planning next"
My guess is that they weren't planning it. Somebody decided to use their 20% time to learn TensorFlow and process the Street View imagery for fun, and that side project got promoted into Maps.
When I downloaded 10 years of church notice sheets, I was trying to get the lyrics of the songs in Chinese. I later realised that I could also find the most common song names, and then focus my Chinese-learning on those songs. Big data is all about gathering more data than you know what to do with, and figuring it all out as you go.
The data you see in Google Maps came and probably still comes from a pipeline of pipelines that rebuild the whole planet on a regular schedule. Since we're talking about all of Earth, random stuff here and there could cause hiccups and delays. Information comes from all sorts of sources, including custom HW (streetview camera, etc.), flying their own planes, owning a satellite company for a few years, and so on.
In one shape or another, it all predates Tensorflow by years.
My ideas:
- Apple is just a few years behind; they launched a decade later. Come back in 3 years and they'll be close to parity.
- Apple only needs Maps to be good enough to avoid PR disaster, since they need a reasonable default on iOS. On the other hand Google needs to be good enough to beat competitors since they want to make money on traffic, usage data, and the Maps API.
- Google's use of reCAPTCHA gives it a huge edge over competitors in mass image classification.
Apple lacks the raw computing capacity to be able to pull this off, even if they had the algorithms and data already.
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300080062/cloud-makes-for-stra...
It's extremely difficult for a company to be good at many things. I'd be skeptical there's anything Apple can ever do to be good at their hardware object core (hardware + OS) and Internet services. iTunes has sucked for years, they either don't care or can't do anything about it. How did Spotify take the lead in streaming services? Why didn't they understand to acquire Netflix for streaming when it was tiny? Same fundamental reason, Apple isn't very good at Internet services.
Siri, iTunes, streaming (which is doing ok), Apple Maps, MobileMe, Ping, these are all the same problem. They mostly got the App Store right, to their credit.
But, I own neither an Echo, nor an Android, and I'm still running iOS 6 on an iPhone 4S.
So you expect Google to stand around for 3 or more years while Apple comes close to parity with Google today?
If you worked at Apple would you want to be working on Apple Maps? I just doubt any of the core talents in Apple are interested in it at all, it's not what the company is known for.
I wonder if there is a more detailed data set available these days.
Very cool app!
The obvious route is to follow the freeway that was built on the best route between the two cities. Instead, all three really enjoy routing you onto a two-lane twisty mountain road that is five minutes shorter if you are driving a sports car and all the lights are green. Heaven help you if you are driving an RV.
I've sent corrections to both Google and Apple about this. They both did nothing.
Signs have been setup to block cars from entering those roads during morning and evening rush hour. But still you see many people taking that road, blindly following the map instructions.
- even privacy conscious people give their location data to their map app
- google maps + google services (android) do everything they can to collect your location data even while not using the app
- how to monetize that data? Measuring online-to-offline conversions! Store visits. This is what retail is after.
Anyone can take $5M for an ad campaign, but if there is a single company that can prove that their ads deliver people to the stores, they get the money and they make case for getting more next time.
To paraphrase Zenyep Tufekci, we're not just building dystopia to make people click ads, we're also surveilling bilions of people to measure retail ad conversions.
https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...
(oh, and there will be a lot of byproducts of course, as the article mentions. Some of them will even be great PR, such as the self-driving cars)
The crazy thing is that I do not believe they have started monetizing maps yet. (Sundar Pichai Implies Google Maps Will Be Monetized With Ads April 28, 2017 - Written By Dominik Bosnjak)[https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/04/sundar-pichai-impli...]
While using Maps the other day to get bus directions I got pulled up short and had a very big laugh after Maps gave me a route that would have required I walk through my neighbor's living room and backyard, and then jump my back fence in order to get home. :D
Maps apparently thinks that the internal roads in the townhouse complex next to mine will provide access to my house. This most definitely is not the case :D
I'd like to forward this to someone internal, both for the fun of sharing it with an actual human being and also because I don't share _exactly_ where I live (town, okay; house and street, not so much).
