Google's New 'Plus Codes' Are An Open Source, Global Alternative To Street Addresses (9to5google.com)

Google has developed a "simple and consistent addressing system that works across India and globally." Called "Plus Codes," the location-based digital addressing system is designed for people with addresses that are not easily located through conventional descriptors like street names or house numbers. That's half of the world's urban population, according to a World Bank estimate. 9to5Google reports: Notably, this open source solution composed of 10 characters works globally and can be incorporated by other products and platforms for free, with a developer page available here. It works offline and on print when overlaid as a grid on existing maps. Places that are close together share similar plus codes, while the system is identifiable by the "+" symbol in every address. "This system is based on dividing the geographical surface of the Earth into tiny 'tiled areas,' attributing a unique code to each of them," reports Google. "This code simply comprises a '6-character + City' format that can be generated, shared and searched by anyone -- all that's needed is Google Maps on a smartphone."

The first four characters are the area code, describing a region of roughly 100 x 100 kilometers. The last six characters are the local code, describing the neighborhood and the building, an area of roughly 14 x 14 meters -- about the size of one half of a basketball court. The area code is not needed when navigating within a town, while another optional character can be appended to provide additional accuracy down to a 3 x 3 meter region. Users of Google Maps in India will be able to easily find the plus code for any area in the app, while the mapping service along with Search will support the entry of the new coordinate system. Plus codes for any location can also be found with this tool.

Comments

Not invented here

[bohmt]

So they reinvented the Maidenhead locator system.

Re: Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention what3words location

Re: Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Or MGRS...

Re:Not invented here

[SmilingBoy]

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

Re: Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

That write-up is pretty much a perfect case study of the classic xkcd comic "There are 14 competing standards".

Re: Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

You beat me to it, glad you got first post though.
I was going to say âoehey google the 1980â(TM)s called and they want there grid system backâ
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. There are already too many, they even didn't include MGRS or GARS. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Grid_Reference_System for example. I don't see any improvements of this system over other systems

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

So they reinvented the Maidenhead locator system.

Hardly. They work in different ways. Unless you are considering all "a way to identify a location" as equals. That is the slashdot standard, course. "This reminds me of something else, therefore Nothing New!!1!"

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, does it matter? The rule of thumb is that if it's from Google, don't use it.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Major reason being: Now you need a smartphone with google maps. Google is no longer optional to your life.

Plusgoogle. Next up: Doubpleplusgoogle, it'll be the new "2.0".

Re:Not invented here

[MachineShedFred]

Didn't click the link, not expecting to find "we wanted our own snowflake system that does exactly what we want, and is less useful outside our organization than existing standards that may already be in use"

Plus, if they expect this to take over for street addresses such as the headline suggests, they should think again. "Oh, it's on Walnut Street, just past 5th" is far more useful than "Oh, it's at CMXR+X6" which has everyone scrambling for Google Maps just to decode what the fuck you just said.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

We rarely value original innovators as much as we do to the people who make the innovation marketable.

Re: Not invented here

[swimboy]

This is Swatch internet time all over again.

Re:Not invented here

[Oswald McWeany]

Didn't click the link, not expecting to find "we wanted our own snowflake system that does exactly what we want, and is less useful outside our organization than existing standards that may already be in use"

Plus, if they expect this to take over for street addresses such as the headline suggests, they should think again. "Oh, it's on Walnut Street, just past 5th" is far more useful than "Oh, it's at CMXR+X6" which has everyone scrambling for Google Maps just to decode what the fuck you just said.

It's more useful than a US Zip Code because it is more precise. (and more logical). There are different uses for either system. A computer would find CMXR+X6 more useful, but a human who is looking for your house will find the street address more useful (actually, ideally, a human would want both)- get in the ballpark with maps and the code and then the address so they can confirm visually when they see your house.

Re:Not invented here

[SmilingBoy]

No, Google think this would be a useful system in parts in developing countries with less formal address systems. For example, there are 1 million inhabitants in Kathmandu, but the majority of the roads have no names and there are also no street numbers. So when you send a parcel, you don't need to describe it as "past the ABC Hostel, then third street on the right; the house next to the large birch tree". I think the criteria they set are quite sensible, but many of them are indeed fulfilled by the Maidenhead Locator System already. Whether it is worth it to create a new system just for the few additional criteria (e.g. "does not spell words"), I am not sure.

Re:Not invented here

[bohmt]

What way would that be? Other than removing the vowels from the character set?

Re:Not invented here

[Chrisq]

Or mapcode, which has enough accuracy to inentify individual houses

Re:Not invented here

[Teun]

I do agree with the possibility real words could be problematic to certain SJW and other sensitive souls.

Re:Not invented here

[holophrastic]

Doesn't even mention the Canadian Postal Code, which seems to satisfy nearly all of google's requirements. Add two more characters, and it would satisfy, I think, each and every single one.

Re:Not invented here

[eth1]

... which has everyone scrambling for Google Maps just to decode what the fuck you just said.

And here you've just found the REAL reason Google created this system.

Re: Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf? You ask people for directions? /Jk. Seriously, I can see that this doesn't replace addresses, but rather compliments it. For Urban areas, addresses make more sense. For rural areas with no roads, addresses make no sense. That's why they pointed to India as a use case example. I'm not saying this is the best implementation, but just that it's not either/or with addresses.

Re:Not invented here

[SmilingBoy]

Can you elaborate? Canadian Postal Codes seem to work the same way as postal codes in other countries. For example, if I want to specify a specific point somewhere in a large forest, there would not be a postal code for this. I don't think there would is a simple algorithm that transforms longitude and latitude to Canadian Postal Codes. In a nutshell, not at all like the open location codes.

Re: Not invented here

[ArtemaOne]

Beat me to it. I'd have upvoted you, but I haven't managed to get any points since the site went down.

