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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."
He may want to ask "What happened to HTML?" instead. Requiring JavaScript just to be able to display text and a few images is insta-fail.
news at 11 most people use it for navigation in their cars, so roads are more important
...I still have hipsters looking at me with disdain.
1) My paper has never experienced a fault while on the move.
2) My paper has more detail than your electronic maps.
3) My paper allows me to see more of the map at once.
Google Maps is intended as a dumbed down service. Expect it to be dumbed down.
Disappearing content more than appearing. Right to be forgotten, privacy, etc. It's all good and dandy but boy was Streetview way more usable just a couple years ago for telecom purposes and what not. Maybe a good thing since it's better to support open especially for cartography purposes. Oblig http://www.openstreetmap.org/ link.
Google maps has always been terrible compared to the old paper maps from the 1980s and earlier. It's like the Google Maps people threw every convention that road mapmakers used and decided they could do it better.
They still haven't done it better.
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.
While comparing the maps is part of the equation, what about comparing how consumers use them? To find a city on Google Maps, you use the search feature. Perhaps the reduction in the number of cities displayed is to guide that behavior?
It is a Google product after all.
Maybe they ran out of disk space.
C|N>K
... than Google Maps. OpenStreetMap has way more details and much more up-to-date information - the only thing it doesn't have is, of course, sattelite images - but I hardly need those to navigate. The biggest plus of OpenStreeMap of course is that I can use it completely offline, and I don't have to share my life with Alphabet, the data Kraken company.
The best analogy I can give is comparing maps of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Paris, and France available from 2000-2005 (over the years, I bought a thick stack of them) when I was frequenty traveling to Western Europe with American style maps, for example, AAA maps from that era.
The European-produced maps I looked at were extremely detailed. They seemed to lose track of the forest for the trees. It seemed like they had to label everything, and that they were going for photo accuracy with road routes, etc.
On the other hand, AAA maps lack a lot of detail but they're much easier to use "at a glance." They aren't as precise, but they give you the gist much better. You were able to pull over and look at a AAA map and get your bearings within minutes. You could even carefully look at a AAA map while driving.
The European maps I looked at, on the other hand, I think were meant to be studied for 15 minutes before setting out on your journey. If you pulled out one of these maps while walking around in a sketchy area, for example in shadier parts of Amsterdam, you were liable to get mugged. On the other hand, armed with one of these European-style maps at your hotel room, you would need nothing else to get to your destination. The incredibly detailed map would give you an unambiguous route to your exact destination.
Now that they don't make many printed maps anymore, we have a similar situation for online maps. You don't want or need a super-detailed map on your phone. You want something that will get you to your destination in an expedient fashion. In fact, the map itself is less important than the route. Do you need to browse a map with every street, city, town, and park on your phone? No way. You type in the exact place you want to go and your phone takes you there. If you want to explore a detailed map at your leisure while sitting at home don't use smartphone app. Don't use Google Maps. Find something else. To most people this use case is not wanted, and added detail is unwanted distraction.
It's UI design, and that's task-oriented.
Paper maps are highly versatile, general purpose tools. You can do all kinds of things with them, and generally speaking the more data they cram in (in a clever way of course) the better. They're like a swiss army knife; you want them to serve in any possible occasion.
Digital map displays are embedded in a user interface; they're a backdrop that provides the user with useful contextual information as he attempts to perform some specific task. The better you understand how the user performs that task, the more you can pare down irrelevant context that might detract from that task. Now there have been many times I wished the Google Maps UI was a little more versatile, but in general it does really well at the kinds of search and navigation tasks people mainly use it for, e.g. finding all the doughnut stores in Quincy, MA.
So basically you can't automatically apply criteria you'd use in a paper map to a digital display, although it's certainly helpful to under stand those criteria.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Now you can adventure out the unknown and mysterious cities of the US. What hidden secrets will you find? What horrors will you stumble upon? You know the roads, now discover the human habitats!
catering to the lowest common denominator, zombies.
It's the way of all things in time.
-
This author is woefully uninformed. The towns and roads that display on the map are dynamic and driven by your search history. This guy can go back to his paper maps and leave the rest of us alone in the future.
Is the error in your neighborhood wrong on all map services? Your town may have put up misleading street signs when GPS was going through.
I continue to be amazed at how high the "bandwidth" of a traditional, printed, paper highway map--such as those still provided by AAA, and frequently by the states themselves--compared to anything you can get electronically. Scrolling a six-inch screen is no substitute for a square meter of paper surface printed in high resolution... and with judicious human preselection of points of interest.
