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Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

Burnt myself on this in Google Maps just this week. I had an appointment in my calendar with the location set to "Dr Firstname Lastname, 123 Main St, 12345". I clicked through it into Google Maps and since it had the full address specified I just trusted it. Well, it turned out that the first result was actually an ad for a competing doctor 20 minutes in the wrong direction.

To Google's credit, they did drop the "Don't be evil" slogan many years ago...

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Same! I searched a local pizza place to pick up a pizza I had ordered and took the first result. I searched for the exact name, I saw a picture of pizza, and I hit directions. Halfway there it didn't feel right and I checked. It was Dominoes. I was furious and my pizza sat for an extra 7 minutes.

I needed directions to a family member's house after she moved. Clicked on her address from the text message, and Google tried to send me to a real estate agent's office instead.

This is egregious. I would be livid if I drove 20 minutes to an ad buyer's location instead of the actual address, after putting in the actual address to google maps. This is completely the opposite of what a map should be doing for you.

If you can, use Apple maps for now, although Apple has proudly proclaimed that they will be serving ads in maps soon. I also refuse to use the maps.app.goo.gl short links that google maps always wants to send. They will trap you in the compromised google search ecosystem. Insist on using raw addresses. I will paste in the raw address every time someone in a group chat sends a goo.gl link.

I would show up at the competing doctor and make things as awkward as possible. They chose to do that ad.

Do they even have any idea that their ads are showing up for the specific competing doctor? Isn't Google the one deciding where the ads are most valuable?

If they don’t know, showing up and telling them will let them know.

If you excuse the effects that people’s actions have because they didn’t realize they were causing them, you guarantee that those effects will never stop.

Yup. If every person that got misdirected by an ad went into the offenders business and raised hell, they would probably decide that it wasn’t worth it.

"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Ouch. But at least there is OSMand.

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