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Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs
TechCrunch reports that Apple, facing a substantial backlash (and some snarky competitive advertising) over goofs in the mapping software included in iOS 6, is going after the problem with a hiring spree. Here's TechCrunch's lead:
"Apple is going after people with experience working on Google Maps to develop its own product, according to a source with connections on both teams. Using recruiters, Apple is pursuing a strategy of luring away Google Maps employees who helped develop the search giant’s product on contract, and many of those individuals seem eager to accept due in part to the opportunity Apple represents to build new product, instead of just doing 'tedious updates' on a largely complete platform."
Meanwhile, writes reader EGSonikku "Well known iOS hacker Ryan Perrich has gotten the iOS5 Google Maps application to run on iOS6 using 'a little trickery.' (YouTube demonstration.) He has not released it yet due to crashing issues but states 'it mostly works.'"
That's innovative ...
I don't really see how this is a news story. I mean it makes completely sense to try and lure away experienced professionals away from another company on a similar project.
It's not like they don't need help...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs
What did they do, prop him up and pull a string wrapped around his wrist to beckon them over?
Sorry. I need sleep. Or help.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The referenced article mentions:
The position sounds like a product development manager position, and will pay him $85k+ and all the moving expenses from the East Coast. He’s gone through 2 rounds of interview and seems like a frontrunner to land that position.
Is $85K a lot of money for a product development manager? I know some IT Helpdesk staff that make nearly that much in Silicon Valley.
Apple's problem is primarily with the data, not the actual mapping application. Considering how deep Apple's pockets are, I'm really surprised they weren't able to license a better / larger set of GIS data. There are number of competing mapping companies out there, so I have a hard time believing that, given enough money, one of them wouldn't have provided Apple with what they needed.
Now as for the actual application, I believe Apple's map application is superior to Google's in a number of ways. I've always preferred vector / real-time drawn maps over pre-rendered tiled raster maps (which is what Google's are).
So as for Google maps, why hasn't Google released a stand alone app yet? After all, that's all Google Maps are with Android is an app on the marketplace. Is Apple blocking Google, or is Google (perhaps wisely) letting Apple go it alone for a bit so people will miss the functionality Google provided, then they can step in and save the day (before Apple has a chance to improve their product enough)?
Better known as 318230.
I'm not an Apple fanboi but the rap Apple is getting about that maps app (and the data behind it) is just unreasonable. I'm totally happy with another big company trying to gear up here. Having only Google as a supplier of that would be just sad. What's wrong with competition? Let Apple try and top Google or at least get far enough to be as usable as Google maps is. And really, it's not as if Google had no screw-ups ever. Google for it (lol).
Sometimes I look at comments everywhere and it seems as if people would be totally happy to see nothing but Google and Android everywhere. Be careful what you wish for! Competition is good. Luring away employees is good. I love to be lured away from the job I'm doing. Give me a better job and a harder task to solve and I'm happy.
I'm sure that Apple going for a solution of its own will make even Google better. There's nothing good about the complacency of being a monopoly. Really. Grow some brain, guys.
At least with Google employees, Apple won't need to email them a pdf map of their office location.
Come on, think of the awesome sales pitch these guys are getting. "Don 't be Evil"? Screw that. Come to the dark side. You have no idea of the full financial advantage of the dark side. Watch those that believe in open standards tremble at your feet.
I don't use Apple products, so maybe this isn't as surprising to others as it is to me, but why the fuck can't an app that ran fine on iOS 5 also run fine on iOS 6? Why is "a little trickery" needed, and even then there are still issues?
Furthermore, wasn't iOS 5 only released to the public in October of 2011? I mean, that wasn't even a single year ago! Is smartphone and tablet crap shat out so rapidly that backward compatibility can't be retained even after only 11 months?
How is it that Microsoft, who aren't exactly known for creating the most robust software, can maintain backward compatibility with operating systems released decades ago, but Apple (also a very well-funded company, with access to basically any talent they need) can't even manage to retain compatibility with a system released not even a year ago?
I thought Apple never did wrong because every pundit was detailing its so called, "attention to detail...". So what happened?
One did not need elementary school education to realise that its maps iteration was not just crazy, but it was just bizzare, showed incompetence and was taken as a reckless joke by many of us.
So again, what hapened to, "It just works?"
Go to maps.google.com in the Safari browser.
At this point it's not Apple's choice to be able to use the old map app - the license with Google is expiring so Apple cannot keep providing that app.
There's no reason to think Apple would block a Google written map app considering there are scores of other map applications in the App Store - including the Bing app (which includes Bing maps).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and has a cleaner view on maps.
Yes, displaying less information often has that effect.
You're thinking of Dead Steve. Zombie Steve is still at Microsoft.
Come on, think of the awesome sales pitch these guys are getting. "Don 't be Evil"? Screw that. Come to the dark side. You have no idea of the full financial advantage of the dark side. Watch those that believe in open standards tremble at your feet.
Yes, because Google Maps is such an open standard. /s
My current job said it best: "What we need is not new *people*; we need new *ideas*.
Wouldn't you know it, they are willing to pay for both!
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
At least they work....
Glad I'm not the only one who imagined Steve Jobs' corpse tied to a string and being dragged along the sidewalk in front of Google's headquarters.
"Oh, hey, Look! A Steve Jobs free for the taking!"
Perhaps now, this will force Google to offer permanent positions and better salaries to some of its better contract programmers.