Re:Not invented here

[ArtemaOne]

I use MGRS all the time, but for a 1 meter area, Google's system is four characters shorter. Not that I'm promoting it, just saying it is as precise with 10 compared to 14 with MGRS.

Re:Not invented here

[holophrastic]

Specifically, Canadian postal codes are not geographic, but nothing's stopping the algorithm from being so. The first character denotes (roughly) the province, from east to west. The rest is the postal delivery route -- which means my neighbours to the left and to the right are identical or off by a single number, whereas the neighbour behind me (on a different street) is off by two characters. While not "geographic" in spatial terms, it's geographic by postal route, which is (obviously) by street. So following directions by car would actually be easier. That said, it could just as easily be adopted longitudinally. The other features are identical:

A1A 1A1 is roughly five houses big. Add one more character, and you'll divide that region into 26.
A1A is roughly 100 square miles (in Ontario, but again it could be adjusted).
A1A 1A* is about 100 houses.

The code alternates letter-number-letter-number-letter-number. So a) there are no words in any language; and b) B vs 8, 0 vs O are irrelevant. Type it, write it, speak it either way, it's discernible.

So I guess I'm proposing the Canadian Postal Code format, simply remapped geographically, with two or three additional characters.

Re:Not invented here

[nospam007]

"I don't see any improvements of this system over other systems"

This one works with Google Earth and Maps.
That's reason enough.

Re:Not invented here

[gmack]

Plus, if they expect this to take over for street addresses such as the headline suggests, they should think again. "Oh, it's on Walnut Street, just past 5th" is far more useful than "Oh, it's at CMXR+X6" which has everyone scrambling for Google Maps just to decode what the fuck you just said.

That doesn't work everywhere. Many countries have streets without names. in fact even my hometown in Canada had two streets they gave names to for no other reason that emergency services needed to find them. In Costa Rica for instance, not all major streets even have names and there are no house numbers making the entire country a confusing mess for even the locals.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

While not proposing to defend this specific action by Google it's obvious that such a system will be necessary for Amazon or anyone who intends to use a single system fro world wide delivery, by drone or any other automated system. You can use a different system in each country, the U.S. Postal code in the U.S., the Canadian Postal Code in Canada, you own system in Kathmandu. Or you can create one system, a proprietary system that only you use. Or you can create a standard and release it and hope everyone uses it.
Of all those solutions I think the best one is the last.
Does Google profit by doing this. Yes there are upsides for them. But unless they stop others, like Apple Maps, from using the same system I think on a global benefit scale that this is a good thing.

Re:Not invented here

[Newander]

I really don't think you need to be an SJW to not want your address to be, for example, "ASSHOLE"

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

MGRS also has all of those weird sliver maps due to the UTM basis map which slices the globe into 16 stripes resulting in "orange-peel" edges of many of the sub-maps. Google's flat Mercator tiles are all squares.

Re:Not invented here

[swillden]

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

That write-up is pretty much a perfect case study of the classic xkcd comic "There are 14 competing standards".

Only if you don't understand the comic, or don't understand the write-up, or both.

The point of the comic is that there are a whole bunch of standards and the idea is to invent a single new standard to replace them all. Which doesn't work, and just adds to the pile of standards.

The point of the plus codes writeup is to evaluate the existing standards to see if any of them meets the requirements of one particular set of use cases. Since it's determined that no existing standard does the job, a new one is created, not to replace the others but to address the requirements at hand.

Re:Not invented here

[holophrastic]

I disagree. What you're saying makes sense only when you're saying it standing in one place.

The airspace rules, road rules, commercial rules, and employment rules are drastically different from place to place. So if you're going to try to describe everyone the same way, then you fall into the horrible trap familiar to most as XML. Look, a standard definition language that has no meaning in and of itself. So you spend forever defining stuff.

Spoken languages are, historically, different for those same reasons. Some cultures focus on 1 vs 2 vs many (one, both, all / individual, couple, group), others focus on 1v2v3 vs many. Some use a thousands separator for finances, (100'000.00) others use a ten-thousands separator (10'0000.00) because the culture is different. Some languages are harsh sounds vs soft sounds, because the climate is different, or the distances. Some are focused on animals vs others on legal systems, vs others on food, so the number of words by category reflects the resolution of significance to that culture. I don't know how many words for "snow" are used in Florida. I've heard the Canadian North have many. Here in Toronto (the Canadian South), I can easily count to 10, and I'd bet I could read 20 words for "snow" pretty quickly.

Here's a very quick example. Google's system doesn't have altitude. I guess Amazon won't be delivering to apartment balconies by drone -- which seams, to me at least, to be the best use-case for drone delivery. And, as I said originally, if it's by cartesian geography, that doesn't help me navigate the maze of one-way streets to get there. Nor does it help with the night-time restrictions on airspace.

One definition system can't work in multiple different environmental systems. Compatible systems need to match. It's that simple.

And that's why longitude and latitude are so perfect. Sure, they aren't easy for humans. But they weren't meant for humans. They are superbly easy for other systems to use, because they are incredibly simple.

Case in point: longitude and latitude work on other planets too. Does google's new system work on asteroids? Aircraft carriers? Beach-balls? I can use longitude and latitude on any object that fits inside an ellipsoid -- which is any object. A third dimension and I'm 3D. And in all of those cases, there's no need to define anything, no need for algorithms, no need for anything except a set of zero co-ordinates.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Costa Rica for instance, not all major streets even have names and there are no house numbers making the entire country a confusing mess for even the locals."

Been there, seen that. Mess indeed.

Guatemala had an intriguing idea they used in some places - avenues run East-West, Streets run North-South. Odd roads are North and West, Even Roads are South and East. Very easy to know what part of town something is in just with the intersection - 11th street at 22nd avenue would be in the South-West part of town.
So if you live at 11-50 22nd street, it means you live at the intersection of avenue 11 and 22nd street, 50 meters from the corner (towards 13th avenue), so it narrows it right down.

