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Comment by doctoboggan | Hacker News Reader

It's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there. I understand that at low zoom levels you may need to filter what is displayed based on the high density, but when I zoom in I want to see everything that is there. Sometimes I am forced to go to street view to read the sign, then type the company name into the search box to force the business marker to show up and get clickable.

I've found Apple Maps is a little better in this regard. They show a higher density of business markers at any given zoom level.

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> It's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there.

8-10 years ago it was way more reliable. The decline started with them adding the option to promote a business. Frustrating.

Yes, I've noticed their results are definitely becoming more opaque and driven by what they want to show you. (This is even when there isn't a sponsored option on the map.)

Yesterday I was having the same issues as the top commenter except I was having trouble getting Google to label various mountain peaks I had zoomed in on.

It would be nice if they'd fix the missing labels on roads, even at the highest zoom with no clutter. Likewise, highway speed limits that were changed over a year ago.

yeah but I'll bet it showed you the closest starbucks

advertising ruins everything, users don't want to change to other services, news at 11.

OpenStreetMap-based maps tend to be much better in this regard. Although this is counterbalanced by the fact that they tend to have less data on businesses in general.

Which is not surprising, as those two have very different priorities.

- OSM want's a detailed and reliable map.

- Google maps tries to either sell your data to clients, or make you buy from them.

Their business data is their priority for maps. You can see that clearly when you look at location history changes over past decade or so. It used to be actual user location history and it was glorious. Now it's "near what businesses you were more or less, help us rate them".

It's a great moment to again remind about existence of low-friction tools that you can use to add business data (among others) to OSM, like StreetComplete app, available on F-droid and Google Play :)

https://streetcomplete.app/?lang=en

In my region OSM business data starts to be on par with google, better (more up to date) sometimes.

If you just want to add POI data, then Every Door is a good choice that also works on iOS

CoMaps would be a good map app, and it will also display when POIs and opening hours were last confirmed (the only OSM app to do so AFAIK)

https://every-door.app https://www.comaps.app

I have recently tried to navigate with OsmAnd a few times where I live. Once I ended up in the wrong location, and a few times I have had to look up the business in Google Maps to find their address.

I would love to use OsmAnd more. StreetComplete sounds great and looks like a nice way to be able to contribute fixes to OSM. Thanks for the recommendation!

It is smooth and kind of "I'm doing my part!" but with low friction.

> a few times I have had to look up the business in Google Maps to find their address

Exactly my point - Gmaps taught us to expect *businesses" on maps. Not addresses. Pins and stars, instead of streets and numbers. Arrival time and traffic, instead of distance, elevation and road type (size).

I use gmaps still, mostly for businesses, but to actually know where I am I have better options. Gmaps hides most of typical map features - you see less of trees, water, buildings, height elevation. On Comaps/Osmand you suddenly can correlate map with things you see (without street view! :P).

A few days ago I was trying to see if a anything new had taken over a vacant restaurant space yet, previous occupant had closed in July.

When I zoomed in, it would still only show me the Permanently Closed business listing for the old restaurant.

Searching by address, they do have a listing for its replacement. But they were prioritizing the dead restaurant on the map because why would I want to know current info from a map when they can be useless instead?

And it's not like this is a restaurant in the first floor of a tower with a bunch of businesses stacked on top of it competing for map space. It's a single floor, there's only one occupant.

> It's always annoyed me that zooming in on a building will not reliably show the business that operates there.

It's actually much worse than that.

I will often see the business name as I'm zooming in, but if I zoom too far, it's no longer available. You have to find "just the right zoom level" for displaying the given business.

As if it were some weird mind game they were playing with you.

A lot of these place names are user-created and I’ve definitely seen completely wrong and bogus place names on Google Maps. It seems that they hide a lot of these when the business owner doesn’t actively take control of the business page. I suppose it’s partly for accuracy, partly to encourage businesses to verify the listing on their maps.

Click on the building, it populates “businesses at this address” - at least, when I’ve tried.

Just tested - slightly different UI but still works the same. Also useful for taller buildings with a lot of tenants.

Businesses inside hospitals, businesses at shared addresses, businesses underground, all sorts of great uses.

Even trying to see the street name has a very high probability of failure, so I don't know what you expect.