On the same note, I wouldn't mind making friends with random people in various teams - Search, Maps, etc - because I often see glitches and have nobody I can tell.
My email's in my profile, FWIW, and I have no problem with anybody forwarding it on and/or random incoming emails from engineers if that happens to work :)
That sounds great—but living in San Francisco,
it’s hard to imagine this working smoothly. That’s
because half the time I request a ride, I have to
text/call the (Uber) driver to coordinate my pickup spot.
If I were Uber's new CEO, I'd treat mapping and location services as a class-one emergency, up there with any others that people commonly criticize the company for.
https://www.quora.com/What-map-API-technology-did-Uber-use-t...
If I look up my home address on Google Maps, it puts the pin in the correct location, at the actual residence. But as of a few days ago, the Uber Eats drivers aren't making it past the mailboxes at the end of my (long) driveway. They no longer appear to be showing the drivers my GPS location at all, just the location associated with the address of the residential mailbox. Very annoying in a first-world problem kind of way.
That being said, they probably simply don't care. Maps is a means to an end for Apple, and likely not itself a direct money maker. People use it because Apple has a captive audience - you can't set your default Maps app on the iPhone to anything else. I don't get the feeling anybody actually likes it, altho I do enjoy using Flyover to see those 3d scans from time to time.
Minor criticism of this great article: a side-by-side view of the images would be better for comparison and more comfortable to the user than an automatically changing gif.
Are they not? The area around me has somewhat decent outlines of stuff like trees that I'd assume is coming from the satellite data, since it looks too odd for a human to do manually…
> I don't get the feeling anybody actually likes it
I enjoy using it. It's well integrated with iOS (and IMHO looks prettier than Google Maps as well).
I realize that some Waze data is surfaced in Google Maps, but it's not the same as "there's an object on the road in 500 feet" or "we're re-routing you because traffic changed ahead." Maybe Google Maps does do those things, but I have never witnessed it, and Waze does it all the time.
That's one way OSM can compete with Google, it is available for the low price of attribution. Pokémon players have quite some interest in improving OSM.
OSM can also end up with data for things that Google doesn't find interesting. Google doesn't have the nice walking path/bike trail in a local park that I added to OSM several years ago.
That depends. The OSM licence requirements depends on what you do. If you don't produce a geo database, then there's only an attribution requirement, otherwise you have to attribute and release changes to the data you made, along with any other data that you mixed in.
It's like BSD for some uses, and GPL for others.
When OSM started in 2004 (before Google Maps), the only real place you could get map data was from governments. The idea of everyone walking around with GPSes to make their own map sounds like it'll never work. And yet here we are.
> This isn't a case like Wikipedia where it entered a market that was barely there (e.g. online/software encyclopedias).
The encyclopedia market did exist, for decades, before Wikipedia. I'll bet very few people are buying family encyclopedias now.
Main priority of giant corporations is money, no matter what. They will always support mainstream closed platforms only.
This in some contrast to the Google Maps navigator, which I have seen throwing some really weird surprises, including faulty info on the placement and nature of a major motorway exit.
Who cares about the shapes of buildings if their directions send you to the wrong town?
I worked for a couple of years in a valley with only 2 access points.
Quite often, when it is time to go back home, the trafic would be jammed.
I activated Google Now (or at least I think it was already called that way ?) and without fail it would warn me that there is no point in leaving the building right now since everything was jammed.
The same info was visible on maps.
For example I often find it recalculating my route to a side road, exit, or different freeway even though I was driving on the highlighted path. If I don't watch carefully, and don't notice it happening, I'll follow it off on some crazy recalculated route.
I've switched to Apple Maps when not routing to a complex building, like a giant mall. Apple Maps' routing and turn-by-turn has really improved in the last couple years.
https://goo.gl/maps/dm8zVDGf5TP2
It's absolutely incredible.
Here it what it looks like:
https://map.geo.admin.ch/?topic=ech&lang=en&bgLayer=ch.swiss...
I've always found that kind of map way superior to the original "google like" maps. It's great to see that google is catching up, but I am really surprised that a database of building footprint is not something public like it is here in switzerland.