Re:Not invented here

[rsborg]

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

That write-up is pretty much a perfect case study of the classic xkcd comic "There are 14 competing standards".

However, given the sheer power of Google and ubiquity of GMaps, it will prevail. It also has a bunch of benefits over all the other options, most of which don't necessarily tie it to Maps.

I for one welcome our new Plus-sized overlords.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

So now he has to go read the page for you as well? Nice.

Re:Not invented here

[tlhIngan]

No, Google think this would be a useful system in parts in developing countries with less formal address systems. For example, there are 1 million inhabitants in Kathmandu, but the majority of the roads have no names and there are also no street numbers. So when you send a parcel, you don't need to describe it as "past the ABC Hostel, then third street on the right; the house next to the large birch tree". I think the criteria they set are quite sensible, but many of them are indeed fulfilled by the Maidenhead Locator System already. Whether it is worth it to create a new system just for the few additional criteria (e.g. "does not spell words"), I am not sure.

No, ti's because there's no standard on addressing, period.

Even in the developed world there are places without street names but every location is well specified. (Basically there all buildings are on a coordinate system so you're really just giving effectively an (x, y) coordinate to get the building)..

Also, it's to avoid the mojibake scenarios when alternative character sets are used

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maidenhead Locator System codes include vowels and so the generated codes include words"

Well considering they use 2 letters, followed by 2 numbers, followed by 2 letters etc I very much doubt that accidentally generating obscenities is an issue with MLS. However google dismissed it anyway.

Google also whinges that it's only "formally defined" for 8 characters, even though it is trivially extensible to arbitrary precision and is frequently used with more than 8 characters.

I think the tl;dr is that MLS did everything they wanted, but it was "not invented here"

Re:Not invented here

[Jeremi]

Major reason being: Now you need a smartphone with google maps.

The assumption is that most everyone will have (or at least, have access to) a smart phone anyway. Given the way things are going, that's not such a bad assumption.

As for needing Google Maps, that would be true if the system was proprietary, but since it's open-source, any organization can use it independently -- neither using Google sofwware nor accessing Google servers is required.

Re:Not invented here

[SmilingBoy]

I think the reasoning is the zero and one can be read as O or I (or L), so words can still occur with common number->letter substitutions. But as I said, I'm not sure this is a sufficient reason to invent a completely new system.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the outlook that makes it "not such a bad assumption" is actually silly valley hubris and arrogance.

We've apparently already hit "peak smartphone", so some sort of settling-in is to be expected. But... I'm expecting fewer people to run around with them all day, once they figure out that they can have a large chunk of time back by not staring at every tweet. They'll have the thing, or something like it (tablet, smart telly, laptop, *gasp* peecee) and they'll deal with their communications at set points in their day.

Anyway, yes you could use the system in some other context, theoretically if you really want to, but that's just the veneer. The practical reality will be engineered to very much look like your day is going to be so much easier if you just let google handle everything for you. It's a lot more subtle than the usual redmondian approach, but that doesn't mean the goals are different. Since nobody really wants to, it's going to be a vehicle that's just as open and welcoming as android is open source. You can waffle around it, but that's going to be the reality.

Re:Not invented here

[Prien715]

That's why I tend to trust Apple much more than Google for my consumer products.

Apple is not an advertising platform -- they're selling me 'ol fashioned hardware (with a huge markup) with the understanding that they're up-front about their business model. You buy a Google Pixel2 and you're still paying for hardware, but also signing up for their spyware "services" -- to sell you personalized ads at best, and a "helpful" older male sibling at worst.

Re:Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they used Maidenhead, they couldn't force you to use an API and track your every query!

Re: Not invented here

[godel_56]

Not to mention what3words location

This is nothing like what3words where codes with small variations are likely to be on different continents. For example "hers.post.back" is in Kent, England and "hers.spot.back" is in Tennessee USA. Actually I have trouble figuring out just what what3words is good for.

Google's system only took 6 characters to locate the entrance to my building on Google maps and 8 characters to locate the entrance to a local shopping mall. I mention the mall because yesterday I saw a man collapsed on the floor inside and people calling the ambulance. This would have been a compact way to specify which of the many entrances was closest to the patient.

Re:Not invented here

[angel'o'sphere]

They might have no english names on google maps. But most certainly they have names. Worst case you have to make a photo of the sanskrit name and draw it on the parcel or envelop if you want to sent mail.

Re: Not invented here

[Askmum]

Google's system only took 6 characters to locate the entrance to my building on Google maps and 8 characters to locate the entrance to a local shopping mall. I mention the mall because yesterday I saw a man collapsed on the floor inside and people calling the ambulance. This would have been a compact way to specify which of the many entrances was closest to the patient.

If you know your location (you have to, in able for Google maps to give a Plus Code) you can also communicate that. It is just like what3words, it is an extra translation from data you already have. The implied benefits are only attained with extra hardware that make the system redundant because by having that extra hardware you can do it without this translation anyway.

Re:Not invented here

[arglebargle_xiv]

But it's just the Google children's universal excuse each time they reinvent the wheel, either "we haven't even bothered checking whether this has been done before, look how clever we are" or "we know this has been done a dozen times before but we're much more cleverer than anyone else who's done it".

The only reason this is even news is because Google did it. Anyone else and it'd be a giant ho-hum.

Re: Not invented here

[billybiro]

But the same problem applies to these plus codes.

This plus code: 9C3XGV25+H9 will get you to Buckingham Palace in London, UK. But transpose the G and the V letters (resulting in 9C3XVG25+H9) will place you in a rural area just outside Luton, some 30-odd miles away.

