Google Maps and Waze | Hacker News Reader

Google Maps and Waze

googleblog.blogspot.com

195 pointsLightning110 comments

What do others think about the safety of using Waze? One thing that I have noticed is that the app encourages me to interact with it as I'm driving in order to add data to the system. It's a little hypocritical of me to complain about this because sometimes I text or check email while driving, which I know I should not do, but it still feels weird that Waze actually encourages me to read the screen and interact with UI while I drive. I wonder if there are any liability issues around this or if the core UI will change as a result of the acquisition.

Also, I wonder if Waze will become irrelevant if Google happens to productize self-driving cars (which can presumably talk to each other).

Sure, might be a bit hypocritical but i get your point. Most of the noise that comes from Waze is when it detects you aren't moving. That said there is the light social encouragement if you see a something (something in road) to put it on the map, or confirm / deny it.

I can personally say the pothole and "thing on the road" warnings might have saved me from damaging my car a few times, maybe even helped me avoid an accident (a mattress was on the highway, yikes).

In my experience, Google Nav already does a wonderful job of noticing and routing people around "not moving" without Waze, so I'm not sure what the acquisition is about if not for the feedback channels which I do think are unsafe if not explicitly illegal to actually use in a lot of places unless you are a passenger and not the driver.

But also, I live in Southern California where car passengers are as mythical as unicorns.

sometimes I text or check email while driving, which I know I should not do

I don't mean to pick on you here. You are clearly aware, but it still needs to be said:

Please do not email, text, or even talk on a cell phone while driving. Driving is the most dangerous task that is socially acceptable for nonprofessionals to perform. It is very irresponsible to make such a task any more difficult than it needs to be.

IMO only when this is treated like DUI will it be taken more seriously. It sounds radical, but the activity is easily avoidable, seriously diminishes your focus and can have horrible consequences.

It's already illegal to use a cell phone while driving in Ontario, Canada. Hands-free devices are still okay, however (I disagree with that part).

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/distracted-driving/

I'm guessing the penalties are not anywhere similar, however, which was the parent's point. Out here in California, a DUI generally ends up costing someone ~$10,000 after all is said and done (if I remember correctly). A cell phone ticket is nowhere near that.

For context, Driving while texting is already illegal in 41 of the US States, however, I believe what the parent was saying, is that the penalties need to be higher, like that associated with DUI.

Why do you disagree with hands-free devices? What do you think about conversing with a passenger during driving?

One reason I've heard is that when you're on the phone with someone, they don't know what's going on in the car whereas if you're talking with the person next to you and you suddenly need to focus all of your attention on the road, they can stop talking rather than adding to your distraction. Plus they provide a second set of eyes. I don't know how accurate and reliable that theory is, but it makes sense to me.

I also wonder if the mental effort of listening to a voice coming through on a speaker would make it harder to focus. I tend to have trouble hearing people when I'm talking on the phone; but that might just be me.

It's no more distracting than talk radio or some blaring annoying commercial which doesn't stop talking if I need to focus. When you have a handsfree device, just say "Hold on" and do what you need to do. You can always ask them to repeat themselves I you don't hear.

People usually don't talk back to the radio though. Thinking up a response to your conversational partner is where the distraction occurs.

DUI can be accurately tested with a breathalyzer. How would you expect these stiffer penalties to be enforced? I believe the current laws essentially require the offense to be directly observed by police or for the driver to inadvertently admit to it.

What if your car had a slot into which you were required to insert your phone in order to operate the vehicle.

What do you do when your phone is lost or stolen (or broken)?

Or if you have two.

Too bad impairment can't be accurately tested with a breathalyzer. That's what we are really worried about in all these scenarios after all.

Observation by police officers? I already see plenty of people texting while driving. The first hint is that they're driving like they're not paying attention. When you pull up alongside them you see them glancing down repetitively.

Also, the penalty fines are a joke. I think in CA at least they were very low, especially considering IMO distracted driving is way more dangerous than other simpler measures like speeding.

Thank you for posting this. It is incredibly frustrating to see people justify this behavior with "I know I shouldn't, but". You know the jerk weaving in his lane in the car next to you, staring down at their phone? That's you!

I text, call, check email, and web all while driving and I bet at least 95% of people on HN do too.

If you want this to stop then invent a new way to communicate.

Based on the top replies to the top comment, I believe it's way less than 95% and, like, I certainly hope so.

Your request, moreover, seems very difficult to meet. What about the lady who wanted fresh cream cheese on her bagel while driving, and who doing so killed a man? Shouldn't she say, "well, invent a robot who can feed me while I drive"?