Edit: Just discovered the time travel function, here in 1860:
https://map.geo.admin.ch/?topic=ech&lang=en&bgLayer=ch.swiss...
If they can extrapolate building details like bay windows, then they should be able to model entire areas from enough heights and angles to represent it much better than what I've seen in flight simulators for personal use (at least last I looked).
Take this address, for instance: "9901 Grant St, Thornton, CO 80229" It is a gigantic Walmart parking lot. When you ask a navigation system to get you back on the northbound interstate highway from here, it first needs to get you out of the parking lot and connected back to the road network. A naive system would just find the nearest road and tell you to drive in that direction. In this case, it would happily tell you to simply drive west a couple hundred meters to I-25 and take a right. It doesn't understand that there's a greenbelt and a retaining wall there. It doesn't understand that the correct answer is actually to go the opposite way -- east to Grant and around to an entrance ramp.
Google, by connecting parking lots to the road network has -- perhaps unintentionally -- made this problem go away.
1. None of the images loaded the first time I opened the page.
2. I was actually just griping about how bad google maps is the other day. I was searching for a business, and (at least on iOS) the surrounding businesses are all unlabeled. Apple Maps did a vastly better job of providing CONTEXT for what was around the business I was looking for. I was actually 99% sure I knew where the business was, but at a glance it was very difficult to tell on Google Maps, where on Apple Maps it was far easier -- the emphasis on structures rather than labels hurt them quite a bit in usability in this context.
Ordinarily I'd agree, Google maps is "better" but I use Apple Maps most of the time because it's the default on iOS and wrks well enough.
Without access to my database, you don't have much information.
Also, there are a few amusing clones... http://www.what3fucks.com/
(note: these examples are from the web app, which I prefer, because the mobile app is infuriating to use except for driving directions)
For example if I google an address and click the link to Maps, there's no street view button. If I search for "food", the "current location" button disappears...so I have to manually scroll to wherever I am. If I search for a store or whatever in Google and then click the map, there's no current location OR street view!
Typing "{whatever} near {address}" works whenever it feels like working. Half the time I get a random address on {whatever} street.
The goddamn search overlay takes up about 3/4 of the screen if you accidentally click on something (and they make sure you do).
On to the app:
The audio driving directions have gotten better...so I give them credit there. I never drive with the display on, so audio directions are crucial.
If I'm walking around somewhere and I search for restaurants that's fine..but if I make the mistake of clicking on a restaurant I get a full-screen view of reviews and shit. The map totally disappears! I'm just trying to focus the goddamn thing so I can see where it is!
With most of this article I was like "So what?" So what if Google has intelligent building vectors. It's UI is shit. You can't go back and fourth between different routes easily. You can't easily add waypoints. You can't do a lot of the stuff you could do with traditional maps.
And the worst thing, half the time you can't even see the names of streets:
https://www.justinobeirne.com/what-happened-to-google-maps/
This is especially difficult if you're walking around and just want the name of a god damn street. You gotta zoom in, jiggle things around. Fuck aerial views of buildings. When I'm walking I need to match up actual street signs to find my way around.
Open Street Maps is actually pretty nice, although the views are extremely busy. It can be a bit of an overload.
Example 1: I had a saved route map from a long while ago. Google Maps can no longer load that map -- it is quietly truncated to the first 10 stops. Given the lack of support, Google apparently doesn't care about losing your data.
Example 2: The move from 'old maps' (tile based) to 'new maps' (webgl based) was a shambles. It still doesn't work as smoothly as old maps, and old maps had working features removed like the ability to edit routes. New maps still performs terribly compared to old maps -- it's slower, less responsive, and about a quarter of the time clicks do nothing.
I now use Bing maps day-to-day, which is worse than 2010-era Google Maps, but immensely better than 2017-era Google Maps.
I'm also not someone who gets lost easy either however, and learned how to navigate pre-GPS - so again, YMMV.
Without Google Maps, I would have been lost a lot more. With Google Maps I easily could find bus rides and stuff that otherwise would have been impossible.
