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You made me realize that I share all these grievances but the degradation has been so relatively slow that I never really thought about how worse it had become, boiling frog style.

I've definitely experienced the "wait why won't it show me the name of that street I'm clearly focused on" problem multiple times. It's especially ironic because I remember that once Maps readability was first class and an example to follow, IIRC mainly because they had a relatively simple but elegant algorithm that would aim to maintain a relatively constant information density over the area of the map at any zoom level. So if you had a very dense area only the very important labels would show and the rest would be hidden until you zoomed in, while in more sparsely populated areas you'd have a lot more detail pop up even at relatively high zoom level. That was a good compromise.

In hindsight it's completely obvious but I remember that when Maps started that was relatively innovative, I remember that many predecessors tended to emulate paper maps more closely (probably because that's what people expected back then) and were a lot more cluttered as a result.

>I think it's a real shame, because I remember in, e.g. 2012 I thought Google Maps was an incredible revelation

That seems late to me, are you sure that's the right date? I remember spending hours zooming in and out of Google Maps (and Google Earth) in the mid-to-late 2000's. Having a full map of the world to explore was mindblowing to me. Apple Maps launched in 2012!

You're right! 2012 is definitely too late... it feels weird to be old enough that things I vividly remember happened ~15 years ago

>Harder to read/understand, especially street names. A lot of the time I have to zoom in 100% and scroll up and down a street to see what the name of the street I'm looking at is.

To add another nitpick, I often want to see the name of the street I’m standing on, especially in San Francisco which doesn’t like spending money on street signs it seems. But GMaps usually requires zooming way out or panning a non-trivial distance to find that. All the other nearby streets on the map have clearly visible names without having to do that, just not the one I’m one. It happens regularly enough to be annoying.

Adding to the chorus, but the decisions on what street names to show is simply insane. Opening the map right now on Android and scrolling around, almost none of the major streets near me are named, and tons of tiny streets are. Why would anyone do this? What AI got programmed that learned to make these decisions with no oversight?

Apple Maps does this too. Or it'll show the street names in tiny, tiny font and then keep the tiny font when you zoom in. "Hello, I'm zooming because I can't read the font, you arseholes!" (although I will grant it's impossible to distinguish between "can't read font" and "need more detail" zooms but still.)

More annoying, to me, is how much of a struggle it is to determine the names of streets that a navigation route follows.

I'm the type that prefers to look at a map to see where I'm going, and it drives me absolutely insane to have to pan up and down my route just to try to determine the name of a street I need to turn down.

For other use cases, I can somewhat empathize with the complexity of determining what street names to show. And over-cluttering with street names wouldn't be much better. But for a navigation route, the logic should be dead simple: throw a street name within the viewport if that street is part of the route.

(Yes, I fully realize I can switch to step by step directions. Maybe it's because I'm more of a visual person, or maybe I'm just old and used to using maps for directions, but I just can't stand using that view to figure out where I need to go.)

this

Every time I open the app, half the screen is taken up by some "Explore your neighborhood!" nonsense. Makes it very difficult to actually use the map, which is the only reason I use the app. 99% of the time I'm in my neighborhood, which I've already thoroughly explored to my satisfaction, and I'm just trying to find some single specific item.

I've simply set my phone to stop updating the Google Maps app and stick with the ancient version the phone originally shipped with, because my phone's screen hasn't grown in resolution to counteract all the screen space Google Maps now wastes.

That works until Google releases an incompatible change on the API. Then you either upgrade or are out of the app.

Worse is that the app will capture any link to the web maps, and AFAIK, you can't change your mapping app on Android.

I find it a bit surprising that such an old version of the app still works today, but the fact that they haven't broken the backend in over 3 years means I'm not too worried that they'll do so before my hardware bites the dust. (I'm expecting the shutdown of 3G to be what finally kills this non-VoLTE phone, though I am likely to stop using it as my primary phone before then.)

Thank you for reminding me I can do that... going to give it a try and see what I'm missing/forgotten, and what features I might miss.

