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Comment by Afforess | Hacker News Reader

Google doesn't get "it" anymore. People used their products because they were free and provided tons more functionality over the "other" competition (mapquest/yahoo/askjeeves).

If they aren't providing the features that differentiates their services anymore, people will leave them. Just because Google's stuff is free doesn't mean I have to put up with their constant anti-user focus. In fact, that Google products are mostly free makes it that much easier for me to pack up and leave.

Fuck off Google.

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>Fuck off Google.

Not map-related but I find myself saying that every time google throws a pop-up at me on youtube. No, I don't want my gmail and youtube account name to be the same. No, I don't care what changes have been made to channels. I was pissed enough when I was forced to use the same password on Youtube (relatively insecure, I would log in on public computers etc) with my GMail (more secure and I was very selective where I'd access it from). Also, getting to my favorite-ed videos on YT is a royal pain now.

As for maps, I was trying to make a quick map for my job but I don't have access to ArcMaps so I was trying to use the free Google Earth. All I wanted was a nice looking terrain map without sat imagery but apparently they took that option out a few releases back in the free version.

I wish there were some good competitors. The updated Google Maps for Android really sucks. It is much tougher for me to use than before they minimized the UI and worse, it is untrustworthy since they removed the GPS accuracy circle and have to try to guess the accuracy based on much the pointer sliders around. Can't even tell if you are actually on a block or not now in cities without hoofing it over to an intersection and trying to convince the damn UI to show you a street name by zooming and in out a bunch. Meanwhile I have to switch to Nokia or Apple, I guess, if I want to switch maps for real. OSM is not good enough.

You know, I don't really mind the new UI. Sure it's different and takes some getting used to, but I don't think it's objectively "worse".

Plus, it does has an accuracy circle, at least on my phone. (Android 4.0.3, Maps 7.1.0)

Wow, I really dislike the new Google maps. I must have sent them 10 bug reports on the thing in the first week. And I'm still frustrated with it.

Having not done user tests, I can't prove it's objectively worse, but it is certainly worse for me. They've totally broken my use of starred places. Search is much slower, especially doing a new search to replace the current one. You can no longer leave navigation running while doing a search. The screen where they offer you route options is useless to me; it gives me 1-3 indistinguishable options, and I always just click on the first to see what it's talking about. The menu button frequently doesn't do anything; the search button never does.

I would pay them cash money to give me the old version back.

How did you use starred places?

Well for one they used to always show on the maps... now most of the time they don't. It used to also be easier to load an address close to where pub wanted to navigate and select what is near here... that option is gone, so it is harder to navigate somewhere now when you know where you want to go, but don't have the actual address. Stared places have you the option of having a location already selected, but now it is very inconsistent.

This over a map layer? The quality, breadth and accessibility of the data Google maps provides is the reason I keep using it. What else is there? Apple Maps?

Open Street Maps are generally better quality, where they are available.

There are also Esri maps: https://developers.arcgis.com/en/features/mapping/

...if only there were a practical Android app available.

It's not free but Gaia GPS works well on my devices. I believe they recently released an android client. Besides the various Topo maps they have an osm layer that's available via internet or for offload cache.

I use it for when going to a rural area I'm not familiar with, since Internet and phone signals is still non-existent or very slow in those areas.

It's not just a map layer - it's also Gmail, chat and forums GUI (see below in this thread), various Google APIs, Reader, Labs...

They managed to get a lot of things right, which is hard. Now not only do they seem to stop getting it right, they actively remove the good things they had built. That's a very disappointing trend, which I hope can still be reversed.

Yes, like the dreaded Gmail new compose

I quite like it.

There's always one.

I haven't liked any of the changes they have made to gmail in the past three years. Literally.

Yes. Or MapQuest.

Hey, this is the internet. We all switched from AltaVista to Google and from MapQuest to Google Maps, and from Yahoo mail to Gmail. If Google sucks, vote with your feet.

It's really no harder than changing a bookmark.

When changing mail providers (I chose Fastmail) I made sure to pick a service that would let me use my own domain. I now "own" my email address, so in the future switching will be even easier. I suggest others do the same.

This is great for the few like us that enjoy having a personal domain, but most people don't which is very unfortunate. It's very-painful for most people to migrate email providers.

I wonder if there's a business opportunity there: make it easy to own a personal domain name and use it with various other services. So instead of having to monkey with MX records for mail, you just say "I'm using provider X and here is my account info.". If distributed social networks ever go anywhere (a dubious proposition, I'll admit) then automatic configuration/hosting could be bundled, with all the necessary configuration and DNS records done for the user.

Of course this magical company could go bust, but even if it did, the users would technically be able to migrate to one or more other providers without losing anything, including URLs.

The problem is that the popular free providers don't offer domain hosting, and the paid ones that do (e.g., Google Apps, FastMail) already handle that for you, if you let them.

Bing Maps is a little ugly, but it's actually pretty good and much faster than the new Google Maps.

You love Quality? You'll really love new-Maps, then!

http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/29472.aspx

Grand Central Astoria Station. :P

Bing maps is quite good.

Looks like we'll be moving to MapBox.

Then why haven't you left already? As someone who has done this years ago, I can only recommend it. The longer you stay, the harder it will be. And next time you want to start using a product, first ask yourself: Could they keep me prisoner if they went evil? Or would I be able to just export my data and leave?

As one example, at $work about a month ago I switched us from our $$$ Google maps implementation over to OSM + Mapquest Open. In some cases the geocoding isn't as good, but it's good enough for the important sites (AU based). And it won't cost us 5 figures a year anymore either.

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