Building outlines are not much of a moat for me.
That said, google has better directions and estimates. And maybe that should trump all. It hasn’t been enough of an issue to convince me to reinstall.
In all seriousness, I've found Apple Maps search to be absolutely horrendous, either missing places or having them in the wrong spot.
Did you try recently or in the 2011 debut debacle era? Honestly for the longest time it was in my junk folder due to bad early experiences.
Driving to my grandparents house until two or three years ago, Google would route you off a paved highway down an impassable two-track road only to bring you back around to the highway later.
When you're up against that kind of technology, Apple Maps doesn't seem so painful.
I take the train and walk a lot more than I drive. I need street names, and GMaps have made them harder and harder to see for years:
https://www.justinobeirne.com/what-happened-to-google-maps/
I gotta pinch zoom all the way in, jiggle the map around a bunch, just to see street names. It's annoying as fuck since it's the most important thing on the map when walking in a city to orientate yourself (because we all know those digital compasses are garbage).
I should really just carry a magnetic compass on my key chain again.
I really miss the classic maps interface. More streets, more relevant detail and much much faster. Classic maps that used the whole screen without the white area on the left, and the vector rendering tech would have been way better than their crappy web interface now.
> I take the train and walk a lot more than I drive.
Intersting, I have the opposite opinion precisely because I walk to most places. Building outlines give you a good idea of where you can walk–often taking the Manhattan path through a city is suboptimal, and you can cut through blocks based on what's in them. Building outlines let you know if there are alleyways that you can go through.
The use case is that I get on a bus at place A, travel by bus to place F going through places B, C, D, and E. I've never been to F before. I use Google Maps to plan a journey, and chose the public transport option. When I'm on the bus I need to know when to get off, and I can only do this by zooming into the map really close.
Also, the marked bus route often doesn't follow roads, which means the planner can sometimes tell you to get off at the wrong stop.
Here's an image of a bus route that doesn't follow the roads: https://imgur.com/a/TPIph
Edit: Now that I think about it "in $distance turn $direction onto $street just before/after the $business_located_there" or would be great because street signs are much harder read and identify at long distance or high speed would solve my most common problem with google maps.
So I tried to locate the place shown in the article on OpenStreetMap and sure enough, if the buildings were missing when the article was writtent, they're not anymore.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/126762#map=17/41.33998... https://framapic.org/04W5qV0AS3t1/8j6obUnCNf1H.png
IIRC he left Apple in 2015 and only after that he resumed publicly talking about mapping products.
Curiously I noticed about a year ago corner of my building vanished from Google map, it was there 5 years ago. Even more interesting just checked right now and ANOTHER corner of same building vanished :). Both are still there on sat photo, both are modeled in 3D view, just not on the flat map.
What appears to be happening is those building outlines are not coming from 3D map, but from official city documents, and those can be a total mess. I checked some recent (5 year old) buildings, and they are also missing their flat outlines.
With good data, then model can better do the tricks, but data is the real gold here.
Not until twenty minutes from now...
(By the time these cars need it, it will be easy to implement, is my point.)
These kinds of applications aren't Apple's strong suit, and Google is years ahead on technical abilities on the data correction and feedback front as well as custom satellite hardware and software design. Although Apple may be moving on that [1].
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/21/apple-satellite-hardware-proj...
Doesn't that mean that in that case we are just seeing image processing with no real meaning? I am not sure how this represents the first step in the creation of data from data. If we just want to see the buildings we can switch to "satellite" view.
Contrast this with something like Open Street Map where you end up with an explicit description of the area that a building covers with no extraneous detail.
The data from data is more about how they have decent building representations and POIs even in pretty remote areas and so have really wide coverage on their areas of interest.
They are the best in using AI and CS in general to make my life easier.
I now use 80% Google products for email, phone, photos, maps, etc.
I just hope I never lose access to my account :-\
But I still use OSM daily. My main mapping needs are basic needs like everyone else's: where is this thing and how do I get there? OSM is very good at that in every place I've been (most of western Europe). It's also something I believe should be free data (as in freedom), but Google keeps it all locked in. Other basic data about our physical world, like where railways or forests are, is also very accurately in there.