For your typical 150-miles-to-a-specific-destination trips I continue to try to make do by printing out relevant Google maps, a small-scale one for the major highway routes to get there and a big one of the neighborhood. It never really works. The GPS and our car's NAV system will get you from point A to point B and show you in very good detail the local roads immediately surrounding your present position, but don't work very well for planning.
Nor are electronic maps very good for sketching, highlighting, or carrying with you. And paper maps don't need to be recharged.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If the data on Google Maps is wrong then you can submit a correction. They offer this function for a reason.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
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.
So when will Apple bring their maps to Android?
slashdot: A failed experiment.
Because Maps sucks on mobile now.
Give us back the working version from around.. 2010.
You really shouldn't be using paper maps while driving anyway. Too much detail is too distracting.
If your phone is telling you where to turn, it also has a screen showing a close-up and the orientation and distance to that turn. If you don't have a good place to mount that screen or a newer vehicle with Android Auto, you're missing something you can't get on paper.
Only if your issue fits in a small number of categories and you live in the right country. Issues like "I live on a street that has been there for five years, but you still think it's non-existent" apparently don't qualify as needing correction.
Here's my rendition: Modern mobile focused millennials use apps, not LUDDITE papyrus and squid ink boondoggles. Apps!
Showing more roads would possibly be more task oriented IF YOU KNEW WHAT THE ROADS WERE.
If a map shows you to turn on a street, but does not provide a table for that street (has happened to me in Waze before) that SUCKS for the task at hand.
I would argue though that knowing what cities are around you is as much a part of the "task" of driving as knowing the roads.
It seems liker there should be some zoom level or perhaps rate of travel where precedence for roads vs. cities display would alter...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You've got a good point, but rendering paper maps directly actually doesn't work as badly as one might think. Try this site www.topozone.com. Normally, I'd call it up to verify, but for complex reasons I'm stuck on my no-Javascript support but very fast browser for a few hours.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Google has the street numbers swapped on the highway I live on (even should on the east side, and odd on the west side). I submitted a problem to them almost 3 years ago and about a year later I get an email response that says "we've looked into it and you're right" and that they would send another email when the correction was made.
It's never been fixed.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
what a retard! you navigate by maps not cities who gives a crap if you know twenty cities in the area, i need road a1a i4 408 etc so i know where i need to go.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for 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.
Turn right HERE!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The critic reduces his cred by publishing his critique in a tiny, thin, illegible font.
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!
What street?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Actually, it probably did get fixed, and then got broken again when they pulled data from upstream. Companies like Google and Apple get their mapping data from a number of providers, then merge that data together. If those providers give them bad info, if they just fix it in their local database, it will get stomped on by the next data pull. To fix it correctly, it has to get pushed up to the providers. If multiple providers give them incorrect data, it has to be fixed upstream by multiple upstream providers. Worse, those providers, in turn, get their info from multiple providers. This continues until you reach some government contractor.
If you're really unlucky, the city planning office tells that contractor not to fix the data, because Google Maps says that it is correct. And then Google fixes it on their side, and then the city sends the wrong data to TIGER, who sends it to somebody else, who sends it to somebody else, who sends it to Google or Apple, reverting the fix all the way down the line.
Submit a second report about the problem. Then at the same time, submit a report to your city planning office. Odds are at least even that they're the problem.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I just submitted it to google again. It's correct in Apple maps and on my TomTom.
Waze is wrong too, but I assume they get their data from Google.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Given that Google owns them now, I'd say it's a safe bet.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Blame Google - they now include how mobile friendly a website is in the ranking algorithm, so everyone is throwing desktop users under the proverbial bus to make Google's algorithms happy.
The paper maps are used to get a general lay of the land and to determine what the route should be in case the GPS or Google Maps has erroneous information, AKA trying to route you over a summer mountain road in the dead of winter. Dedicated GPS because it only requires power work, if I am out exploring and intend to use the GPS only to get home or back to the hotel (great fun way to explore new areas), I don't need to have a data connection of remember to download maps before beginning my adventure and the dedicated GPS tends to have a screen that is more readable in the sunlight.
Even it's 'lite' mode is so bloated that you sit there for at least 10 seconds, maybe longer, waiting for it to finish doing everything it needs to do before it even lets you look anything up.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Good lord help me, Google god damned maps!
I'll try my best to keep it short and sweet:
The DUMBEST thing those idiots have done is remove the 50/50 split from the street view option. It's without a doubt, the most moronic @#$%ing thing they've done. It's incredibly frustrating.
Luckily I have a screenshot of what I'm talking about.
http://chattypics.com/files/5050split_sueprsqg9z.jpg
You used to be able to do a 50/50 split, one of what you're looking at and 2 of where you "are" on the map what direction you are "facing". Any idiot with basic N.E.S.W directional skills, found this incredibly useful.