I guess Google's self-driving cars will ultimately satisfy all of the above requests.

Preach all you want. Pass all the laws you want. People will do this because they can and they want to. The only real way to mitigate it is through innovation. Not by telling adults on the internet what they can and cannot do or by passing draconian laws telling people when they are allowed to communicate.

Some people "can and want to" steal cars, or commit domestic violence, or dump benzene into rivers. "I want to do this, therefore it should be legal" is not a good argument when there's a compelling argument that it harms society.

True. However, laws will still be passed.

What about listening to the radio, talking to a passenger, or just zoning out and daydreaming?

These can all be just as dangerous as using a phone while driving.

It's not clear those are similarly dangerous behaviors. Talking to passengers can prevent falling asleep at the wheel, which may be a bigger net danger than conversational distraction.

But the larger answer is perhaps that if you are driving poorly you can be ticketed regardless of the underlying reason.

Ideally, people would not drive when they are fatigued enough to fall asleep at the wheel.

I do realize that the reasons for it are often quite complicated, I don't mean to be dismissive. Such levels of fatigue are something society should be taking a closer look at.

New York didn't make texting while driving illegal - it made driving while distracted illegal, so as to encompass all smartphone-related and unrelated issues that make the road dangerous.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think this is a problem that is going to solve itself. And it will do so more quickly and more effectively than legislation ever could.

It's a fortuitous coincidence that the same advances in computing power that have put fantastically distracting little computers in all our hands will also grant automobiles the computational horsepower to start saving us from our own stupidity.

We're probably 5 years away from accident avoidance technologies being a standard feature in new automobiles. Even sooner if auto insurance companies start giving massive discounts for cars that have them. Not only will auto-braking and auto-swerve technologies solve the distracted driver problem. They're going to solve the much larger issue that humans are just generally very poor at prolonged tasks requiring a high degree of concentration.

And from there it's only a few more years before the car pool lanes are repurposed as auto-pilot lanse. Filled with endless virtual trains of cars whizzing along at 95 miles per hour with 2 feet between each vehicle. While human occupants are mindlessly (and safely) scrolling through Facebook...

"Please do not email, text, or even talk on a cell phone while driving."

I knew of a woman whose husband was killed while driving to work. In the opposite lane, on a narrow road, was a young woman who, while driving, was trying to put cream cheese onto her bagel, so she could enjoy eating it while driving. She unknowingly veered across the center line and the 2 cars collided, almost directly head on. The guy was killed. The woman was saved by the airbag in her car.

I agree that driving is dangerous. I agree that doing anything that distracts you, while you are driving, is dangerous to yourself and others around you. But I would not want to elevate texting and cell phones above other activities that drivers do -- eating is also a big risk, dropping food on your lap is distracting, etc.

The risk of emphasizing texting as uniquely dangerous is that drivers will start to underestimate the risks of other dangerous things they do.

I'm fairly confident his point wasn't that cell phones were the most dangerous possible toy while driving. I think he was trying to convey that driving was the most dangerous possible task people regularly undertake, and any distraction during its performance is recklessly dangerous. The phone-based wording was probably just contextual, given the original post.

If someone posts about doing food preparation while driving I'm sure they'll get called out on that, too.

I'd imagine they intend for a passenger to use the app, as for productionized self-driving cars -- I think the obsolescence of Waze is the least interesting thing about that scenario. :)

Waze actually has several features in place to make it safer:

* Waze is designed only to be used by a passenger. Any field that requires typing, etc. warns you if you're moving and makes you acknowledge that you are a passenger to continue.

* Waze has a hands-free capability where you can wave your hand in front of the phone and interact with Waze via voice. It actually works pretty well.

* The UI is designed with big buttons, so even if you choose to interact with Waze regularly, you can usually complete a road road report, etc. very quickly (1-2 seconds).

Regarding its "encouragement". I think alerts and the fact that they're available via audio as well reduces the risk. In the end, it's up the user to configure Waze according to how safe they want to be (which, hopefully is pretty safe).

(I'm a huge fan; I've been using Waze from the beginning. No attachment beyond that though)

Eh, that may be the intent, but I think they could work harder on making giant buttons for things that you are supposed to use while driving. For instance, the popup that says there is a hazard ahead, and you have tiny buttons to say it's not there or to give a thumbs up.

The "work harder" here is that you don't need to acknowledge pretty much any of those popups in Waze. If you leave them alone, they'll timeout and disappear automatically, you don't NEED to interact with the app while driving, I rarely touch it except to report traffic or a wreck, at which point I'm usually stopped anyway.