When I need advanced stuff like live traffic, or want to see something on satellite, I'll have to resort to other services. And I think that's reasonable: they're costly to setup and maintain, so paying someone for that makes sense.
If we make such a comparison, I'd rather see Google Maps starting with a large negative score for keeping it locked-in, and then comparing whether they're actually, functionally better for different common uses, rather than "oh look at this gimmick, they even have the air ducts mapped on the roof over there" as this article seems to do.
I use Apple Maps almost 95% of the time, and this is one of its major annoyances. If I'm trying to find a location by eyeballing it from the map, it can sometimes be impossible to do so because there's another label on top of it.
However, on the one hand these maps are owned by a single company that has the singular unique infrastructure, on the whole planet, to even begin to attempt to create maps like this, that no other company (not even Apple) could start to try and get close. Google's machine learning and data-crunching abilities have no match, and there won't be a competitor that ever will.
And on the other hand, the only way I can access this data is through an app that wants to track me and spy on me so badly it refuses to even remember my recent search queries if I disable Google's Location History. I mean get this, remembering recent search queries used to be a feature that made people consider a program to be "clever" or "smart".
I can use ALL this machine learning and fuzzy queries, sound alike typo corrections, super smart Google tech and search with vague hints of queries like that restaurant near the thingy or whatever, and it will give me relevant results!
But it refuses to remember my recent queries, a most basic feature that today is just considered basic UX instead of "clever programming", unless I allow it to spy on me.
This is literally the tradeoff it's asking me to make:
Do you want to be able to use the single most advanced and detailed map of the entire planet available to the public with basic User Experience niceties?
Or do you want to keep your privacy and not broadcast your location to a corporation in a foreign country, specifically the one with the biggest, most out-of-control spying agency, that's --just to name one thing why I think the US/NSA and whoever lives there wanting a bite of my privacy can piss right off-- been hacking people in my home country's personal computers and devices, left and right just because anyone who is a sysadmin is considered a "strategic target" even though our countries are "allies" on paper, that apparently doesn't mean shit when attacking citizens' property.
Sorry yeah it looks great, just like with cathedrals. Was a bit shit with some caveats/blood/death for the common people during the time they were built, but in a few hundred years we'll probably look at this with awe and wonder.
I'm sure there's a lot of AoI value in these two sources, so I would expect it to be part of the big equation.
Perhaps it could be a nice ML project: turning map data + satellite data into fuller looking map data.
Yeah, fun ML project. This is how much data there was in 2012... >Combining satellite, aerial and street level imagery, Google Maps has over 20 petabytes of data, which is equal to approximately 21 million gigabytes, or around 20,500 terabytes.Aug 22, 2012(http://mashable.com/2012/08/22/google-maps-facts/#yf0lqw7FlZ...)
Also, I do agree with generated AOI's, Google can leverage it for Waymo and their other products as well.
Maybe I'm too much into openstreetmap and these things are normal to me, but "beautifully" detailed was not my experience. More like google fanboy showing off.
That's called 'Information' - Librarians the world over having been doing exactly this for centuries. /facepalm
As an aside, the whole article also seems to be written very simplistically, and aimed at a younger audience.
At least when your product is something physical you end up with twice as many outputs. When it's just data you just do the same work twice.
https://trademarks.justia.com/860/91/mapzen-86091461.html
> Mapzen is an open and accessible mapping platform...Based out of the Samsung Accelerator, we support the geo community through building tools and collaborating on open source mapping projects. We believe that a healthy mapping ecosystem is one that is diverse, sustainable, and accessible to all.
We've made much use of:
- http://www.openstreetmap.org/
And founded efforts like:
Monocultures are dangerous too.
People differ on what to measure and how. Competition gives us an opportunity to try something new and potentially better. Especially when there isn't a network effect (e.g. phone protocols).
Also, the cost of this mapping apparently isn't especially high.
No, it's actually a feature: competition. With a single product in every category it would be impossible to have diversity of ideas being tested and competing.