Even worse, if you mistakenly transpose any of the first four characters, which represent a large "area code" in plus code (i.e. transposing the C and the 3 resulting in 93CXGV25+H9) you end up in the ocean in the Gulf of Alaska - an entirely different continent!

Re:Not invented here

[Lord Bitman]

And they seem to think it's okay to stop at "building" when describing a location.

The vast majority of "destinations" in the world which one might want to find on a map are some sub-division of a building. And many others span across multiple buildings.

Re:Not invented here

[pnutjam]

Not sure I prefer a "more precise" location to give marketers.

Re:Not invented here

[mlynx]

Works in Waze too!

Re: Not invented here

[Anonymous Coward]

Swatch was trying to invent a solution when problem didn't exist. But unique location identification is a serious problem in many parts if the world. Strategic use of the system combined with Google"s muscle power can easily make this successful.

Re:Not invented here

[Qwertie]

Okay, but if you're going to make a new system that meets your requirements better, would it kill you to include at least some semblance of the advantages of previous systems in the new one?

For example, what3words codes are easy to remember - they are simply 3 words. A typical Open Location Code is 7FG49QCJ+2V. So... yeah.

Re:Not invented here

[swillden]

Okay, but if you're going to make a new system that meets your requirements better, would it kill you to include at least some semblance of the advantages of previous systems in the new one? For example, what3words codes are easy to remember - they are simply 3 words. A typical Open Location Code is 7FG49QCJ+2V. So... yeah.

Because what3words suck, for many reasons.

1. They're proprietary, and kind of inherently so. Their design approach requires a big table providing all of the mappings, rather than a simple, easily open-sourced algorithm. Google could have tried to reproduce their approach, but likely would have run afoul of their patents.

2. Their approach also doesn't scale up and down like OLC does; in what3words you can't specify a region larger than 3m^2, or a smaller one. With OLC each additional pair of digits allows specification of a sub-region 1/400th the size of the "parent" region.

3. The approach provides no indication of proximity. Given two locations you have no idea how far apart they are without first translating them to some other system.

4. They're language-dependent. A triplet of English words is no more sensible to a Tamil-speaker than an OLC code. A Tamil-language version could be constructed, but the entire mapping would need to be built for every language. And not every language has as many words as English. what3words has not included the oceans in either of the other two languages they support for this reason.

In any case, it would be trivial to layer a mechanical word mapping on top of OLC if you wanted. OLC values are fundamentally numeric (base 20), and it's trivial to pick an appropriately-sized dictionary and map onto a different base. To preserve the area/local distinction in OLC (note that typical OLC codes are not " 7FG49QCJ+2V" they're " ". In your example it would be "Tinzaouten 9QCJ+2V") I'd probably choose an 800-word dictionary so that one word corresponds to two "digits". A full 10-digit location would require five words, not three, but normally it would be city name plus three words.

If you'd like to fiddle with this, I have some code I put together to do something very similar. https://github.com/divegeek/me...

3x3 option code almost mandatory

[guruevi]

3x3m is your average NYC apartment or Indian slum house, you also need to encode elevation and room/apartment numbers in many cases since you could have your code shared by many tenants both in the same plane as well as vertically.

Also, encode up to 1x1m if this is going to be useful for any modern delivery methods (eg robot truck or drone).

Re: 3x3 option code almost mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnâ(TM)t this just google marketing the reinvention of something that already exists ?

Because I am pretty sure that street addresses are open source, as are UTM, MGRS & other grid reference systems, are global, and are much more useful than lat/long. They also work anywhere in the world, can be shortened if you are dealing with a 100x100 km area.

And they work for delivery technologies already - plenty of pizza shops near military training areas will deliver to grid references that are publically accessible.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

And in the case of apartment blocks and similar multi-dwelling units... you need two codes, one 'via' code for the door of the building itself, and a final destination code for the apartment door.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[gl4ss]

look if it just gets 10 meters then thats okay.

it would work for ordering mcdonalds or whatever. in thailand most roads don't have names on the maps and some roads have different number on here maps vs. google maps. openstreetmaps. it's really fucking annoying. the local mcdonalds operation has a map where you can put in your location... .... but it turns it into a street address that possibly points to 10 km away. ..so instead of explaining just an address, they will call you up and you need to have someone local to explain basically where the place is and even then it's a crapshoot if they understand which gas station they're meant to turn at.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the thailandese aren't lazy fucks, so they simply go to the restaurant and eat there. Usually not at TrashDonalds, mind you.

Re: 3x3 option code almost mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, this is potentially useful in areas where the post office hasn't already assigned addresses. And not worth it for places where there is a functioning and reliable addressing system.

But, pizza shops don't normally deliver to non-addresses because of the risk of being jumped at the other end. It's dangerous enough being a delivery driver, hence why you see those "driver doesn't carry more than $20" signs so frequently. But, if you deliver to a physical address, it's less likely for their to be any shenanigans. Plus, it's easier to fight a charge back if one comes in by being able to state that the pizza was delivered to a specific address rather than some random person that just happened to be at the arranged location.

Anyways, a system like this is unlikely to be easy for humans to figure out without technology. Which is why the system that's used in most parts of the world involves some for of nation, state, city, street, building number and possibly unit number. There are a few variations, some are big endian and others are small endian and sometimes they have a zip code or equivalent and such, but the basic method tends to be similar.

