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Comment by gjm11 | Hacker News Reader

I don't personally care about Latitude, but it does seem recently that Google have been on a crusade to ruin Google Maps on mobile devices. The two most noteworthy instances: (1) screwing up the offline-maps feature (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/Ck_Pd6UgZ... -- but they've slightly walked this back: see https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3246076) and (2) adding advertisements to the Android version of Maps: http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/attract-new-customers-... (I don't mind this at all on the web version of Maps, where I'm usually on a display with plenty of pixels, but on a mobile device that's a whole lot of space being taken up by advertisements instead of actually useful information).

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Google Maps on iOS has been destroyed. It is incredible how good solid apps commit suicide. For example, I entered "34th and 6th ave ny,ny" for my end destination. Soon as I submit, it renames it to "34th Street Partnership". Few weeks ago it would rename to some chiropractor's office a full avenue away.

Before I upgraded my iOS, I'd come to rely on Maps as a regular part of my life and couldn't live without it. But now it's just a painful experience.

This is the algorithm gone extraordinarily wrong. I really wonder if the guys who make decisions to change the UI or functionality of highly rated apps ever take time to really use their own creation. Because if they did, I don't see how they'd continue with their botched modifications to what was once a great app.

The app is fine. Google just really has trouble with 6th ave for some reason. Try it on maps.google.com, it has the same problem ("Avenue of the Americas" almost always works, but who wants to type that? (or call it that?)).

It worked fine in the previous version. The concept of auto changing street intersections or street address with names of random venues sucks and is inaccurate at so many levels. That it would make it to the product symbolizes an overall failure with the present Maps team.

That kind of rewriting would be stupid, but of course isn't what's actually happening. In reality there's no match for the geocoding search [34th and 6th ave ny,ny], so it is interpreted as a local search for [34th and] in the vicinity of [6th ave ny, ny].

Why isn't there a match for the geocoding search? It's not because somebody "destroyed Google Maps on iOS", but most likely just due to a switch to a newer geocoding index. These would be updated frequently with new data from all kinds of sources, just like web search won't use a static index but one that changes over time.

Why wouldn't this kind of change be noticed when changing to a new set of data? Because it'd be essentially impossible to find all possible changes to geocoding results from a data change, and even less feasible to verify which of the results are correct. So there's always going to be some kind of sampling going on when validating new data or code changes. And with a sensibly sized sample, you're not very likely to be checking a particular intersection in a very large country.

These kinds of regressions would have popped in and out during the whole lifetime of Google Maps. Just because you noticed such a change for the first time doesn't mean that they are currently failing when they weren't before.

The issue has more to do with google trying to match each address with a business. They are failing because 34th and 6th is one of the most popular tourist corners in NYC which you'd think would be tested during QA. Moreover most Maps users will attest that when they enter an address they do not want it auto translated to the venue name...again something that should have never made it beyond an idea stage or been reverted soon after release.

No, I'm quite sure that the issue is that geocoding search fails and Maps has to fall back to a local search.

It is probably bad UX to not make it clear that this is what's happening. But it would be much worse to fall back to a local business search, drop a pin on the result, and have the user think that it was an actual geocoder result.

Intersection searches are rare, and there's a limit to how large a set of queries you can have in a "the results of these searches can never change" golden set. Again, these kinds of things have always happened with map data, it's not some kind of new phenomenon. I'd bet there's no less QA going on than during the times when you thought the quality was good.

Intersection searches are rare

No! Intersection searches are the norm, at least in New York City. And the intersection I listed is one block from the Empire State Building.

They may not be doing less QA. Just a crappier job.

My current theory is that this is a simple extortion ploy: After getting me to depend on Android Google Maps, they have replaced it with something unusable. Shortly they will release Google Maps Classic for $49.95/year. I will happily pay that; it's cheaper than the blood pressure medication I'd need to counteract all the rage-inducing misfeatures they've put in the latest version.

Bullshit. Google does not sell web services to end users.

Someone on the internet is wrong!!! (ps. it's you).

You can pay Google for services as an end user.

He might have overstated the case but the commentator he is replying to is, actually, talking bullshit.

sheer bullshit u r taking about

If only there were some kind of well-understood cultural phenomenon where people could say hyperbolic or absurd things for the amusement of their fellow humans.

It's a shame something like doesn't exist. I bet it would be fun.

Google Maps on my Android (Galaxy Nexus) phone has now developed an annoying habit of making the keyboard disappear while I'm typing in an address. I type in a couple of letters and the keyboard slides out. I tap again in the input box to bring it back up, type in another letter, and then it slides out again.

I haven't been able to figure out a repeatable way to get this to happen, but it seems to have started happening in the last few weeks. Rebooting the phone usually makes it go away, but only for a short while. I haven't seen this weird keyboard disappearing behavior in any other app, so it makes me think it's something specific to Google Maps. It's making the app pretty much unusable.

Anyone else seeing this?

There is a bug in iOS[Redacted] that causes similar behavior.

I used to hit this a lot in Maps on Android. It would happen whenever the GPS position fix changed; my location would change and it would 'reset' the UI for some reason, hiding the keyboard.

I'd recommend moving to one of the OpenStreetMaps apps for offline usage. They allow basic things like the ability to search for points of interest while offline, so you can do things like ask where the Metropolitan Museum of Art is and get a pointer on the map. Google Maps doesn't really provide a proper offline mode with such functionality, and never has. All they do is cache images that they let you zoom/pan, and not even that works properly.

Which app in particular are you thinking of? All the ones I've tried so far haven't been all that impressive.

osmand, Oruxmaps, mapswithme

Don't worry, I'm on the beta for the new web google maps and after being impressed with it initially, found it borderline unusable.

They seem to be on a crusade to strip useful features out of their Android app.

Don't forget that from one day to the next they also killed terrain mode for maps on Android. That one made me very grumpy.

Sponsored locations were already a part of the old Android and iOS apps, so its more accurate to say that they're bringing the ads back to the new design.

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