Wish there was a VCS-ish way to get an intermediate version.

Why is it so hard to find the name of the street I’m on in Google Maps. It often takes a minute or so of zooming and panning to reveal that.

It seems to me that Google Maps is far more focused on being a suggestion engine than a map now.

Yes, and this even happens with major highways! I'll be trying to pick a ~200-mile route, and I have to play zooming gymnastics just to see the difference between I-84 and I-95!

Okay, I should just know the difference with roads that big. And okay, generally East/West interstates use even numbers representing what % of the country lies to the South while North/South use odd numbers representing what % lies to the West. But I shouldn't have to know that when I'm wondering how to avoid the accident on "that big yellow stripe that passes through D.C."

Sometimes I'll use a mapping app designed for outdoors activities, because it is so much easier to read than Google Maps.

I had no idea about the interstate numbering system. This is awesome to know, thanks.

It's a cool system. The numeric rules are (though there are lots of exceptions):

* Primary interstates are one or two digits. Shorter spurs, loops, and connectors are three-digits.

* East-west primary interstates are even-numbered, north-south are odd.

* Major arterials are divisible by five. (The longest interstates are I-90, I-80, I-40, I-10, I-70, I-95, and I-75.)

* Odd routes increase in number going from west to east.

* Even routes increase in number from south to north.

* The last two digits of a three-digit interstate usually identify its main parent interstate. (For example, the I-310 spur connects I-10 to US 90.

Even routes increase from south to north (e.g. I-10 runs through Arizona, I-90 runs through Washington).

Oops, fixed.

Another fun tidbit is that any 3-digit interstate is an auxiliary route of the 2/1-digit mainline. The first digit determines the type of route, with odd being a spur and even being a bypass or beltway. So I-405 is a bypass of I-5, and I-110 is a spur off I-10 connecting it to the Port of LA.

I-110 is also a spur connecting I-10 to downtown Pensacola, FL, Biloxi, MS, and downtown Baton Rouge, LA.

And apparently there's a I-405 in Seattle. (All the I-110 spurs I've driven on.)

> And okay, generally East/West interstates use even numbers representing what % of the country lies to the South while North/South use odd numbers representing what % lies to the West.

The idea that the highways are designed and numbered to represent the proportion of land area of the contiguous US seems specious. Source?

Edit: the interstate highway going north from Kansas City is 29, but obviously much more than 29% of the US is west of I-29.

The semantics aren't exactly meant to be "% of land area", but they do represent a rough coordinate system[1], from (5, 8) in the SW corner of the contiguous US (San Diego) up to (95, 90) in Boston.

Interestingly, US highways follow the opposite system[2], going from (1, 2) in the NE corner of the country (Maine) to (former) (101, 80) in San Diego.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Numb...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...

Those us routes came first and the interstates are purposely numbered backwards of it to avoid confusion.

Numbering from west to East and south to north and using evens and odds to mean East-west and north-south makes sense.

But that doesn’t imply anything about proportion of country, however the measurement is defined.

Sure it's anecdotal, I just heard it from my parents as a kid.

And obviously it's not exact, just look at how close I-94/I-90 are around North Dakota and compare it to I-90/I-80 or I-80/I-70. And a lot of the "East-West" interstates go diagonally or even North-South in places.

But I doubt they made the roads by laying rulers across the map (except maybe in Kansas or Oklahoma), and it does seem like they generally increment from 0-100 in each direction with odd/evenness decided by the primary axis.

Wikipedia has a lot to say on the matter, but I got bored reading all the special cases like how they number loops that connect two highways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Numb...

Thank you I had no idea how the numbers were chosen until now!

That‘s arguably what many people use it for, though.

Regarding the street names. I usually approach the service from these 2 directions:

- Address or name of place is known. I use Maps to find out where it is and how to get there.

- Trying to find places in a certain area (Laundry, restaurants, shops, etc)

Only very rarely do I need to know a street name specifically. Not saying it‘s not important for other people though.

This also happens with rivers! It's incredibly annoying.

