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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."
...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.
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.
... 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.
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!
Who the hell zooms out to a view where you can see 4 surrounding states as well when using maps for navigation? It's like holding a book at full arms length and then complaining about the size of the text.
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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.
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.
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."
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. !"
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!
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.
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If I had mod points this post would get some positivity.
"Elegant!". Too often I see applications, desktop environments, Linux distributions, even languages, described as "elegant". Through experience I have learned to automatically mentally translate this into "ill conceived, badly implemented, fucking stupid, actually worse than useless".
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.
Elegant, when done correctly, is based on simplicity forged out of deep intellectual forethought. The problem is, by design, the end result of what's elegant is often abstracted from the origins of its protégé. Effectively, that many anyone can create a simplistic design and pass it off as functional when in fact it's just an empty lackluster useless pile of UI; which BTW is the majority of "elegant" UIs these days. Even iOS which I consider an elegant mobile platform is suffering feature creep that's eroding this experience IMHO.
Life is not for the lazy.