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Comment by nathan_long | Hacker News Reader

> “Today, our users aren’t just asking for the fastest route to a place but also what’s happening around them, what the new places are and what the locals are doing in their neighborhood,” Google VP for engineering and product management Jen Fitzpatrick noted in today’s keynote.

Are users really asking for this? I only ever use Google Maps for driving directions. I like that I can type the name of a place and it finds matches near me, but that's all the personalization I've ever wanted.

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Yes, I do. I use it a lot to find restaurants. Say I search for "Turkish Restaurant", I'm presented with a map with locations nearby, allowing me to click on each of them and check opening hours, the website, reviews, etc.

It's an awesome tool to discover things in a neighbourhood.

I travel for work a lot, often to new places, and Google Maps is my go to for restaurants almost nightly when on the road. Just in the last week Maps helped me find 2 new favorites in Flushing, NY.

I use Maps as a gateway to new areas. If I can't see new places automatically, if I'm not notified, if I'm not otherwise aware of new places, how am I going to come across them?

I think asking locals can be one solution. If not, check out a blog of the city you are visiting, they might publish new places there.

I get a local newspaper that shows restaurant openings and closings; it seems like a much better fit for that kind of information than something global like google maps.

Google maps should be answering two questions: Where is it, and how do I get there. "What's cool and new in my city" seems like a feature that's being shoehorned on because it's a possible revenue channel.

>asking locals

I like that for hippie reasons like building community and a sense of connection to other people, but I'm also a little disappointed I didn't instantly recognize that the objectively best way to know "what the locals are doing in their neighborhood" is to "ask them"

> Google maps should be answering two questions: Where is it, and how do I get there. "What's cool and new in my city" seems like a feature that's being shoehorned on because it's a possible revenue channel.

No, Google Maps should be answering the questions users are asking. And, apparently, users are asking those questions.

If you have access to a local who's tastes (and temperament and budget) are calibrated to your own, it's a good strategy. If you are in a place for a while and want the most out of it, researching on blogs etc is absolutely the right thing to do. But if you are passing by and looking for a place to have lunch, that's not feasible. Heck, even finding a local who routinely eats out in the local area (in a great many places, people will eat at home most of the time) can be a challenge - in touristic areas, the great majority of people will be other tourists or trying to sell you something. Google Maps, on the other hand, can instantly tell you if the brasserie on the main square is a tourist trap or decent, or if there is a small independent café with great salads on a side street five minutes from you. That's the problem Google Maps is solving.

Fair enough, but I have a hard time google maps is building this system purely out of altruistic intentions, and not to sell us on the locations that pay their way into the "hip local venue" group a la yelp.

Sorry, but this is a very unimaginative comment. Yes, people use the app differently than you. For me, this would be extremely helpful while traveling. Right now I piece together the information I want from various travel/restaurant apps.

I use it almost daily to recommand coffee shops or places to go to. It's not always the best at this task but it's quite good.

I've searched "Food near me" at least once a week this past semester. I wish I could do something like "tampon near me" to be able to find a business that sells tampons near me for example

Both Google and Apple have several recommendations for me in Bellevue, WA, including the closest likely suspect, the Chevron gas station down the street. I assume you've tried this and had less successful results?

I use Google maps to get directions - usually for public transit. And then I use it to tell me where a coffee shop is at my destination.

When I'm on the bus I use Google Maps to tell me how close I am to the destination bus stop. It's not great for this. You have to really zoom the map in to get the bus stops to display. And the GPS positioning isn't great - often it'll show me travelling through the middle of a field rather than the road I'm on.

While we're at it, I hate when you click on a search result hoping to see the location, but instead it covers up your entire screen with pictures of food.

All the responses are talking about finding places to eat but I think Google still has a little ways to go in their recommendation / AI engine that they keep toting out in marketing events.

Take for instance my silly effort to get the assistant to help me out while I was driving on the highway a few weeks ago and had an emergency suddenly crawl up on me: https://imgur.com/v2Y1hsC

I didn't really expect that to work, but it would've been nice if it could've pulled up the closest business with a public washroom... I know Google maps is always asking me questions on that type of stuff.

Or the time where I hit the road towards a blizzard last winter and I asked Google to tell me what the highway conditions were like and I got some search recommendation for road conditions in a different country.

Maybe improvements to "recommendations" in general can solve these other problems that I figure are very navigation-centric in nature.

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