As a side note, at least in the US, the zip+4 will typically get a package within a few hundred feet of the intended address in the US. In many cases, this would be good enough to get a package delivered with just the addition of the name. You're letter carrier would hate you, but it's likely that they could do it.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[Malc]

We don't need street names in the UK, just building number and post code. I can see that this Google proposal could physically locate something more quickly, especially given how inaccurate Google Maps can be.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes... McDonald's delivery. The lack of it here in the U.S. may be the one thing that saves us.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[guruevi]

It depends, perhaps in Thailand but for something to be used it needs to work universally. I can see the usage of the model for eg. drone deliveries across the world, you tell Amazon ship my package to 5N33-1337, I'm in Thailand, now ship to 413Z-4421 relatively more easy to remember and communicate than GPS coordinates but it needs to be useful enough to land my drone, 10m is the difference between a landing spot, a crash or my neighbor.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[angel'o'sphere]

That is a problem with google maps and Apple maps, too.
Of course the streets have names, they are written on the small metal rectangles nailed to eother posts or the house walls at the beginning of the street.
However I agree, the guys making the delievery have the same problem like you, their maps apps don't show the street names correctly or not at all.

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory

[angel'o'sphere]

That is because you don't know the tricks.
You would not memorize the exact position, but longitude/latitude seperately from minutes and second.
And of course you would use minutes and seconds and not decimal places after the degree.
 

More control for Google

[DNS-and-BIND]

I see they're giving it away for free again. You know what that means. If this catches on, Google will know everything about these people's lives. Even more terrifying, they'll be able to turn it *off* if they wish, or if ordered by government. Boy, I miss the days when Google was a Lawful Good company.

Re:More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I see they're giving it away for free again. You know what that means. If this catches on, Google will know everything about these people's lives. Even more terrifying, they'll be able to turn it *off* if they wish, or if ordered by government. Boy, I miss the days when Google was a Lawful Good company.

Umm, when was that?

Re:More control for Google

[Vitus Wagner]

There is no such thing as "Lawful Good Company". 150 years ago Marx have written "There is no such crime which captitalist wouldn't commit for 300% margin".

Re:More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

No crime people won't commit for sufficient gain. (Personal gain, or gain for your group or whatever.) Capitalists are not special at all. Communist administrators have been known for elaborate bribery systems that in practice make them capitalist. And true believers do even worse crimes for whatever ideology they subscribe to.

Re:More control for Google

[Lunix Nutcase]

Boy, I miss the days when Google was a Lawful Good company.

Such days never existed. You were just blinded by fanboyism.

Re:More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "Lawful Good Company". 150 years ago Marx have written "There is no such crime which captitalist wouldn't commit for 300% margin".

FUCK Karl Marx. And every last one of his followers. Up the ass with a 50-year-old splintered telephone pole covered in flaming tar.

What Marx wrote has lead to the deaths of 100 million people - and counting, given the state Venezuela is currently in:

Daniel Goldhagen argues that 20th century Communist regimes "have killed more people than any other regime type." Other scholars in the fields of Communist studies and genocide studies, such as Steven Rosefielde, Benjamin Valentino, and R.J. Rummel, have come to similar conclusions. Rosefielde states that it is possible the "Red Holocaust" killed more non-combatants than "Ha Shoah" and "Japan's Asian holocaust" combined, and "was at least as heinous, given the singularity of Hitler's genocide." Rosefielde also notes that "while it is fashionable to mitigate the Red Holocaust by observing that capitalism killed millions of colonials in the twentieth century, primarily through man-made famines, no inventory of such felonious negligent homicides comes close to the Red Holocaust total."

What Marx wrote isn't suitable for use as toilet paper - it's an insult to shit.

"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." - Ronald Reagan

Re:More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, Reagan, that foremost intellectual and philosopher who, like you, definitely understands the material they're critiquing perfectly.

Re: More control for Google

[Miamicanes]

Google's alignment falls roughly into the triangular region bounded by "Chaotic Good", "Lawful Neutral", and "Neutral Neutral" (Good-Neutral-Evil on one axis, Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic on the other, Neutral Neutral in the middle).

Re: More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you haven't read anything from Karl Marx? You listed examples of communist implementations that don't fit the analysis structure devised by Marx, aka a Marxist view. Marx's critiques on capitalism are more often than not well founded. Blaming a philosopher for deaths of millions commuited by cruel communist regimes is like blaming Adam Smith for all the deaths carried out from wars and uncaring humans (e.g., pharmasudical companies) for the sake of seeking profit, which is utter nonsense.

Communism as implemented fails, as does free market (laissez-faire) capitalism. It so happens that borrowing strengths from both concepts gives us an implementable system that works fairly well (aka, the United States).

Re:More control for Google

[Joey Vegetables]

Love this! Leftism in general (including but not limited to Marxism) is responsible for a huge part of the suffering and evil in this world. If it were up to me (which, fortunately, it is not), every leftist and every defender of leftism would be burning in the hottest part of hell.

Re: More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Even dead, he's smarter and more informed than you.

Re: More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you haven't read anything from Karl Marx? You listed examples of communist implementations that don't fit the analysis structure devised by Marx, aka a Marxist view. Marx's critiques on capitalism are more often than not well founded. Blaming a philosopher for deaths of millions commuited by cruel communist regimes is like blaming Adam Smith for all the deaths carried out from wars and uncaring humans (e.g., pharmasudical companies) for the sake of seeking profit, which is utter nonsense.

Communism as implemented fails, as does free market (laissez-faire) capitalism. It so happens that borrowing strengths from both concepts gives us an implementable system that works fairly well (aka, the United States).

Ah, yes.

The bog-standard, brain-dead retort of the not-able-to-think Communist apologist: "It wasn't TRUE Communism!"

No true Scotsman is a kind of informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group).

PS - Marx was an IDIOT because he based his entire body of work on the fallacy that economics must be a zero-sum game. "If the company you work for makes a profit, that profit had to be STOLEN from the workers!" Economics is NOT a zero-sum game. Companies do CREATE value above and beyond the sum of the inputs.

Marx completely missed the fundamental fact that coordinated economic activity CREATES value. It's so damn undeniably true that entire massive governments are funded by it.

Again - Marx was an IDIOT. And a not-very-useful one at that.