Adding lake names to the problem.

> Much worse at text parsing e.g. I can no longer loosely type something like "10th and grove to Jim's Hardware" and get directions. In fact most of the time I can't even type in a major intersection and get what I'm looking for.

That's the part I don't get. Google is all about search. Their main engine is so good it's creepy. and yet, for me, it is unable to parse a perfectly well formed street address, written as recommended by the postal services.

I know it is a hard problem, but that's Google we are talking about. I also live in France (i.e. not the US) but our street addresses are not so different, and Google has a presence and generally works well here.

For example search something like "building X, 123 street, postal code, city" next to your current location and it will find a shop called X on the other side of the country. Search "123 street, postal code, city" and it will find exactly what you want, to the letter. Why? Is it that hard to throw off a small bit of information to perfectly match everything else instead of searching for an insignificant random detail? Probably harder that it looks but if there is one nontrivial thing Google can do, that's it.

I get very annoyed copy-pasting addresses into Google Maps because it completely fails on some forms of zip codes and countries. Just deleting from the end of the address until Google shows the right result works.

I can't find any examples of this not working. Can you give an example? The GP's complaint of "x and y to business" works perfectly well for me. E.g. "55th and 5th to barclays center" works perfectly.

> * Harder to read/understand, especially street names. A lot of the time I have to zoom in 100% and scroll up and down a street to see what the name of the street I'm looking at is.

This one is hugely aggravating, but there's another one that annoys me more. Try searching for "food" or "restaurants" at an intersection with 10-20+ options, Google will completely hide plenty of results. Just show me where I can eat at nearby...

I don't understand how anyone can prefer Google maps's style (probably lack of knowledge of alternatives). It's pretty much unreadable, extremely low contrast, doesn't show like 20% of streets even if they're there and fit easily on a selected zoom level, and thus is useless for orientation/printing for walking types, like me.

Thankfully I only ever have to use Google Maps if the website integrates them into the contact section, and we have much better local mapping website/app.

Same zoom level:

Gmaps: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/fbcf80d0eda5570c.png Local app: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/5cbe3d860874717b.png

I can use one to comfortably find my way in the city center even without zooming, and it's not the Google Maps.

I can look at the better map, figure out where I am and where I want to get to, figure out my next few skips and turns and forget about the map for the next 5-10 minutes.

I don't need to constantly zoom around or use GPS at all. Actually, I wonder if Google made such a garbage map style just to force people to fiddle with their devices more, while they're navigating around the city, and to make them use GPS, because it's really hard to orient yourself and plan if you lose so much detail when looking at lower zoom level for overview.

I'm guessing most people using gmaps are looking for something like places to eat or landmarks/attractions then use the navigate feature to get there and so it focuses on presenting that information.

Well that's my point. Stupid map that forces you to enable GPS, and fiddle with the device constantly, instead of presenting useful information to plan a walk for several streets and enjoy/be aware of the city.

Harder to read/understand, especially street names. A lot of the time I have to zoom in 100% and scroll up and down a street to see what the name of the street I'm looking at is.

This is so bad, incredibly bad. The legibility of street names is also extremely sensitive to lighting conditions (at least on iOS) which is a rare accomplishment in this age of screens that adapt their brightness in response to ambient light.

The color design of their iOS application is also terrible.

So many elements in the navigation UX are a similar color.

The worst is the Current route (light blue) and alternate routes (grey). Both of these colors are fairly similar and have very little contrast compared to the background. I have a hard time picking out the difference between a road (grey) and an alternate route (grey, slightly thicker line).

At night, when it switches to a dark color scheme, everything is a shade of dark blueish grey, with very little contrast.

The colors drive me crazy when looking at forest service roads in the mountains. National Forest land is some shade of green, and the tiny roads are light gray and there is virtually no contrast between the two. So if I want to be able to see the roads, I have to zoom in a lot, and then I can only see a radius of half a mile, so I have to scroll the map constantly to see where a road goes. Absolutely maddening. Presumably some designer is really pleased with how elegant and subtle these colors look, but without contrast it's useless.