Same here -- I turn on Waze before I go somewhere, and then don't touch it (or really even look at it) until I arrive. I figure that the social features are meant for a passenger, or MAYBE if I'm totally stopped at a red light and/or in very heavy traffic. But the notion that I would look at my phone's screen, let alone press any buttons on it, while driving is pretty terrifying.

>But the notion that I would look at my phone's screen, let alone press any buttons on it, while driving is pretty terrifying.

Wha? I just have a windshield mount. It's pretty much the same as any other GPS that you can look at while driving.

I'm an avid user, and my main complaint is, precisely, the UI. Sure, some of the main functions (e.g. traffic report) can be done fairly easily with one hand, but almost everything else is terrible:

- Choosing a navigation destination (slide, pick one from the list, wait not this list - my favorites, search - wait, that doesn't do what I think it does, scroll scroll scroll...)

- Closing those damn popups with the tiny X that is almost impossible to hit (at least on my 3.5" iPhone)

- Pretty much anything involving panning around the map or zooming in/out. It's like the gesture experience is way worse than anything else on iOS, and you definitely feel it.

And some others I can't think of right now. So if one good thing comes from this acquisition [1], I hope it's a massive UI overhaul.

[1]: I'm dreading it, and I fear what will actually happen is the integration of the social network into Google+, and the death of the product itself, somehow subsumed into Google Maps.

> if Waze will become irrelevant if Google happens to productize self-driving cars

How far off is widespread adoption of self-driving cars vs lifespan of a company / product? Waze may be obsolete before self-driving cars make the core function obsolete.

I used Waze for the first time last week on a long drive across the mid-South. With self-driving cars on a long haul I can see the social function becoming the primary function.

At least when one is _driving_ one has something to keep one's mind occupied. Passengers on a long-haul only have books, music, games, sing-alongs, naps, and other tomfoolery to keep themselves entertained.

> Also, I wonder if Waze will become irrelevant if Google happens to productize self-driving cars (which can presumably talk to each other).

Eventually, probably, the front-end will become, if not irrelevant, less important. Of course, much of the back-end could be kept with incremental improvements to handle new forms of data.

That's also a pretty long time horizon.

I ride a motorcycle to work. I'm extremely vulnerable to mistakes and bad habits (my own as well as other drivers). I would really appreciate if you'd rethink your priorities as we share our commute.

You can do reports by voice and reporting it is just a few clicks if you don't use voice. I think this will work well even after they get self0driving cars, even when you have self driving cars there's still a need for good traffic data.

Definitely. I was using Waze just the other day on a trip with my wife down to Los Angeles. Fortunately, I was the passenger and guiding my wife through traffic. Two things struck me about Waze:

1) It requires a lot of attention to use. 2) It's not that accurate. I mean, I figured it would be collecting data from Waze users and marking the roads with heavy traffic. But, that wasn't really the case. It DID mark some roads with traffic, but it wasn't accurate at all. Most of the accuracy came from people self reporting traffic data, and that was a cumbersome task. I don't recommend people doing it while driving.

What about it requires a lot of attention to use? I use it daily and it's set-and-forget for the most part.

Are you serious? You don't think fumbling around trying to tell people where hazards, traffic, police, bla blah is an attention getting process? What about the whole reward nonsense like giving people the thumbs up. Or, what about when you're warned of a hazard and then asked to verify if it's still there or not. I honestly can't see how a driver can do all that and not have their attention to the road/driving impeded.

Exactly. If Google jerk up Maps on IOS with that noise I'll be back to Apple Maps in no time.

You don't actually have to do any of that to use the app.

A lot of other people need to be doing it, though. Without the crowdsourced info there's no point in using it instead of Google Maps.

The only thing in that list that really needs to be done is reporting hazards and traffic and such, and you only need to do that a very small amount of the time. You don't need to give thumbs ups or verify hazards or anything like that, and you only really need to report hazards a small percentage of the time.

Maybe it will be integrated with the upcoming Google Dashboard(tm)

I think in a proper world Waze would be banned because of its insane idea of encouraging drivers to socially interact during driving. Certainly it is not safe.

Waze has been generally exploiting people's stupidity, people's keen desire for free crap, and corporate dementia.

This is how you do things: by exploiting shortcomings of this world.

I found that most of the time it's prompting you when you're stuck in a traffic jam. It auto-detects that and asks you why you slowed down. Since I was already slowed to a crawl, interacting with it (via voice or tapping a button) wasn't much to ask. It's not like it prompts you every half mile with "how's it going?" or something inane.

