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Google Removes "Search Nearby" Function From Updated Google Maps
First time accepted submitter BillCable writes "One of the most useful and intuitive features of Google's Map tool was the "Search nearby" link. After searching for a location, users could click on a marker on the map to pop open a window with the address and other details. This window also contained a link to 'Search nearby' — extremely useful if you want to find a list of restaurants near a hotel, the closest pharmacy, or any other business you might want to patronize. Google recently updated their map tool, and 'Search nearby' is no longer present. The 300 posts to the Google Product Forums complaining about this omission indicates this is a feature Maps users sorely miss. Google's work-around (detailed by Google staff in said thread) are a poor substitute and unreliable. There is no indication Google will add the feature to their new tool. For now users are able to revert to the original Google Maps with the 'Search nearby' feature intact. But there's concern that when Google discontinues support that the feature will be lost. So why would Google remove one of its best features?"
I'm guessing the feature was dropped due to privacy complaints, which just goes to show that you simply can't win.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Maybe it's because only 300 people know about it? Yes, that was a joke, but seriously Google Maps has millions of users, and Google knows how many people click on it. If the vast majority don't (even if it's due to not having a clue), I could see why Google might drop it.
It's far from a perfect replacement, but Yelp lets you search for businesses and such by location. You can narrow it down my moving/zooming the mini-map in the sidebar.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Let me guess. Somebody else got a stupid patent on 'search nearby' functionality?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Yahoo is dead as fried chicken.
I don't know why Google would remove this feature, but you can be sure it probably has something to do with their strategy to shove everyone over to Google+ at gunpoint
I use the feature, but I'm not always impressed by the results. It has my exact location, but often suggests stores that are much further away. There are many times when I will search for a store trying to find the closest, but it pushes me to one across town. It is useful, so I hope it comes back, but fixed.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Maybe its because you can simply pull up an area on the map and type what you are looking for in the search bar (i.e. restaurants) and essentially get the same result.
Product managers. Agile development. *Lean methodology*
The business world is full of stupid yes-men who constantly jump on the newest trends regardless of merit.
One of those trends, in product management, is "lean methodology", which as some people implement it, means leaving out any sensible features that haven't been explicitly asked for. This is in the name of giving users what they want. The rigid way which product managers interpret it means they resist implementing sensible, intuitive functionality that hasn't been planned for specifically, and the whole product refinement process becomes less efficient as a result, with the minor benefit that you don't build anything that wasn't needed.
Google has better control of ads if they decide what you want to find.
Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner!
And now we're starting to get into the "you're the product" stage of Google. Google Shopping now is a pay-for-inclusion system, and soon Maps may head that direction.
I guess that the $64,000 question is how far will it go before either Google stops pushing it, or before they find that they have competitor that outperforms them and resists a purchase attempt...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's the way I've done it, or else just using the word "near" (e.g. "Catholic confessionals near bars of questionable repute").
Google found 1920 results.
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#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
google is a corporation and their main products are services...
Correction: their main products are users. Services are just part of the manufacturing process for producing users to sell to their customers.
And use Open Street Map http://www.openstreetmap.org/
I'm running with the "classic" Google Maps because the new Google Maps is missing a lot of features that I find important. It still has this feature.
I don't know why they remove useful, functional features. I've always assumed it had to do with streamlining the interfaces, Apple-style (motto: "It's either easy or it's impossible"). But they don't seem to end up more friendly or usable.
I keep expecting them to start adding new features such that I'm forced to abandon the classic maps if I want them, but as far as I can tell there's nothing compelling about the new Maps, and I'll keep with the classic until they stop offering it.
I'm a big fan of Google, and I really love the way they give me cool stuff for free. I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when they stop supporting things, and assume it means that they're working on other cool stuff. But this has me rather perplexed: a lot of work put into a new interface which is not just feature-poor but clunky.
You misspelled OpenStreetMap.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
When you have an already loaded map / search, and you enter a new search, it already does a "search nearby".
IE, if I go into Google maps and search for "Times Square, New York, NY", it shows me Times Square. If I then type in "Pizza", it will find all the pizza places AROUND TIMES SQUARE, IE the ones inside whatever window I have open. This is the way Google Maps has always behaved, it is nice an intuitive, and does not need clicking weird extra buttons. It just plain does what you expect it to do without asking.
It's so damn useful though. You locate yourself on a map from an intersection (or geolocation if you don't care about your privacy at all) and search nearby places.
Example: I'm at a tire store and it will take 45 minutes before my car is ready. I plug the address of the tire store into Google and search for nearby restaurants within a 10 minute walk. It tells me that up the street, which I did not come by from, has a Denny's.
That's fucking important. I need to know where those Denny's are to avoid them more than Battlestar Gallatica tried to avoid the Cylons, or a salad avoided Jabba the Hutt. I think most sane and rational people have used Google this way right?
As far the maybe is concerned, perhaps, it's that Google really did find a lot of people doing that and figured it was an additional commodity to sell. A local business would pay quite a bit actually to steer real time requests for businesses towards them. I know some businesses well enough to say they would test it out and shift funds away from other marketing budgets.
A half a dozen times in the last 3 years I've found myself in meetings with the local telephone book companies pitching SEO and their own web based directories as the primary product instead of their dead tree publishing. Those companies see the writing on the wall and are not trying to sue or regulate the Internet into compliance with their old business model, unlike some creeps we know. They would jump on that in a second to offer local foot traffic to a retail brick and mortar store as an added service they provide.
Google could make money doing that. Google doesn't service the Internet user except with a glove going you-know-where, they service their real customers and those are the advertising industry and Big Data consumers.
Got a funny feeling that it will play out just like that. A new NearMe(tm) feature with sponsored search results on a revamped directory page.
Google could knock off Eat24.com and Groupon in an afternoon with their search tech, map tech, and payment processing tech.
There's money in it. A lot of it.
You can still do every single thing you said above. The people are complaining about some button that you are not even mentioning. I don't even know how to get to the functionality they are talking about.
Not really. The new maps is basically built around this feature. This seems to me to be a case of people not understanding that "search nearby" is effectively the default Google Maps behavior in the new version. It only moves the map if it doesn't find nearby results, or if the search query is a specific location elsewhere.
Try it yourself. Using the new maps, zoom in on a location with a number of restaurants, and type "restaurants" in the search box.