Hacker News Reader

Comment by JSavageOne | Hacker News Reader

Criticize Google Maps all you want, but it is easily one of the most useful apps to me, especially as someone who's been been living nomadically the last 5 years. It's kind of scary how dependent I am on this app. Anytime I need to find a restaurant, dentist, electronics store, etc. - I'm looking first on Google Maps and my life is basically dictated by the results.

I have lists like "Places to Work" which is a list of all the nice coffee shops and places I like to work out of (currently have 200). I star hotels + AirBnBs I'm staying in, and bookmark a ton of things. I rely on it for public transportation. If I could only pick 3 apps on my phone, Google Maps would definitely be one of them.

I do wish there were better alternatives and I hate being overly dependent on one company. Unfortunately the open source alternatives like OpenStreetMap don't really even compare.

View on HN

I have a similar experience. The addition of all the places details and reviews that are accessible inside of Google Maps has actually expanded its usefulness. Google Maps has grown to be more than just navigation software for me. I live in the US but was in Berlin recently. It seems that Google reviews have supplanted Yelp as the main platform for reviews over there. It honestly made things simpler and easier and I can see in the US it looks to be trending in the same direction.

I actually have more of an issue with the busyness of google.com and the search in Youtube than I do with the changes in Google Maps.

Critising products that serve billions of users every day as "useless" is a latest fun past time for a sect of contrarian HNers that can't think of the world outside their use-cases and bubble.

High usage figures does not equate to being perfect or untouchable. Often it’s just a result of market dominance, or worse.

It's incredible how of touch HNers are.

Same here. I complain a lot about google, I mean a LOT. I use Firefox, I tried DDG for a while and now am trying to mostly use ChatGPT (which actually is typically immediately helpful in code questions which is my number one google search activity.

However Maps and Gmail. I don't have and probably don't need a replacement.

Even the hotspots functionality is useful - if I'm in a new city, I can see the highlighted areas where the best restaurants and bars are.

Waze is a decent alternative, if not mostly for the community driven aspect of it. Sometimes it’s too aggressive to save 1-2 minutes but it knows tolls , when they’re open, and just as accurate if not more than google maps at times

I don't understand this at all, how can Waze be a decent alternative when it doesn't show, well, anything? [At least where I live,] there's no photos, rating, comments, no info about opening times, no way to get there unless I'm driving (which in this European capital I am totally not), and even if I'm driving there's no info on parking zones (you can't just park anywhere on the street). Waze is literally 100 % useless for me in the city.

Same. It's one of my pinned app shortcuts that appear on every screen, right next to camera and messages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com