It is the same with evolution.
Why? Google seems to have a gigantic advantage in data, which is highly valuable.
Why would they give up that advantage, if they spent millions, if not billions, of dollars creating it?
And what would be the incentive to create such data if there's no economic gain from it?
If the data is useful then there is an _economic_ gain, just not necessarily a profit.
If you meant "if there's no profit from it" then it was spoken like a true capitalist.
Why do anything if you're not going to be paid for it.
Why visit your mum in hospital? Why give money to the homeless for food? Why create software for others? Why teach a child a fun game? Love, altruism, interest, expediency, fun, ... and a million other reasons besides.
Would you invest your retirement savings into a company that plans to return no profit by mapping the world and releasing the data for free?
I thought so.
I've worked on OSM, AFAIK I've got nothing back from having done so other than learning a little about maps.
Your position is flawed, because you're focussing on a single element of a social system. If I invest in mapping, it doesn't remove resources, it improves them for everyone. Without the waste of resources of solely profit-driven activity then we have ample resources to meet basic needs and develop technologically too.
No, I don't yet know how such a system can work. I've been working on it ... transition is the biggest problem and the one I've been addressing. At some point I hope it will benefit us all as a species - probably at a financial loss to me and many others.
We're not talking about a bunch of people pitching in some time as they feel about doing it, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars (probably more) spent on this.
But, as you wouldn't invest your retirement funds in such a company, why would you expect others to do so?
We, humans, currently spend the resources on those things through the medium of fiat currency. Remove the necessity for profit, the need to pay a lot of people in that system incredibly more than they require - take a couple of dozen 8-figure mansions, a few 9-figure yachts, several hundred 6-figure cars, gold-plated taps, diamond-encrusted tiaras, etc., etc., and the resources targeted at the problem of producing maps go much further. And there's no reason not to have a competitive element, you don't need profit to create competition.
It's not spending people's retirement, it's spending the same resources we spend now, just not mediated in the same manner and without the waste of 40% spend on advertising (plucked that number out my ass but a few years ago pharma was spending more on advertising than on R&D) and without allowing controlling elements to steal all the output for personal gain.
So, I'd like to spend the equivalent resources we do now, but with saving on profit, over-paying wages, and de-duplication of effort. That gives much more resources applied to the actual task without touching pensions (which of course I'd like to see have the same effect).
The problem, is that moving to such an economic system requires the most greedy, most powerful, to be usurped. Humans are greedy (myself included), that leads us to waste so, so, much of our resources.
Why do you think a system where people choose the collective good (having all their needs met) - "volunteering" - rather than personal financial gain can't produce satellites, or any other good/technology we now produce?
No. You're missing the point:
> And there's no reason not to have a competitive element, you don't need profit to create competition.
This is where you're getting things wrong. We need competition to advance. Resources are limited and we compete for those resources. Competition is a resource-allocation system.
Sure, you can advocate for a centrally-planned pipe dream as much as you want, it doesn't work. It has been tried many times before, to horrendous results every single time.
> Why do you think a system where people choose the collective good (having all their needs met) - "volunteering" - rather than personal financial gain can't produce satellites, or any other good/technology we now produce?
For the same reason that unicorns can't fly: they can't even exist.
If you had a single company, you wouldn't have 10 teams doing the exact same job. The competition here isn't fruitful because so much of the work is shared. Competition is more effective when there is a diversity of approaches.
Think about how mapping was done before Google. Competition is exactly why we have Google Maps, and why Google Maps is continuously improving, instead of just sitting on its advantage.
Not only competition here has been extremely fruitful, it has made maps freely available to consumers.
Do you remember how much the TomTom app used to cost?
I'm glad that Nvidia and AMD compete to build better graphics chips, I'm also very glad they both work with a shared, cooperative standard (PCI-E) so I can plug them into my computer. They've chosen to compete on some areas and cooperate in others.