Re:More control for Google

[DNS-and-BIND]

WTF? From 2001 until about 2007 Google was a seriously Good company. Their search page was clean and empty. Their SJW/delisting culture was nonexistent. You could send an email to them and they'd reply. Gaslighting doesn't work on people who were there.

Re:More control for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat some meat Mr. Vegetables. You brain is broken.

Re:More control for Google

[Lunix Nutcase]

Whatever you need to tell yourself for buying into that bullshit “Don’t be evil” meme.

News...?

[Richard_at_work]

Google developed the Open Location Code in 2014, and it's been part of Google Maps since 2015...

Re: News...?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://maps.googleblog.com/2015/08/plus-codes-new-way-to-help-pinpoint.html

So...

[YuppieScum]

...very like What3Words then, which is already used by the postal services of seven countries ...

Oblig. XKCD reference

Re:So...

[ma i ude]

...except that w3w codes are deliberately distinct for geographically close squares, and designed so they'd be easy to share and sanity check e.g. over the phone. Sure, both are trying to solve the problem of precise locations, especially in places where addresses don't exist, but with very different emphases. Also note that the w3w algorithm and word database are proprietary.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although.... What3Words sanity checking over the phone doesn't really work.

Service Holly Moist and Surface Holly Hoist are completely two different places but could be easily confused.

Re:So...

[MightyYar]

Which is probably why only one of those two is in the database.

Re:So...

[swell]

This seems to be the same three word system created by Chris Sheldrick and discussed last year on a TED talk. He describes the rationale behind it and how it is currently being used in remote areas. The three word concept is nice in that words are easy to remember, but those words are meaningless as a guide to where the location is. Latitude/longitude are the opposite. Google's system somewhere in between.

  https://www.ted.com/talks/chri...

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

...very like What3Words then, which is already used by the postal services of seven countries ...

Oh yes, totally like What3Words. Because, I mean...with What3Words, none of the coordinates contain words, right? And it's a piece of cake to decode W3W coordinates without any software. We all know that "drips.drums.paid" lies directly east of "minimal.reacting.body", right? And isn't it easy to tell that "digits.giving.closes" and "bland.former.fills" are next door neighbors, while "beard.device.skill" and "beard.device.skills" are roughly 10,000 miles (17,000 km) apart (US vs Australia)?

Re:So...

[mikael]

There are also Gray Codes - normally those are used for weather vanes and anything that rotates and needs to avoid errors due to signal nose.. In theory, you could have a global coordinate system using these. The Manhattan distance between two coordinate is simply the number of bits that change, but if you want accurate distance, the regular GPS coordinates are better.

UK has 7 digit post codes. These identify a small area, such as a block of apartments or row of houses, but you still need to specify the building number. There also seems to be a competition to build the narrowest building which is around 1.5 meters. Though I've seen outbuildings at the back of houses in a terraced street converted into separate units. They only have a doorway at the front of the street with an access corridor going to the property at the back. So you would need to increase accuracy to 1 meter if a drone were to deliver a parcel to the front door.

Re: So...

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course, everyone in the world speaks English and can sorry these words perfectly.

How about a three dimensional model?

[t00g00d2btrue]

For the folks who live in high rises and need to be uniquely identified.

Re:How about a three dimensional model?

[bickerdyke]

They need that for conventional addresses, too.

I really hope they try to patent this...

[Terje Mathisen]

First obvious reference would be the UTM map coordinate system which also works off 100x100 km squares, here we use 6, 8, 10 or even more digits to designate any spot on the globe, to any desired accuracy/precision. (6 digits typically give you 100x100m squares, 8 digits 10x10m and with 10 digits you have a single square meter.) This system have been used in the military for a _long_ time now.

Next we have the What3Words idea which have already been mentioned, giving approximately 3x3m resolution using 3 english-language words which makes it much easier to memorize or send to someone else.

Terje

Re:I really hope they try to patent this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having trouble figuring out how to comment without manually copying part of my username into the body of my post. Can anyone help me figure out how to not do that? Everyone else has this figured out but me.

Terje

Re:I really hope they try to patent this...

[j-beda]

I'm having trouble figuring out how to comment without manually copying part of my username into the body of my post. Can anyone help me figure out how to not do that? Everyone else has this figured out but me.

Terje

Log in first?

Re:I really hope they try to patent this...

[rsborg]

First obvious reference would be the UTM map coordinate system which also works off 100x100 km squares, here we use 6, 8, 10 or even more digits to designate any spot on the globe, to any desired accuracy/precision. (6 digits typically give you 100x100m squares, 8 digits 10x10m and with 10 digits you have a single square meter.) This system have been used in the military for a _long_ time now.

Next we have the What3Words idea which have already been mentioned, giving approximately 3x3m resolution using 3 english-language words which makes it much easier to memorize or send to someone else.

Terje

I personally find my W3W code to be awesome, but it's very confusing - after being assigned the code, I searched and there were 2 others that popped up on the search - one across the country and another in a different continent.

If someone got my W3W wrong, my package or whatever would be going very far away.

Maybe W3W would be a good supplement to an actual mailing address but sucks for places where there is no street name or the street name itself is super-confusing (e.g. Springfield city).

Re:I really hope they try to patent this...

[mikael]

Convert those into barcodes and put them on street signs using invisible ink. Conspiracy theory nuts used to think the maintenance bar codes at the back of street signs were some kind of geo-location code for the army to take people to the nearest FEMA camps when GPS wasn't working.

Why?

[Dusanyu]

Reading this only one question comes to mind. Street addresses work, why replace them?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is no street, there can be no street address.

Re:Why?

[PhunkySchtuff]

Street addresses work when there is a street to address.
In some countries, the streets literally have no name - Japan springs to mind. In Japan, the blocks have names and the streets are just the space between the blocks. Asking someone what street they live on is the same as asking someone here what is the name of the block you live on? Then the numbers sometimes go in order around the block, except there are often gaps where two properties have been merged, or numbers out of order where one property has been subdivided. In other countries, there are no streets. There are paths, there are tracks, but there may not be a street with a name.

