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The Geek Behind Google's Takeover of the Map (fastcompany.com)
tedlistens writes: Google's map isn't just a map. It's a living, complex manifestation of the data that billions of users and a team of thousands of engineers and designers feed it every day. The public face of the company's mapping effort is Ed Parsons, a gregarious Briton and geographer who as Google's Geospatial Technologist evangelizes for its mission of organizing the world's geographic information. He also works on building the trust the company needs to make Google Maps and Google Earth more detailed, useful, and increasingly, 3-D and interactive -- what he describes as "a selfie for the planet."
The terrain isn't easy: that mission faces challenges from cartographical purists, hoping to preserve the art of cartography, and the democratic mappers of OpenStreetMap ("it's become almost a parody"); from governments seeking to police sensitive borders; from a host of tech companies fighting over the map business; and from privacy defenders concerned about what Google does with that data. "We're kind of looking at what to do with it. We've got a very rich source of data there, but also one that we have to be very careful of," he says. "Your location on the planet is one of the most sensitive pieces of information that anyone can hold on you."
The terrain isn't easy: that mission faces challenges from cartographical purists, hoping to preserve the art of cartography, and the democratic mappers of OpenStreetMap ("it's become almost a parody"); from governments seeking to police sensitive borders; from a host of tech companies fighting over the map business; and from privacy defenders concerned about what Google does with that data. "We're kind of looking at what to do with it. We've got a very rich source of data there, but also one that we have to be very careful of," he says. "Your location on the planet is one of the most sensitive pieces of information that anyone can hold on you."
I was thinking, I hope they are planning a date figure, so in the future we can see street maps by date and year or decade. In the future it would be interesting to visit not just a place but a year. In the same way that old maps have value because political lines have changed, I hope Google Maps is investing in keeping the older data as the lines change. It would be good to see what Florida was like before it was submerged in water, for example.
Gently reply
Funny, I gave up on my Garmin for the exact same reason.
Using the Garmin is almost unbearably slow, but I can successfully enter multi-stop trips into it, whereas with google maps most of the time when I try that on the web it decides to shit the bed almost every time. Slow and poky is better than not working at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because if he is, he is a massive fuckup. Maps has become steadily less useful over the years, both the Android app and the website. The interfaces are both just pure garbage.
I use maps regularly, but I gave up on using it for navigation/directions beyond point to point and just use my Garmin for multi-stop trips in spite of its crap interface.
I agree. I sort of wonder if they eliminated all but the most obvious route was in response to the dumpkoffs that got lost or killed by trying weird directions and found themselves driving off cliffs when trying to drive their Camry on Jeep roads?
We live in a world where people can sue for stupidity, like not knowing that alligators live in ponds in Florida, so why not?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.