We can still use street view and find what the building looks like that we're after, but it's much harder to identify where on the map it is, what direction it's facing, what the number is. We can do it, definitely, it's still down the bottom in the corner, VERY small - but the old system was incredibly easy to navigate in a combo street / maps view. I can't even put into words properly just how much superior the old version was, vastly is a big understatement.
Perhaps you guys are sick of me but I'm personally getting frankly, fucking sick of typing shit up like this time and time again about applications, phones, websites, because idiots feel compelled to change things, not for the sake of improvement, but for the sake of change.
It's times like this I WISH slashdot had a much larger audience, I WANT some piece of shit at Google to see this post and understand just how badly they fucked up. Yes, they did, fuck up, I'm sorry but there's no other way to put it.
Tired of these changes, tired of things becoming worse for the sake of it.
Google maps is literally an inferior product to what it was many YEARS ago.
P.S Don't bother going back through the feedback system to these wallies, they have no idea. It's as bad as sending feedback to the Government at this point
- Frustrated.
You can still measure distances on the mobile Maps app (at least, on Android) https://support.google.com/map...
Loads up slowly and zooming or moving around is sluggish. Likely because there's too much fucking data in the background. I've been mulling a replacement for some time but the integration with my phone is too clutch at the moment.
Worst part is searching around. Since Google knows my IP, they should be able to figure out where I am and if I'm looking at cities I don't live in, they should be zoomed out further by default. Phoenix comes out fine as I can see the metro area. Chicago and Atlanta are not. It's gotten better than it has historically. But when I search for specific locations in my area, it tends to give me a really close view. Odds are if I'm looking for it, I want to know how to get there - not just exactly where it is.
Sorry, This guy has no room to complain. The text on his website, not google, is horrible. When I first opened his blog I thought my browser zoom was off, but after checking I realized his font of choice was a bad one.
Why do you think Google is? A charity? Do you really think Google gives things away expecting nothing in return?
And unlike Apple (who sells hardware) and Win10 (which is paid for), your data and ads is the only reason why Google gives you Android.
As for Nexus devices, Google makes very little profit from the sales. It is not what they are for. They are reference devices, it is a way for Google to tell the world "this is how an Android device should be". And obviously, they don't want to leave out the data collection part, their real money maker, from their reference.
"Companies like Google and Apple get their mapping data from a number of providers"
Yep. Not just for streets but for fund raising, health care, threat assessment, marketing etc. Once a data stream is polluted it is almost impossible to fix. And all the fancy AI, ML, Statistics, weighting algorithms etc. will not fix it. Which is why I rant and rave about "eventually consistent" databases. They end up polluting the data steam. Much of Data Analytics is built on a foundation of sand.
It's about data, not how you process and present it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Waze is actually better, because you can edit the map yourself and fix it. Not that you should have to, but at least it's an option. You do have to have the appropriate access level to edit main streets and highways, but there are usually plenty of people online with access who can help you with things (see live chat). It also helps if you can point them to google street view to clearly show the problem.
I've made several small edits to address locations, street names, and turn restrictions. They show up in app after Waze does a map dump (about every week, if I remember correctly).
See: https://www.waze.com/editor
The new, as opposed to the classic format, really sucks dead roaches. Zoom out, to get the area? Some of the time, what you're looking for is no longer marked. Click on the x, rather than , to get that annoying and overlarge Helpful Block in the upper left? You've lost what you were looking for.
And it keeps trying So Hard to be Helpful, that you constantly trip over it, 'cause it's in your way.
I won't begin to start on how they've ruined google search, apparently to please advertisers, rather than users.
mark
They have multiple street names wrong in my neighborhood. Whatever they are doing, it's a little bit sloppy.
I live on Maple Drive. About 3 miles away (same city) there is a Maple Loop. Google Maps calls my street Maple Loop Drive. I have lots of fun with home delivery.
If it's practically an easter egg to do it, then it probably needs to be redesigned.
It started back in Team Fortress Classic
And.. you didn't go to Openstreetmap, where you could have added it yourself?
What can I say. It may be your fault then, you know...
Herve S.
They removed the -/+ zoom buttons a while ago. I used to be able to zoom with one hand, now I have to use two-finger tap to zoom out. I can't do that while holding the phone, so I have to put it on my knee while tapping the phone. Great UI move.
Slashdot seems to want a lot of domains whitelisted in noscript to reply, so this is just a test since my last reply was eaten.
Just want to say, reading a lot of good points from both sides of the argument in this discussion.