It's not just tiny roads that are swallowed by green with the latest updates. I couldn't find my favorite state highway while trying to show it to a friend recently until I zoomed in so far as to lose all context of its route and surroundings.

That low contrast stuff is what bugs me. I often go out into rural areas. Try making out where the (white) minor roads are against the (almost white) background. Now, try that in bright sunlight!

A good mapping app would have different modes for this. Garmin GPS's are much more readable, which is one reason I recently bought one, even though GM in theory is better. GM is better at routing, but it is really hard to see the detail, which is dangerous if you are driving.

Try Waze [1]. Even though they are owned by Google, I find their maps much more readable for driving.

1. https://www.waze.com/en-GB/

The Maps feature I hate most on Android is the "answer a few questions about places you've visited by tapping on these colorful cards."

The UX here is one of the worst I've ever seen. Once you tap an answer you don't get a chance to change it, or even see what the question was you just answered. It's on to the next question.

Many of the questions are insane. Like "Safeway: can you buy meat here?" Hello? Safeway? It's a giant supermarket!

But one design feature constantly leads me to giving wrong answers: every card is a different color, even for questions about the same establishment.

These frenetic color changes overpower the actual business name, so it's easy to get in a rhythm of "Safeway: can you buy meat here? Yes. Can you buy paper towels here? Yes. Can you get an oil change here? No, of course not!"

Oops, what? Did that card say Safeway or Jiffy Lube? Well the card's gone now, no way to go back and check it or fix it.

The color changes are a distraction from feeling confident which business you were answering a question about. With the lack of undo, they make me feel stupid. I like software that makes me feel smart.

I have never seen these, but I wouldn't answer them if I did. Does it not give you a way to just use the map instead?

Oh, it's not something you have to do, and never prevents you from using the map. I think it comes up as an Android notification like "help people by answering a few questions about the places you visited."

I like to help people, so I tried it out for a while. I would probably still be answering questions if they didn't make it so annoying! :-)

I empathize greatly with these complaints - honestly, this is one of those threads I'm kind of happy to see appear on HN since I know some of the feedback might actually make it back to people who can make an impact. I also feel like Google Maps has spent the last few years in a backslide from a really incredible example of the promise of the web to surprisingly frustrating and not useful. I'm somewhat mystified that while the "discover around you" section of the app has been iterated on nothing has been done to improve the actual experience of searching for places on the map. I really hope someone builds an alternative like you suggest - I want to be able to look for bars near a music venue and see the walking distance within the results, for example. Why can't I search for a lunch spot within 5 blocks of the office I'm meeting in and without any steep hills on the way?

Google maps 2012 refactor was what made it amazingly useful to me. The street names are much more readable now, they actually had a decent breakdown of the before and after and how the street names are much more readable overall now that they switched off of a "dumb" text fitting model vs their scaled text and "smart" placement of street names.

I wonder if your area has more trouble than most areas due to street shapes/density? The before and afters for me everywhere I've traveled and where I live are a huge step forward compared to old maps.

core77.com/posts/21486/google-maps-designing-the-modern-atlas-21486

I don't note that it's changed much from this 2012 release.

Another gripe, in the US they have gotten into the habit of calling street names by their state route number (that nobody knows), rather than the common name (that is on the street signs).

On the other hand, a couple times Apple Maps has screwed me over badly by trying to route me down closed roads. Google seems to have much better knowledge of road closures.

The one that hurts me the most, search for a location I know is in town, Google decides the best match is somewhere across the US and zooms me there.

Recently searching the name of a town overseas in a browser detects my IP, pops up a local map and returns 'overseas place not found'

It works normally if you bother to include the country, but telling me a place doesn't exist isn't how I'd expect it to behave

> I can no longer loosely type something like "10th and grove to Jim's Hardware" and get directions

I've had the same issue, and I find it bizarre. It's really become a much less natural interaction.

