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Google Sunsetting Old Version of Google Maps
New submitter Robertgilberts writes with word that Google is dropping the old version of Maps. The new version of Google Maps came out of preview back in February 2014 and was in beta for several months before that. The only way to access the old version of Google Maps was via a special URL or if you had a very old browser that did not support the new version of Google Maps. Consolation prize: There will still be a lighter-weight version, which "drops out many of the neat Google Maps features in exchange for speed and compatibility."
The old version has the zoom controls where they should be and has less zooming animations and is much clearer to use all respects.
Oh, the one that actually worked well?
Thanks, Google!
This is one problem with web apps. I do not have any ownership of the product and it can be obsoleted arbitrarily by the manufacturer. It's even worse than with closed source apps.
The vectors are shiny but the user interface looks like it was designed by a team of managers more concerned about slickness than usability. Moreover it's only fractionally as powerful as the old system. (Among other things, I bet several people in places like San Francisco are really going to miss the combination bicycle/terrain maps.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The new version still does not have the Distance Measurement Tool. I still switch to the old version for that feature.
I just wish on the new one you could toggle Traffic on / off without entering in Traffic: and messing up whatever it was you were searching.
Probably a mistake considering the "new" one is next to impossible to use.
Or maybe Evil Google just felt like making it hard for people to look shit up.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The old version of Google Maps works for the majority of users. The new version of Google Maps has quirky bugs for lots of users who haven't bought a laptop/tablet this month, such as the entire map appearing upside down and/or backwards depending on your hardware. Google is (ab)using OpenGL tweaks that aren't universal by a long shot. So, if you're one of the millions of folks with a graphics card that Google decided not to support anymore, good luck and have fun. Kinda like their support of millions of Android phones - nil, zero, no upgrade for you! Go pay for tomorrow's bleeding edge hardware or be left in the dust, this seems to be Google's new motto.
Attention Google, you and your employees might be doing great financially, the rest of us can't necessarily afford to buy or be given the latest greatest hardware. How about some legacy support.
Also by RobertGilberts...
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Online Business Accounting Bookkeeping Service
Congratulations on approving an SEO spammer who just happened to submit something on-topic!
Google has "improved" the Android version of Maps so much that I switched to Nokia's Here maps app. It's much easier to use, faster, and I can download maps for offline use.
I haven't seen the new version, but did see the announcement. It looks like I will be switching to another map service since I don't use one of the browsers or OS's on their list of requirements. Too bad I used them often, but when pointy hair managers start making the decisions on what their customers want then end is in sight.
I use open street maps and never looked back. https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Tourist Mode - "Ooooh, a 3D view of Paris! Let's see what our hotel looks like!"
Resident Mode - "I need to confirm the directions to the restaurant I'm meeting my wife at in fifteen minutes and see if my bank has an ATM nearby and I need it right f*cking now."
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I don't understand it. Can someone explain why so many companies intentionally? destroy the usability of their products? The newer version is much more difficult to use when browsing through bus routes.
Will anyone be willing to create a working "theoldmaps.com" to go along with "theoldreader.com"? Because the new and nominally-"improved" google maps definitely doesn't work particularly well on my home computer, and having a working google maps is pretty much necessary.
Because it sucks, because it's all the same controls you've come to memorize and then scrambled. It is SLOW and the their new print dialog SUCKS. i encourage anyone bothered by the slowness of new google maps to go to leaflet and just try their demo app on the front page. Google maps data may be more robust but holy shit why can leaflet run so much faster? why do i need a discreet video card to use the new google maps. I've always contributed corrections to google maps. Now I think i will just switch to leaflet and openstreet maps and contribute there. Keep on fucking up google, you literally cannot help yourself anymore so many fucking failure changes and failure new products.
When you ask for it to draw up directions, the blue line covers up the street name.
You must zoom in (a lot!) to see it.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The old maps satellite image is months more up-to-date than the cute one where I live. But it's ugly! Who wants that on a map?!!
They aren't doing this to improve the user experience with the software. They're doing it to address the perception that "new and shiny" is what people want -- not functionality per se. They're aiming at the user experience of getting something new.
You know that marketing slogan, "sell by showing what problem you solve"? The "problem" that marketers have identified is the public's disinterest in things not new and not shiny -- and lately, not thin.
In my view, incompatibility is a sign of poor vision, poor support, and a lack of respect for those people who have come to you for what you offer. Speaking as a developer, if I come up with new functionality that is incompatible with the old, I add the new functionality without breaking the old. There are almost always many ways that can be done. I never did find a worthy excuse not to do it, either.
It isn't Google, or Apple, or whatever vendor that needs to learn a lesson. It's the public. I don't think it can be taught to them, either.