As a long time user of Waze, I have begun to notice that their ads are becoming increasingly annoying and distracting. For example, it will give me a pop up covering the screen asking me if I want to go to Taco Bell. While I am a huge fan of Waze, by deviating too far from being just a GPS makes it a bit frustrating at times. If they are looking to monetize the platform, there are surely other ways besides covering up the map!

google glass

Doesn't Google already incorporate user's data for traffic information[1]? I try to have my maps/ navigation running during my commute home to feed that data.

The Google Now traffic feature saves me at least an hour a week on the return leg of my commute (14 miles.) I'm glad they are trying to make it more accurate.

[1](2009) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sittin...

This will allow more specific user information, like which lane is blocked up or " eople can report accidents, traffic jams, speed traps, police and can update roads, landmarks, house numbers, etc."

From the Waze wikipedia page.

Thanks for the clarification.

But now that I think about it, when I'm walking out of the office, I want to know whether I should take "Route A", "Route B" or "Route C" to get home.

What causes the traffic whether it is construction, an accident or plain old traffic doesn't matter to me. I wish Google Now (GN) would tell me that instead of me having to double check by clicking the alternate routes button in navigation. Sometimes GN does not suggest the quickest route for me even though a $1.33 toll road may save me 20 minutes.

Having that info can make routing better, though. For example, if it's just normal traffic volume, the delay is probably fairly predictable. On the other hand, if it's a massive accident, it could take some time before the road gets backed up enough for regular GPS monitoring to notice it, but you know as soon as the massive accident is reported that things will be bad for a while.

> What causes the traffic whether it is construction, an accident or plain old traffic doesn't matter to me.

No, but knowing about what is causing the traffic can (if the analytics get advanced enough) make it easier for the central service to determine what the likely impact in the future (e.g., by the time you get to it) is likely to be, which is important.

Great news for both Google Maps and Waze. From my understanding, Waze negotiated a 3 year period where they would be allowed to continue independently, but I imagine there will be quite a bit of data sharing between the two (Waze can now use Google's maps and POI data, and Google can use Waze's data to improve its realtime directions)

source?

I'll bet you that Waze won't exist as a separate app/product in 3 years. I hope it does, but I doubt that Google are going to maintain two separate navigation apps.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/06/09/google-to-...

FWIW, I used Waze for a few weeks but went back to using Google Navigation.

I found that the traffic data on Google Navigation was much more accurate and up to date than that provided by Waze, and that Google Nav's display is much easier on the eyes. Waze showed more information, but most of it was irrelevant noise or just plain wrong. All of the social stuff was also very distracting.

This was when I was commuting daily on one of the UKs busiest motorways.

Also, they send your login details in the clear. I remember taking a traffic dump of my Android phone to see how easy it would be to scrape information at the time... Not that difficult.

I did the same, but for slightly different reasons. In the Silicon Valley area, the data from Waze seems more up-to-date. But I found the UI very difficult and frustrating, so much so that I switched back to Google Maps.

I'm looking forward to the Google Maps UI with the Waze data.

This looks more like an acquisition to keep Waze out of the competitors' hands than Google needing it. Sure, having the platform will enhance Google maps and also probably be enhanced to get other POI data as well over time (if they are not already getting them) but Google already spent a lot of money getting that data.

I'm excited about this. I actually wouldn't mind if Waze was shut down instead of the 3-year period, as long as Google assimilated all of its technology.

It would be fantastic to have Google both data mining traffic data (as it does now) and also combining this with user-volunteered traffic reports. Each technology has something to offer the other, and it will be really cool to bring in the best of both worlds. I'm very confident about this acquisition, it feels like it wasn't just an acqui-hire.

I really don't see Google incorporating all the Waze functionality. Waze is pretty bandwidth-intensive. And I could see some liability issues with presenting crowdsourced data directly on Gmaps.

I feel like this was simply a "keep Waze out of the hands of our competitors" move, and now it will die a slow death like most other Google acquisitions.

Great for Waze, good for Google, but I feel like a lot of the value (from Google's perspective) is stopping Apple (or FB) getting Waze.

Maybe FB, but not Apple. It's just not the right fit for Apple.

Yea, Apple would have paid for a lot of users that they would immediately screw over (anyone not using iOS, Apple could not cope having a popular Android app). I imagine the Waze team wouldn't have been cool with that either since they weren't even willing to relocate.

I hope that someone will make a OpenStreetMap version of Waze. As a project already based on user generated information, it seems more sensible than sending everything to Google.

I think people have missed a key value of Waze -- their crowd-sourced mappping infrastructure. They have essentially created from scratch a navigation database that competes with the big two players in the field -- TeleAtlas and Navteq -- with update cycles of a week or less for new user-submitted data. This system would be amazingly powerful in developing countries where the map set is incomplete or full of errors.