1) Don't like WAZE; don't need advertisements, or gamification. I just want directions and traffic info. Google usually does that just fine. WAZE sucks my battery dry even when I'm not using it.
2) Google maps UX is pretty stupid, most of the time. Used to be pretty obvious and functional, but now, with each new "upgrade", I end up doing a fair amount of clicking around to try to figure out what widgets do, and try to locate functionality that's been (apparently) deprecated. It is very frustrating and annoying, but much less so than Apple maps. The bar is low.
3) A long time ago, I used to deliver pizza. I did that job for about 4 years. I can imagine that google maps can work far better than paper in some situations. But a paper map does something that you don't really ever get into when you're driving in an area frequently, over a period of time. Google doesn't let you LEARN the area. It keeps you on the main/shortest route, which is not always the best route. And you end up relying on Google to get you around. If your signal goes, or your battery goes, or for what other reason, it's not working, then you are fucked, because you don't remember the area. If you use a paper map to view the whole area, and find your route, then you actually begin to LEARN the layout. The layout of an area is important. You learn where there are rail lines, and creeks or rivers, or freeway underpasses, which are HUGE bottlenecks, and when you're improvising or navigating on the fly, you need to have that knowledge in your head, not on your phone. There are also tiny details that become VERY important; that don't show up on electronic maps. No-left-turn signs, center-dividers. When you're on a busy urban or suburban street, and you pull out somewhere, and find you can't go the direction you want, you can sometimes get fucked into having to travel several blocks in order to get turned around again. This can set you back 10, 15, 20 minutes, depending on the traffic and situation. Google does that to me CONSTANTLY; but when you LEARN an area, you know these details in your head, and you can avoid those situations. You'll still need your paper map from time to time, but you're not going to have to refer to it constantly, as you would with a GPS/online map. The other skill you miss out on, is self-location or orienteering. The phone does that for you. (unless there's a technical problem). But the skill for figuring that out by reckoning, visual landmark checks, etc - goes away if you do not use it. That's also very important for on-the-fly navigation. With an electronic device, you can end up with imperfect information, and lag, which will put you a few hundred feet away, which is another situation where you can miss an important turn, and end up having to backtrack or re-route (which, fortunately, google does for you).
There is NO substitute for having an intimate knowledge of an area's quirks and foibles, which are not available even at the most detailed level for electronic maps.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
my god, let's get back to what the _software_ aspect of the essay is.
Google relaunched maps in 2013 with two massive changes:
1. switch from pre-renderd tiles to vector-based client-side rendering (good for native maps app and network traffic)
2. heavy personalization ( watch this intro video from Google in 2013 to see the idea in extreme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )
So what did O'Beirne see and post? No, he did not see the place names and point of interest marks you will probably see at the same zoom level (esp. in your local area) - he posted a screenshot with the city names the big google correlation machine thinks is relevant to him. This is both good and bad imho. We're even deeper in our bubble and don't even see unwanted city areas on the maps (bad). But when we quickly want to find something relevant, it's great (assuming the relevance works).
Concerning the map design: I agree, the manually / traditionally done tiles had more semantic and cultural context and did in fact look more balanced and structured.
But they did not have any notion of intermediate Zoom levels, which is crucial on smaller screens. And they had a very ugly way to incrementally render on slow connections. If O'Beirne posted Videos instead of images the impression would have been different.
Overall I agree with his findings as long as you see Google Maps as a static map image (to print out). Which it isn't. Even if you see it, I do not agree with one of his findings: Streets that do not connect named places. The actual structure of cities and their wider surroundings did in fact change towards being form- and shapeless continuums of houses and streets. Many areas simply do not have structural centers any more that could be named, but are very relevant to the people living or working there. In addition, new streets are built to _not_ touch city centers but to avoid traffic there. The traditional map layout pattern of lines connecting dots (cities) does not represent the current metropolitan structures any more (and his screenshots were all metropolitan). Does anybody know good resources on the topic?
To Google, search tools for pushing ads at you is their only hammer, and Google Maps is yet another nail, no more no less.
Another example:
A. If you already know where Newark is relative to NYC when zoomed out, seeing road lines is more important to forcing a cluttering label on there just cuz you happen to know it's the largest city in NJ. (And yes, sometimes clutter *is* clutter.) When you start pinch-zooming directly toward it, then you'll see it.
B. But if you don't already know where Newark is relative to NYC and you opened the app to find your way there, you're going to search for it, find it, and get moving.
C. And in both cases, you're not going to see a label for it until your use of the app suggests you need it.
D. And once you search or pinch your way to Newark if you're lucky you'll get ads for LoJack for your car and YouTube videos for treating GSW's, y'know, Newark stuff.