Squirrel!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Consider these 2 Google Maps views of the same location.
Old Google Maps:
http://i.imgur.com/qtJHOVM.jpg
New Google Maps:
http://i.imgur.com/Yop9CEJ.jpg
The old Google Maps had far higher quality imagery, at least around me.
"Where you been all these years? Looking good old friend!"
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Slashdot was only Beta for a while. Google is Beta all the time.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Currently you can use classic with this URL:
https://www.google.com/maps?ou...
Since like, no one linked it or mentioned it yet.
They have a feedback feature on the new version of Maps. Click on the question mark symbol at the bottom and send them a polite, short note saying that you prefer Classic Maps and ask them not to get rid of it. Maybe if they get enough actual user feedback it will change their minds.
In the old map you could access your "My places" to your bookmarked places. Where is that in the new map? Nowhere. That's right, the one usage of a map is to have your markers on a map and Google managed to fuck that up. Thanks Google your developers sure are smart.
The part I find particularly most frustrating is when you're just messing around, and they have that "predictive" thing going on, that's supposed to show you what they think you're most likely wanting to see. (e.g. larger streets and landmarks have labels, whereas smaller side streets or whatever have been left blank for better overall legibility.)
However, there are times where I have simply wanted to see the street name of an unlabeled street, and the amount of zooming in, out, and panning around just to HOPE the renderer fills in the name is ridiculous.
Dammit, I use the 'measure' tool in classic all the time.
I no longer use Google Maps. On my desktop, the dropdown covers the parts of the map I want to look at, and when I close the dropdown the marked location disappears. What are they thinking!
The 'new' Maps is pretty widely disliked. Google's product forums are littered with threads begging them to not implement this change A couple examples:
Thread 1
and
Thread 2
Thanks for posting the links. I didn't know the old version was still available until I read this story. What a cluttered mess the current version is. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a choice to de-clutter the map, but if there is I haven't found it.
I don't care why you're posting AC
The new version of Google Maps is erratic. Mouse zoom is sporadic and inconsistent. Sometimes when you search specific business by name, it still gives you the "sponsored" results first. The problem is not that it gives "sponsored" result, it SOMETIMES gives "sponsored" results. It's trying to trick you into clicking on the "sponsored" results and it's really annoying.
It's both too much information and not enough information at the same time. Search for something and it gives you too many irrelevant results. Look on the map and it's doesn't show enough information for me to make a decision. It's everything I hated about Bing Maps when that first came out.
One of the best features of the "old" maps was the historical traffic times. Say I need to be somewhere at 10AM; I can get my route, then some clicketty-click and get what the normal transportation time, with traffic, is. Use that as a guess, with some extra slop and you;ll probably get there on time. I haven't seen this feature in the new maps.
Though hard to bitch about "you get a pretty useful GPS as a (pseudo) freebie*" I hate when Google thinks "yeah, you really want this" when I really don't. Their idea of "you really want this" tends to not be as often as they seem to think. Eg: my distaste for all things Material Design now. Too much wasted space, a big saturated color header with a thin white font inside making it hard to read, too much effort to make that little circle at the bottom right do too many things.
Anyway, rant over.
(*) Free as in "Every google app wants access to your location every second... from Maps (makes sense) Google Now (a bit more sense, but location turned off) to GooglePlus (only google engineers go there anyway) to Google Hangouts (no thanks)"
The new version STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN AND I HATE IT.
It's slow, obnoxious, cluttered and distracting. It behaves oddly, and lacks basic features like putting transit on the map at the same time as search.
It's utterly hateful.
A similar problem besets Google Hangout, which I've been using for a few months now for work. The UI is a catastrophic failure.
Google have totally lost the plot for UI. Maybe all their good people are working on autonomous car driving?
I stayed with classic. I will use it until it goes away. I will try the light version and - as I rather expect - if it stinks like current Maps does, I will change map provider, as the current version of maps is utterly, actually, genuinely unusuable. I *cannot* use it, whether or not I want to isn't even a part of the question.
Keep It Simple Stupid
I have a dual core i7 2.8Ghz laptop with 8Gb of RAM with 2x256 SSD in Raid 0 configuration. Every app runs blazingly fast... except the new Google Maps, which slows the computer down to a crawl. I just ran a set of comparisons and the "new and improved" google maps load times were 3-5x slower than the old google maps.
Moreover, I have yet to find a useful feature in the new maps that is not present in the old version.
This boys and girls is how companies come to be functional retards: anyone can tell the old version is better and it is just a switch of a button away from coming back, but internal politics and committees stop this from happening... as if this wasn't enough, now the company doubles down and makes an even stupider decision: removing the previous, faster and superior version.