Re:Why?

[bickerdyke]

addresses that are not easily located through conventional descriptors like street names or house numbers. That's half of the world's urban population, according to a World Bank estimate.

No, they don't work for half of the world's urban population because they don't have addresses.

That was even in the summary!

Re:Why?

[Tom]

Japan has addresses, they just aren't street addresses. But they work and are unique, and unless you are a web form developer who thinks the whole world has middle names, states and zip codes, no problem that needs solving exists. They just have a different system.

Many countries have their own variations of systems. Whether street numbers are sequential or even/odd divided upon the two sides. If different entrances to the same building get different numbers, or an entrance designator (e.g. in Vienna you very often get a street address like Somestreet 5/2 where the /2 indicates the 2nd entrance).

This system and its competitors were invented to address your second situation - where no streets exist. That could be geographical (villages clustered around a central point but without streets per se) or circumstancial (slums with no official streets existing) or for any other kind of reason (that old castle on the mountain which is now a Hotel).

I honestly have no idea why they invented a system for that. We already can give the coordinates of any point on Earth with any amount of precision that you need. Sure, VXX7+39 might be slightly shorter than 38.8973,-77.0364 - but it doesn't give me information, for example how far away QXW5+38 is. 38.8039,-77.022 does.

But all that is besides the point. Cities are not just their geography. Many large buildings, for example, have one official entrance for the public to use. The geography of the building doesn't tell you that. The street address does. And many buildings have their doors close to the next buildings entrance, I know several examples where they can both easily fall within the same 3x3m square. Street address makes it clear.

A street address also tells me (if I know the numbering system) which end of a street I need to start at. Here in Vienna, for example,6CJ8+QV and 7FGH+6M are on the same street. The Plus codes gives you no useful information whatsoever. With the street address you can take one look at the nearest building and understand which direction and about how far away each of these destinations is if you are somewhere on that street.

So as a real-life navigation system, zero usefulness.
As a coordinate system, weaker than the ones we already have.
Plus (pun intended) you need access to Google Maps to figure out your current location in Plus Code. But every smartphone will tell you your GPS coordinates, doesn't even need a working network.

Even after checking their Benefits page I still fail to see any advantage whatsoever.

what3words at least has the benefit of memorability.

Re:Why?

[Hognoxious]

If there is no street, where can they do the jolly old shitty-poopoo?

Re:Why?

[DarkOx]

I agree conventional addresses are a lot more useful to the pedestrian or even the driver without a GPS unit of some kind in hand.

One problem they do suffer from though is sometimes the names change. That is fine for storing delivery/calling on information about locating a person or business where the address will get updated; its a not a good system for location of things at all. A location system should feature immutability.

The other thing sometimes street names don't confer much navigation information. Is Oak Ln, after or before Maple blvd, when traveling north -> south on High street?

Re:Why?

[Entrope]

Japanese addresses are almost useless for locating a building unless you have the neighborhood's map at hand: Because the numbers are assigned more or less chronologically, standing in front of Naninani-ku 1-3-1 does not mean you are anywhere near Naninani-ku 1-4-1. Unless you're in one of the places that uses a different system, which may be more systematic for coarse locations but not much more helpful for building locations.

"Plus Codes" are just a radix-20 method for expressing latitude and longitude. If you know how far away 38.8039,-77.022 is, that is only because you have a lot of practice using that notation. A "ten digit" Plus Code (which is 11 characters long because they add that plus sign) has resolution of 0.000125 degrees in both latitude and longitude, so it gives more precise location than your 15-character string.

Overall, I would say that Google devised Plus Codes because they didn't know about MGRS, or wanted to make something quasi-proprietary. It is weird that they spend so much space complaining about other lat/long-based locating systems without applying the same rules to Plus Codes.

W3W's major drawbacks are that it is proprietary and that it needs a huge database to translate locations. A minor drawback is that it breaks down at sea.

Re:Why?

[Tomahawk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (The European City Centre With No Street Names)

Re:Why?

[tomhath]

So as a real-life navigation system, zero usefulness.

That depends on what you mean by "real-life navigation". When you are walking on a named street that you are familiar with you can use street numbers (if you can find them on the buildings). But this system is intended for Google Maps, so a Cartesian grid (or really, a grid of grids) makes perfect sense. Find the 100 x 100 kilometer locality, then zero in on the spot of interest. That is far more efficient than trying to figure out how a street is numbered when looking at a map.

Re:Why?

[Oswald McWeany]

Sure, VXX7+39 might be slightly shorter than 38.8973,-77.0364 - but it doesn't give me information, for example how far away QXW5+38 is. 38.8039,-77.022 does.

VXX7+39 is a lot easier for a human to remember than 38.8973,-77.0364. You can remember that and punch it in for your Dominos delivery 3 years from now. Also, being able to calculate distances easily isn't really the point. This is a system to make it easier for computers and computer driven systems. They likely have no difficulty calculating the distance between VXX7+39 and QXW5+38. Stupid human need only remember his/her own code and plug it in.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's google - a lot of these issues just go away if you just plug it into google maps and do what it tells you.

(Not that that is a good thing, but it is probably Google's intention).

Re:Why?

[demonlapin]

It’s for India. Lots of slums with no real streets, let alone street names and numbers.

Re:Why?

[angel'o'sphere]

I always was fond of having 'adress fields' mot subdivided into zip and street and city etc.
But just let users write their name in the 'natural order' of their language, and the same for the address.
In the end that is hiw a software system will print it on an adress label for a parcel ... why split it up first and then have extra logic to retrievve it from the DB and format it again gor printing?

Same as other similar schemes, and same problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just not a property marker at all. It's just a more user friendly variant of latitude/longitude.