A couple of years ago I implemented the Google Maps location API which at the time said it would give you a consistent location_id for each physical location in the world, a couple of years later and a bug report is still open and it's still not consistent. It's to the point now where I won't touch the Google Maps API anymore because of the price and lack of fixes.

Justin's theory is that the design focuses on a clean (empty?) look for mobile users. And on POIs, not streets.

https://www.justinobeirne.com/what-happened-to-google-maps

* I searched for "chinese restaurant". Why is it showing me taco shops at all? I don't care that there are several open this late at night, I want to see my _search results_.

Wow. You just nailed everything that is wrong with google maps and I didn’t even realize it was happening. Frog in boiling water.

Have you tried Waze? It shows you the street you’re on and the incoming perpendicular streets.

> Much, much slower than it used to be.

It may be using OpenGL to display it now, you could try disabling webgl in your browser to check.

The appearance is different when drawn with webgl than when it is disabled so it is fairly easy to see if that is the cause.

One of the real travesties of our time is the active, continual sacking of the libraries of Alexandria inherent in every public website and application which is lost to the sands of adtech, paywalls, and the changing whims of anyone called "stakeholder"

Like, it's a metaphorical question I must give you, but who owns the information that we as a people produce? Take away the considerations of current law, and think about it in a different paradigm. Imagine that we had some impending apocalyptic event heading towards us, and we needed to as a people work together instead of competing. (Just a rough thought experiment, not that exactly, but just come along for a bit of a ride)

In that circumstance, the human population of earth forms this more cohesive collection, and in that frame, a group of people who produce some great work of art and invention and function, and then they or other people ruin it or destroy it, or simply bury it underground. In the frame of humanity as a collective being, that happening is akin to if you have some brilliant idea that you're scared of whether it's good or not, and so you write it down and decide it's not good and throw it away, but it could have been the seed of the creation of cold fusion, or romeo and juliet, or whatever.

The metaphor breaks down quickly, but this societal, special (as in species) loss is such a cancer on us as a people, and I wish there was a way to remove its crippling effects. But then again, it's akin the balance between to the law of nature and selection, and human societal safety nets. It would be easier without it, with a safety net built around everyone, but would we be inspired to such greatness? Or, what things wouldn't have been produced without the incentive of billions? Are you sure that number is zero? Please, don't take my positions as argumentative in the debate sense. This post is part complaint and part thought experiment. I also wonder what brilliant art we've lost because a child died of malnutrition or ~~malattention~~* neglect.

* instead of erasing "malattention" the unnecessary word I just coined†, I'm striking it with pen, so that it exists. Yeah, that's a bit meta and on the nose, but I like it.

† 148 Google Results at time of writing‡, so "independent of, but created after, a few others"

‡ Receipts: https://web.archive.org/web/20191214060156if_/http://web.arc...

By the way, I really wanted to delete this instead of clicking "reply", so: You're welcome/sorry.

This is off topic. OP is about the Maps API. Perhaps submit as a separate post.

If only we were paying for it, then we could legitimately complain.

We are paying for it in:

* personal data & attention

* opportunity cost (b/c their market domination deters investment interest in alternatives)

* advertising costs (each $ that businesses have to spend on advertising is a $ taken from R&D, profits which get reinvested in the economy, and/or consumers' pockets)

Just because you don't pay directly with money doesn't mean there isn't a cost.

Sorry, but this seems like nonsense to me. You are telling me that the curtailing of your attention by an app which you voluntarily install and voluntarily use is a ‘cost’ such that you are a stakeholder in the app?

Just gonna leave this here -- https://markmanson.net/attention

This is a great article. But it’s irrelevant to this discussion.

Oh I can complain just fine. Just because a corporation monetizes via a different means than selling software doesn't mean that I forfeit my ability to gripe about it (see Facebook).

They've also taken all the air out of the room such that there's very little ability for competitors to gain traction. So it's not like there's really many real options out there.

I don't really see a problem in complaining about a software product, especially when:

  - It was actually BETTER before
  - We're basically giving them a list of high-priority UX stories to make their product better

(edit: formatting)