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What Happened to Google Maps? (justinobeirne.com)
Google Maps has reduced the number of cities it shows by up to 83% over the past few years, according to Justin O'Beirne. Maps, in addition, has increased the number of roads it showcases. O'Beirne, who writes about digital maps, in a blog post outlines the changes Google has made to its mapping and navigation service over the years. The side-by-side screenshots comparison on his blog post shows that Google has largely abandoned labelling towns and cities in favor of showing as many roads as it can. He has also looked into several elements of Maps from the design standpoint, and questioned Google's decision. He writes: If these roads were so important that they deserved to be upgraded in appearance, why weren't they also given shield icons? After all, an unlabeled road is only half as useful as a labeled one. [...] [Comparing Google Maps to a paper map] Even though it's from the early 1960s, the old print map has so much more information than the Google Map. So many more cities. So many more road labels. And the text size is comparable between the two. O'Beirne believes that Google has made these changes to better serve mobile users. "Unfortunately, these 'optimizations' only served to exacerbate the longstanding imbalances already in the maps," he writes. "As is often the case with cartography: less isn't more. Less is just less."
UXtards happened.
User Interface professional: "1920x1080 is a standard desktop resolution. There is adequate space for menus with words and for the actual map to have words like street names/numbers on it."
UXtard: "ZOMG MOBILEFIRSTFLATDESIGN! Words ugly. Not like words. Not touch words with finger paw. Make words go away. No like reading. Use Javashit to hide everything that shows what you're looking for, make the menu fly out and obstruct 20% of the screen when you hover the mouse over the wrong pixels, and remember that nobody would ever want to have the last set of queries on while searching for directions! Two tasks, wipe out the first one! Elegant! Simple! Delete all functionality, then rewrite in latest Javashit framework Nothing but pure flat lines. Make all menus hide. Hamburger menu enough. !"
Time for your nap Grandpa. You're getting cranky.
It's like the guy took a road atlas from 1978 and started complaining that it didn't indicate as many submerged rocks as his the chart his forebears sailed to the US with. And this is what passes for front page news on slashdot these days...