Slashdot Mirror
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."
Everybody is adapting the web for the phones and removing important and useful features in the process. Whereas some sites in the past had a minimalist phone version we're getting stuck now with major sites eliminating critical features for everybody. I don't really know what to do about it, but I don't like it. I guess the only thing one really can do is look elsewhere. Unfortunately in many cases there are monopolies or features missing from other companies products / service in part due to these entities disproportionately smaller size.
What this does is highlight what Google is famous for- not giving any user choice. It runs throughout most of their products and platforms.
Instead of deciding for us how something must be to best meet the assumed majority, what would be nice would be to simply let us CHOOSE what options we want. What font size, if we want the scale meter to be shown, how much detail we want to see, etc.
I am sick of the "modern" "simple" design of everything that is supposedly so superior... because it isn't. Removing all controls and choices, hiding everything, getting rid of settings, etc. No thanks.
To this day Google maps does not allow you to rotate whatever you're looking at so it is aligned N-S. For example, if you look at Manhattan, NY, its gridlines are neatly arrayed. However, the island itself does not point N-S. It is slightly askew.
There is no way (that I am aware of) to rotate the map so the gridlines run E-W and N-S so when you print out a close up view everything lines up neatly on the page. Instead, the picture runs off diagonally.
Outside of rotating, when you drag the line for your trip to a different route it regularly ends up doubling back on itself. When you try to drag the offending part to match where you want to go, it may double back again.
Sure, if you fiddle with it enough you can eventually get it to have one continuous line but generally it's faster to clear the entire page and start over.
Google maps has gone downhill over the years. What used to be an easy way to map or view where you want to go has been reduced to the typical shiny so prevalent on the web. Forget ease of use, so long as it's shiny.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Google Maps seems to remove features with every successive release of Maps for Android.
You used to be able to measure distances on the mobile Maps app, but not any more.
You used to be able to plot a course or set waypoints on your desktop computer with its big screen where you could see a lot more, then pull up that route on your phone with the mobile app. Not any more.
I used to be able to publish a link to my location plotted on an embedded map on my personal web site so my friends could track me on road trips. They took that away claiming that idiots were forgetting about their public links and violating their own privacy. So to protect people from their own stupidity, ostensibly, they removed that feature.
I've forgotten all the features that they've removed just in the past couple of years.
In recent versions Maps INSISTS that you turn on wifi in order to get an accurate plot of your location even with GPS already enabled. This tells me that they continue to map wifi access points as you move around to add to their database. It has nothing to do with improving the accuarcy of your location, that's BS.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
Agreed. Honestly, I'm surprised there's anyone who's not of the view that Google has been going backwards in terms of their map interface and quality of what's presented for a long time. Heck, Google Search too.. "Yes, Google, I did want you to actually find pages with all of my search terms in it, rather than you randomly deciding that I was just kidding about half of them...."
"I know you have questions." "That would be why I just asked them."
Four point text on some street names.
So you zoom and and they shrink all the text back to its original four point font.
Google is supposed to have a lot of smart people.
Maybe they are all on a 5 year sabbatical.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I just came to say how awesome maps are. Not Google Maps, that is becoming more and more shit by day, but maps in general. Can you even imagine the old days when you couldn't get an accurate map anywhere? Imagine how hard that would've been?
I travel a fair bit, and my first stop is always to grab a free local tourist map, it makes such a huge difference once you have even a high level layout of the land.
Go maps!