Slashdot Mirror
Get Ready To Be Bombarded With Ads When Using Google Maps (news.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes: The chance to squeeze some extra advertising dollars is something rarely missed by Google. This week the company quietly announced changes to two of its most widely used services, offering businesses the chance to pay for featured advertisements in Google.com and Google Maps. In a blog post, Google senior ads vice president Sridhar Ramaswamy outlined the likely changes to Google Maps that will see users met with pop-up ads for local businesses when they use the GPS-based app. The announcement has been facetiously described online as "the Ad-pocalypse" but Google has shown more tact in their use of language, referring to the ads as "promoted pins".
I got an offer for an Uber coupon while using Google Maps on my phone the other day.
It was a text ad and wasn't very intrusive. Still, though, unsettling.
I am constantly surprised by how good it is. It has paths in there that Google has never heard of, ones up mountains that might not even be 1ft wide, new and old. It doesn't look quite as polished and smartphone-oriented as the Almighty GOOG's version but the maps themselves are more detailed and more accurate
You keep your data. You are not SPAMed. You help the community if you annotate or fix mistakes in the map if you find some.
No, the summary is bullshit. There are no pop-up ads here. All that is happening is that when you search for something the search results can contain promoted items. So if you search for "restaurant" the local branch of McBurger can pay to be listed above the real results, just like they can when you do a web search for the same.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I gave up on Google Maps years ago. I've been using OpenStreetMap for a long time, with better results.
I use the Google Maps on my iPhone for navigating when I'm driving someplace unfamiliar. Does this mean that I'll have to be dismissing ads in order to see continue to have a useable navigation tool? I'm also not wild about the idea of pop up ads drawing my attention away from the road. Time will tell.
I usually use [the Google-owned] Waze app, which started doing pop-up ads a while back. It's annoying, but they typically only pop-up when stopped, and disappear once you start driving again. They also do sponsored "pins" for stores and restaurants, which aren't intrusive. It's not enough to get me to stop using the app (yet), but i will start to feel a bit more annoyed if I start getting the same stuff in Google Maps as well.
That's what we thought we were getting with cable TV subscriptions, and then we started getting ads there too. Even companies from whom I purchase products (like Amazon) still can't seem to stop themselves from *also* putting ads on their sites, which irritates me to no end. The temptation for just a bit of extra revenue from ads is apparently irresistible.
It would be nice to have that choice, but the cynic in me says that what you'll probably see is *fewer* ads, or perhaps *less intrusive* ads, rather than no ads.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Waze, now owned by Google, has already had popup ads and promoted pins for awhile.
While the ads are a bit annoying, they only show when you are stopped.
The pins really do not make much of a difference.