There are two 40-floors buildings nearby to each other in Tbilisi, Georgia, that are missing on Google Maps. All businesses have to put POI just "somewhere". One man from Google told me that there are staff members responsible for Georgia maps but they are chilling :)

The most annoying thing is when you search for instance for "Chinese restaurants" and Google maps shows me Japanese restaurants while hiding actual Chinese restaurants.

In Tokyo when I search for convenience stores, a lot of the time Google Maps will also show ATMs, assuming that's the reason I want to go to a convenience store. Inversely, if I search for a bank branch, it'll show convenience stores. The fuzzy search results can be very frustrating sometimes.

My search for thrift stores did not include Goodwill. Had to search for Goodwill explicitly.

Clever.

I don't know about other countries, but in Japan, maps will show underground passages from e.g. the metro, with exit annotated with their numbers...

Unfortunately, not all numbers are shown, even when all the exits are non-overlapping at the displayed zoom level.

information density of online maps is, in general, quite low compared to old paper maps: https://x.com/patrickc/status/1738646361128792402

I guess there's various reasons, ranging from "it's hard to make auto-layout algos produce stuff as dense as painstakingly handcrafted maps" to "let's make it harder to scrape/copy data"

Back then it was dedicated map makers that created maps. Now it's mainly programmers. So its not surprising that quality tanks when you go from disciplinary expert staff to IT day laborers.

Its not possible to be better because its not possible for even Google or Apple to verify anything anyone claims which is not static btw. The info keeps changing all the time with biz disputes/divorces/inheritence wars etc etc.

Nobody is asking for the data to be perfect at the margin. Just for it to be readily visible at all.

>I am forced to go to street view to read the sign, then type the company name into the search box to force the business marker to show up and get clickable. I've found Apple Maps is a little better in this regard.

the way you juxtapose them calls for pointing out, Apple Maps don't have streetview which makes Apple Maps a lot less convenient.

Apple Maps has had "Look Around" (their implementation of Street View) for a while now.

Where are you? Apple street view coverage isn't as extensive as Google's but there's a binoculars button for it if they do for a given location.

Hardly anything unless in a major city, no way to easily tell if there is any coverage other than randomly clicking until it shows, also doesn't tell you the date taken.

Google street view has the 2d overlay letting you know where there is coverage, shows the date taken along with previous imagery, and they have coverage nearly everywhere in the US at a least, although some of its pretty old.

Apple Maps does seem to have more up to date satellite / aerial imagery though.

Hard to overstate how valuable all that street view coverage is on the Google side.

My little Swedish village has full Look Around coverage, and clicking on the ⋯ icon shows an “Imagery” menu item that tells me the month and year the coverage was last updated. I think you’re underestimating where they’re currently at.

In the US is has basically zero coverage outside any major city. Google on the other hand has exentiqive coverage into rural areas, albeit some of it old, at least its there, where it has newer coverage it usually has multiple one at different times allowing one to look back in time as well, very useful.

I just double-checked my village. Every single road and cul-de-sac that I could find, with no exceptions, has full coverage on Apple. Google on the other hand, has coverage for maybe 50-55% of the roads. The worst example is a residential area on the outskirts where they’ve driven the car in, down one side-street, then given up and gone home.

On the other hand, they do have historical coverage, have to give them that.

Yeah so not sure why but Look around coverage is much better in Europe than the US for some reason which seems odd since Apple is US based.

You can see the very poor US coverage here: https://brilliantmaps.com/apple-look-around/

Of course compared to Google Street view there is no comparison on a world wide basis as you can see on the same page.

In areas with partial coverage Apple Maps has basically the same overlay showing where Look Around is available. It just doesn't have a great indicator as to why the option is greyed out when there's no coverage.

I mean in Google Maps you can drag the little man over the map and it has a map layer that highlights all the roads available, so you can easily see where it is and is not. Not randomly picking a point and seeing if indicator is available.

Actually… last time I checked some local addresses Apple Maps had newer streetview data than Google.

As interesting as StreetView is, it's such a colossal privacy invasion, it's absurd. In my neighbourhood, you can literally see in peoples windows, into their living rooms.

And how is this any different from walking down the sidewalk? They're on the road, they're not stuffing cameras into your living room window to try to catch you walking around nekkid or anything. It is literally documenting what public view looks like.

The biggest difference is that you would have to actually travel there and look, rather than scanning the whole city from your recliner.

The difference, as usual with this kind of thing, is scale.

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