That alone makes them worth a good fraction of $1b.

I wonder if providing this kind of information to the public can lead to worse performance (commute time).

This reminds me of Braess's Paradox [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess_paradox

I recommend the excellent book 'Traffic' - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Traffic-drive-what-says-about/dp/014... - it covers this pretty well.

Great, now tha NSA have a direct pipe to waze too.

Your phone company already knows where you are at all times and is already cozied up to the intelligence community.

If you want to go full paranoia, don't forget that the GPS is a US DoD project! Why bother with GPS clients, when you can have direct access to the satellites?

I'm confused, very confused. There's talk about this acquisition being in the $1 Billion range. Can anyone break down how this company can be worth that much money?

Revenue - no idea if or how much money they made? IP - Patents on using location to perform traffic analytics? Talent - 100+ employees? Userbase - ~50 million users? Technology - Isn't the app easily replicable?

It's really confusing for entrepreneurs to know if they are building something of value when we can't discern how these companies are being valued!

Of course, that company is clearly not worth that amount of money even closely. It was a startup running exlusively on investors' money with no model of generating revenue whatsoever. Without the acquisition their perspective would be to run out of money and fade away. Yes, they have an impressive userbase, but even that userbase is hardly worth $1B.

The price paid obviously has nothing to do with the real value of the company. I guess Google managers have their motives. On the Google's scale usual business rationales do not work.

Obviously, the giants pay billions mainly because they can.

Speaking of the motivation, this deal looks pretty much like shutting down a competitor, though I do not know what Google will actually do.

It would have been interesting to see Waze remain independent and as an alternative map solution. With 34 million users, it could have been a very profitable business for the long-run.

Apple'z biz dev team was on holiday, I suppose?

Has anybody familiar with Waze's monetization system?

I used it with a client and saw absolutely terrible metrics. We burned through a ton of cash and got almost zero results. To be fair: I've only had one client try it & I'd argue that they weren't the best fit, but I'd be very interested in seeing what other people's results were here.

I've seen icons for chain restaurants show up on the map. Is that what you mean?

I get ads from Taco Bell on my Waze.

That's all the ads I get. I can't wait until there are ads from everyone. Then I'll stop using it.

I'm talking about from the advertiser perspective, I (personally) haven't seen great results with their product.

At least from this announcement, it's not merely a defensive acquisition. Google is looking forward to integrate the user-based realtime traffic system from Waze into Google Map. I am a little surprised that whatever Waze provides now wasn't a complete overlap with what Google Map is also offering in its trafic related functionalities.

I was under the impression that Google Maps already used crowdsourced data for its traffic?

I use it in the UK and it's incredibly accurate - scarily so!

For its traffic updates (Green/Yellow/Red) is does use some user collected data

I personally can't wait until I can get (and send) Waze alerts using Google Glass for when I'm motorcycling.

I kind of like Waze at very least for the police speed trap notifications.

I can't see Google continuing to support that feature.

Agreed. Is their data format open, in the sense that anyone could write a client that did nothing but transmit and receive police locations?

Who, other than Google, is a respectable entrant in this space? Did they just consume their only competition?

Apple is very much interested in getting more valuable routing/traffic information! Microsoft and Samsung, too!

It seems really redundant for Google to buy it. Wasn't google using andiod directions to feed traffic data back? I guess the more data point the more valuable the more people use it.... and so on.

Waze uses Bing maps on the backend.

Wanna bet that "look forward to working with them in our ongoing effort to make a comprehensive, accurate and useful map of the world." means converting to use Google maps?

Well, duh. Can't see anybody being upset about that though, except perhaps Microsoft

NSA will also know when, where and how you are driving. Fantastic.

Does this mean no more speedtrap data? I can see google not wanting to deal with that tangled web of legality.

Will this be another application that Google lets wither?

Looks like I'll need to delete another account.

How much is the question.

i read 1.3B a few days ago

Speculation is $1B-1.3B

"imagine if you could see real-time traffic updates from friends and fellow travelers ahead of you, calling out “fender bender...totally stuck in left lane!”"

Yandex Maps do that, like, forever by letting users to mark accidents, road works and other events on the road as they drive - for fellow drivers to see. Works pretty fine and sometimes even a bit socially.

Another service I get to quit. Soon they'll be nothing left.

Same here. I trust Waze with my location information, to provide a service to me. I do not trust Google with that same information, because it will be used for far more than providing that navigation service to me. No thanks.

Free app, no monetization model ----> Sold for $1B

Take notes folks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com