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".

Comments

Openstreetmap.org

[ickleberry]

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

Use OpenStreetMap - problem solved.

[ffkom]

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.

Re:Distracted Driving?

[AmiMoJo]

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.