Huh? Google has no contract programmers to speak of. I hesitate to say the number is zero, because there's probably some obscure corner of the company that has one or two tucked away, but as far as I can see, zero is what it is (excluding interns -- many of whom become regular employees after graduation).
Google uses a lot of contractors for facilities, food services, recruiters and other supporting positions, but SWEs (Software Engineers) and SETs (Software Engineers in Test), are basically all regular employees, as are the vast majority of SREs (Site Reliability Engineers... basically Google's sysadmins).
Honestly, given the complexity and uniqueness of Google's infrastructure, it wouldn't make any sense for Google to hire contract programmers. It's pretty widely accepted internally that it takes a full year for a new Google engineer to become productive because of all of the technologies he or she needs to learn (this is also the reason Google interviews don't ask you about what tools/frameworks you've used in the past -- whatever it is, Google has built its own anyway so your knowledge is irrelevant). Since the company has to basically invest a full year up front, there's little value in hiring people for periods of time less than 2-3 years, but you can't hire a contractor for that long without the IRS viewing them as an employee anyway.
(I'm a SWE at Google.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Search is completely broken. Completely.
I use map search a couple times a day. I've been using Apple maps for a month, including a drive from New Jersey to Los Angeles. It has only failed to find what I was looking for a few times over that period, for me on par with Google (which sometimes cannot find things that should be easy). Google has decided what I want is really in China on more than one occasion... so I would not say Apple search is totally broken. It seems some areas are worse than others.
I wonder how many of the items not being found in Apple maps are people not typing in very specific search terms. That's where Apple really needs to improve, is on search term parsing. Although even there some general terms like "food" seem to work just fine.
You are reporting the map errors you see right? That's the only way things get better, and if Apple gets a lot of reports from a region perhaps they can figure out why their dataset is so out of whack for that location.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree, but Apple decided to partner with TOM TOM of all companies. These are the guys that drive people into lakes and down railroad tracks. Google put a ton of work into their maps product and API and sent their cute little Google mapping cars all over the world to get Streetview done. Apple should have just bought Garmin instead or just worked out a map revenue sharing deal with Google. It seems that our egos are what always get us in trouble.
IMHO Apple is on a very self destructive course with respect to Google. Google can do services on a scale that other companies can't even conceive and the backend is where the magic happens. Apple might have new shinier lights out data centers and Google products might have clunkier front ends but the backends (especially GMAIL, Google Docs, and Google Search) are untouchable. We see this everyweek as Apple mail and iTunes struggles to scale up. Hey everybody, don't forget, the next round of the Google Power Searching class starts tomorrow. Power Searching with Google Registration and the presenter at Google is confident enough in his company to use a MAC.
"Legitimate criticism = trolling"
Errors where it's not finding something it should are or course legitimate.
But many of the supposed map flaws I have seen are NOT legitimate. At least half of the supposed "errors" on the Apple map fail sites are people not understanding that Apple Maps renders differently, or not understanding a 2D projection onto 3D terrain because they have not seen it.
One big example is Apple maps supposedly not having some data at a location, when in fact the data is there - just at a slightly greater zoom level. When you say Apple Maps is missing a tube stop, and you zoom in a bit and find the tube stop there, well then you were wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
what would apple do if samsung did this to them? what would the courts reactions be?
Excuse me? You realise that at some point Apple, Google and others had agreements not to headhunt each other's employees, and _have been told by courts that such an agreement is illegal_?
Hiring Google ex-employees and even more hiring Google employees is something that Apple is _expected_ to do by Californian law. Free market. Free choice of employees to work for whoever pays most.
Yes, because Google Maps is such an open standard. /s
They provide access to their API, anyone can freely integrate it into their software, websites, or Android apps and even insert their own maps.
https://developers.google.com/maps/
Google also sometimes cannot find things that I am pretty sure should be easy to find.
You're right. I've been looking for this place called Schadenfreude and I can't seem to find it anywhere. Is it on your Apple map?
Yes, because Google Maps is such an open standard. /s
They provide access to their API, anyone can freely integrate it into their software, websites, or Android apps and even insert their own maps.
https://developers.google.com/maps/
Misleading, at best.
Google charges you if you go over a certain number of users:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2122151/Google-Maps-API-to-Charge-for-High-Volume-Usage
If you want access to map tiles, you simply can't get them, and Google will send their lawyers after you if you reverse engineer.
At least with Apple maps commercial use is free. And Bing will let you license the raw map tiles and provide you with an API to get them.)
(Citation: I've worked on software that implemented Maps from scratch and tried to license from Google. Google also made the news recently when they raised their rates: )
I'd believe Florian Mueller and Steve Jobs when he was alive before I'd believe searchenginewatch.
Google work for you?
https://developers.google.com/maps/faq#usagelimits
They also have a pretty long history of favoring open standards (Postscript, HTML5, etc.).
Garmin do not own any maps. The only realistic alternative to Google and Tom Tom is Nokia, but they're competition too, so its easy to see why Apple went with Tom Tom.
Apple to Customer: "You know that mapping app everybody uses? The one that's practically the most popular iOS app? The one that works so well? You can't use that any more."
Customer: "Why not?"
Apple to Customer: "Fuck you, that's why not. Now get back in line. And by the way, did you know that you prefer the walled garden because it provides a more seamless end-user experience? Now repeat that after me: "I prefer the walled garden because...""
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thing is, Android is for hackers.
No, it's not.
I thought Apple's slogan was "It just works"?
Apple has no slogan. Don't know where you got that idea.