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Comment by memefrog | Hacker News Reader

Google Maps just isn't a map. I wonder if the people that work on it have ever looked at actual maps before. You have to zoom in almost to the maximum setting to see street names, and even then they often don't show up. Real maps show street names labeled on every street. But Google Maps developers are obviously more interested in it looking 'clean' and in showing little ads all over it than in it actually being useful.

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> Real maps show street names labeled on every street.

You are specifically describing street maps. There are other sorts of maps, even maps for areas with named streets where the streets are not named on the map.

A local orientation organization has checkpoints around many areas here in Sweden. You visit each one and tally up how many places you've visited. The web site lets you enter the 1- or 2-digit code for each checkpoint if you want to track it that way.

Here's my local map: https://koncept.orientering.se/provapaaktiviteter/hittaut/tr...

There are no street names on those streets. There are contour lines, making it a topographic map.

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_map and you'll see other examples of topographic maps showing streets but not listing all or even most of the street names.

Did you consider that maybe huge majority of users don't actually use Google Maps as a paper map and don't particularly care for using it that way?

I didn't say anything about using it 'as a paper map'. But using it as a map is the point of a map.

>Real maps show street names labeled on every street

In your locality. Not all places have street names.

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