This phenomena has been studied by Organizational Management types. Decisions taken by committees often match those taken by a person with an 80 IQ level. In this case, that number would be generous.
(1) my old personal maps (MyPlaces)? I've generated a few over the years that I still refer back to once in a while. I didn't see any migration path to the new version for those.
(2) the custom tools in the old version? One of the most useful for me personally was the distance measuring tool which gave a straight line distance between 2 points (or a series of points) that you marked on a map. Don't think that's there in the new version either.
Loss of these functionality alone means that being forced onto the new version is going to suck.
licet differant, aequabitur
It is really impressive that the phone version of maps can smoothly rotate a map and show a 3D view, but I almost never want this. I do want to scroll to my destination and zoom in, but I invariably get the 3D mode or rotated map. Stop adding cool features.
Over the years I wrote a bunch of applications that generate KML files to be loaded in Google Earth and [if they weren't too big] in Google Maps. The old Google maps made this really easy because you could just put the KML file's URL in the search field and it would load it. The new version makes sharing these a lot harder because you can't just share a URL, you now have to go through importing into My Maps or setting up additional custom displays using the Javascript API.
If anyone knows an easier way to give people a link with which to display render a KML file as an overlay, I'd love to hear it.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
Absolutely with you on that. However, there seems to be a workaround - just double tap and then without lifting your finger, drag down or up to zoom in or out (drag to zoom). Its quite usable, surprisingly.
New Google Maps doesn't print well, making it undesirable for it's most important use -- taking a map with you.
Of all things, Bing Maps is looking good. I've been using it some already, and will probably fully switch unless Google makes its product properly usable again. Yes, Google is driving me to a Microsoft product. Pigs have grown wings and Hell is looking a bit frosty right now.
I have never successfully printed a map on one page with the new google maps. It makes a godawful mess of it. Most commonly, the map prints in teeny tiny mode that is completely useless.
Clearly, they are favouring smartphones over printed maps which is a real shame because their old product printed maps perfectly. I have tried other maping programs such as mapquest and bingmaps however the address is frequently in the wrong place on both of those.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Maybe they borrowed the idea from Microsoft Outlook. The new version says things like "We didn't find any messages to show here." We? What, are they my nurse?
...I think website authors & designers are ignoring what users want or need and instead make something that keeps them involved.
Or they are doing what their users want or need and it turns out people with your wants or needs are the minority.
Amazingly but unsurprisingly, Google Earth the 3D package that does about the same thing as the 2D Google maps is like an order of magnitude less demanding on hardware resources. It even requires little GPU performance (a geforce 6100 is more than fine for instance)
So I may recommend it as an alternative if Google Maps is too slow, or if you need something to run on old or very slow hardware. Roads/streets can be enabled with one click - you end up with something that looks like a superposition of plan and aerial photos, and street view is available.
Yet it may fail to display the damn little pictures. At least on linux (ubuntu 14.04 derivate), the embedded browser seems to fail depending on what version you use. Had to rip out "google-earth-stable" from my system, then install "googleearth-package" which is kind of like setup.exe files that act as downloaders for Windows software. Then run "make-googleearth-package" which you can helpfully find by typing "mak" and hitting tab, tab, or by searching for it with such thing as " find /usr -name '*google*' ". How wonderfully user friendly is that!
But unexpectedly, I've just fixed the problem.
It went from version 7.1.2.2041-r0 to version 6.0.3.2197, go figure. It seemed slow at first but that's a matter of repopulating the cache.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Celeron users suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
It's a shame that Google abandoned its motto of "Don't Be Evil"
Fwiw I love the new maps. The new map updates itself as you search and lot more of the screen is used by the map. Plus it's got a version of Google earth that loads instantly which is pretty nice. But people who like the new thing rarely yell about it.
It is not hard to get classic mode in the URL. Just add: .../maps.google.com/maps?output=classic
output=classic
As in my book mark:
To bad this will not work for much longer because the new maps really suck under Linux when you don't enable ALL the google java crap.
Where is Labs? Distance measurement? All those cool add-ons? Where's lat-long tool tips? I find myself using Google products less and less. When they took Reader away I realized that anything and everything can and will be taken away at anytime so I stopped using GMail, Calendar, Tasks, ....
So now I'll be looking for a new Maps replacement. Google's a real buzzkill these days.
J
The new version of maps is slow, half the time it doesn't work, satellite imagery is decades old, streets are shown that don't exist anymore for eons...and no matter how often you send them feedback on this, nothing changes. Yes, I know it is a free service, but free does not have to be 'sucky'.