The parents are suggesting, hey, wouldn't it be nice if _everyone_ contributed data to OSM, and then competed on providing the best interface on top of that, rather than constructing data moats. Is it realistic that Google would do this? Of course not. But if 10 companies are all constructing their own data completely independently, that's an awful lot of duplicated work that could be avoided.
Data is the interesting part. And it needs more investment. Data is the valuable part. UX has very little relevance here.
Companies are competing on what matters and what gives them a competitive edge. Map UX doesn't. Map data does.
And who would do that?
Coke and Pepsi have been around for a long time, despite sharing the same set of ingredients that any other soda maker can use. Their value comes from marketing and distribution systems.
By stating "collaborate on X so that we can focus or compete on Y" merely adds one more turtle to to the the stack. You need to take a step back and ask these sorts of questions:
Does competition solve any problems that cooperation does not, or solve them better?
Do problems arise in competition that would not under cooperation?
Is there a 3rd alternative?
What about competition that pursues what's best for everyone, even if it is worse for the individual company pursuing it? (arguably not possible when corporate officers have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of the company, which presents a conflict)
Railroads should compete on service, quality and price. They should not compete by laying down parallel tracks side by side.
Some things should be shared in common and competitive services built on top.
Only when the existence of one incumbent inhibits the entrance of new ones, like physical infrastructure and natural monopolies.
As you can see, there is an abundance of mapping services. So yeah, competition is working great here.
Same as me.
In situations where most of the cost to set up a business is upfront, the marginal cost is very low and you can't "move" the immobilized capital after (like power lines, train lines, water main, fiber optic networks), there is a massive advantage to the first entrant (the "incumbent").
In these cases, there are massive barriers for new entrants: any new entrant would have to make an immense investment with zero chance of making it back, as the incumbent could just retaliate by lowering prices and driving the entrant out of business.
This situation means that there is little chance that competition will happen, so it is the best interest of society to mandate the operation of the infrastructure from the service. That's what happens with local-loop unbundling, or when the ownership and operation of the rail infrastructure must be separate from the ownership and operation of train lines and services.
That is not the case with mapping the world: anyone can do it, and having an incumbent doesn't block new entrants. There were already many incumbents when Google entered the mapping business, and there's still plenty of competition.
Therefore, there is no reason to mandate separation.
So no, it isn't "100% just your opinion".
But I appreciate the Lebowski reference :)
If it weren't for the need to compete, would Google have spent billions on innovations like Street View, Satellite imagery, Google Earth, etc. Or would they have just said, "MapQuest has won the internet maps game, let's just let MapQuest do their own thing. No use in doing the same work twice,"
I disagree with the competition is always good. There are many cases where you are duplicating work. The best standard rarely wins (PCI vs MCA .. MCA was superior in many ways technologically .. was even hot pluggable, but PCI had better licensing).
We get into a lot of repetition and the 'best' product rarely wins. It's more about marketing your product in a way people desire it. Example: Beats Audio Headphones.
When specific about the type of data there is a lot less competition than you might expect. And for commercial companies it makes sense to make as much money as possible front that.
I don’t get it.
It’s literally worse at everything I try to use it for.
- Directions are so bad I have to recommend Uber drivers not use it.
- The mobile website is practically unusable with an appallingly bad UI
- The mobile app is not much better, and continually tries to upsell to other google apps.
The strange thing is: they own Waze which is better at basically everything.
Maybe the experience on Android is better, and their desktop site is great, but I’ve been using Apple Maps and Waze and it’s just so much of a better experience that I think they’ve lost me for good.
I could have guessed that before the punchline. And it's not that difficult to add for a company with tens of billions in cash. What are you doing, Apple? Fix your OS and Maps!
Thats surprisingly hard to buy from imagery providers, because most of them only want to point their cameras directly downwards.
Could drones be used here ? It looks like it would be a good way to refresh this data often on the cheap.
(drone is the loosest sense, a balloon would do the trick)
https://blog.google/topics/inside-google/google-earths-incre...
Too bad it's a video. Fast forward about 2 minutes.
Or: https://youtu.be/suo_aUTUpps?t=121
Fly plane. Zig zag. 5 cameras, then photogrammetry. StreetView, from planes.