And there is the huge confusion issue inherent in having 10's, or potentially hundreds, of different codes for a particular property.

what3words

[MoogMan]

It's a shame they haven't adopted what3words (https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_sheldrick_a_precise_three_word_address_for_every_place_on_earth) instead - Easily rememberable addresses like "blocks.evenly.breed", vs "F26X+9F Gurugram" as a Plus Code.

Re:what3words

[Anonymous Coward]

What3Words is proprietary and only available through a service run by what3words Ltd. with no public pricing information available.

Re:what3words

[SmilingBoy]

Disagree. What3Words is proprietary. Something like this needs to be open source really. And whilst w3w may have the advantage of being easily remembered, you cannot tell whether two addresses are close-by. I also don't think it works well across languages as every location has a different name in different languages - the words are not translated but completely different words are used in different languages.

Re:what3words

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, the three Chinese words are easily remembered by a Chinese speaker, and the three Russian words are easily remembered by a Russian speaker. But I would find both of those very hard to remember. But here's a great idea: why not specify a location using a sequence of decimal digits, which everyone in the world can read and type?

And if you have to read it over the phone in a foreign language at least you only have to learn ten foreign words. I used to be able to count in Hungarian...

Re:what3words

[Z00L00K]

They could have used the ham radio locator instead of inventing yet another locator tool.

Re:what3words

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect as for commercial use of frequencies there is likely a commercial prohibition on using the Maidenhead Locator System.

Re:what3words

[slew]

I suspect as for commercial use of frequencies there is likely a commercial prohibition on using the Maidenhead Locator System.

You can get all sorts of commercial GPS devices that support the Maidenhead Locator system http://www.n7cfo.com/vhf/gps/~...

About the only "real" difference between google's system is that the Maidenhead system the minor details of the encoding the longitude and latitude...

Maidenhead is basically as follows...

First pair base18 [A-R], second pair base10 [0-9], third pair base24 [a-x], fourth pair base10 [0-9], subsequent pairs alternating in the 3-4 pattern after that. By alternating base encodings, it is a bit more drop-out resistant.

Where google's system uses a consistent base 20 restricted character set (23456789CFGHJMPQRVWX) chosen to avoid vowels and easily confused letters. First pair is limited to 18x9, and the smallest subdivision where it encoded as a position on a 4x5 raster.

To preserve the history of measurement of locations (and no doubt annoy all the "metric-first"** folks), both schemes attempt to preserve the "degree-of-arc" measurement. Maidenhead by having base 18 and 10, where Google simply limits the top grid to 9 rows and 18 columns. Maidenhead also attempts to preserve conversion to minute/seconds of arc by using base24, but google apparently gave up after supporting degrees (maybe to placate the "metric-first" folks?)

**my watch guy has a French Revolution Time piece which marks Decimal Time (100,000 decimal-seconds in a day)

What? 3 words needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's system looks ugly. Looks like a UK/Canadian postal address. Yuck.

What Three Words is Cool, Clean, & Clear.

That's my location BTW, Cool Clean Clear.

Gotta love it.

Re:What? 3 words needed?

[sheramil]

If it turns out your location is Where The Hell, can you petition to have them change it?

Re:What? 3 words needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you're about to move to "Now In Hell".

gps coordinates

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick run through wolfram alpha converting gps coordinates to base 36

4z.zzz = 179.999978

4z.zzy = 179.999957

Difference = 0.000021 degrees

At the equator, 1 degree = 111320m longitude and 110575m latitude (based on a quick google) which makes the 5 digit base36 encoded gps coordinates accurate to within a 2.5m x 2.5m box at the equator, and a much smaller box closer to the poles.

That's within the 3m x 3m area that google's new thingo does. Drop the decimal (or base-36al) points, and you have your character string.

Re:gps coordinates

[RoccamOccam]

If I was creating a new system, I'd definitely avoid having both a lowercase L and a 1 valid at the same positions.

Re:gps coordinates

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, but if you make it simple and based on what everyone uses today, you don't get to put out a press release about how your new standard for doing things that there's already at least 5 standards for is so shiny and spiffy.

They're solving problems that already have solutions, dammit! Stop making sense!

Yet another standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have used either Universal Transverse Mercator or Military Grid Reference System which is based on it. Coming up with competing standards borders on evil.

What 3 words

[Anonymous Coward]

... The first four characters are the area code ...

UTM and MGRS already use 100 Km squares, so this is swapping metre offsets, zones (and bands) for letters. Although a city/country descriptor isn't needed for Plus codes, it makes the co-ordinates human friendly because it uses information they already know.

Originally called Open Location Codes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code#Specification), it measures longitude and latitude, modulo 20, with a zero point of -90 Lat. (South Pole) and -180 Long., then converting the resulting number via a cipher to provide a single, unambiguous 'digit'. Thus, each pair of digits represents a subsection of the previous section. A 4x5 map-grid is used to calculate the 11th digit.

What 3 words is best in eliminating digits, although one needs to specify separately, the desired level or floor. Unfortunately, the calculation is secret, so their online service must be used for conversion.

And people don't live in multiple story bldgs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Location Code is a 2D area on the Earth not a 3D volume. Been available for years. It tiles the entire surface of the Earth - which means it wastes the codes for the 70% of the Earth underwater. Which, if I can do the math, means that the 10 digit string could be significantly shortened perhaps while adding "level" (above/below ground surface/entrance level)...

Re: And people don't live in multiple story bldgs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Math fail. 75% only saves you two bits, which is a lot less than one character or byte.

Re:And people don't live in multiple story bldgs?

[bistromath007]

So what happens when somebody builds a floating city? More practically, I might want to send something to an oil rig worker.

Re:And people don't live in multiple story bldgs?

[Anonymous Coward]

... string could be significantly shortened ...

Wrong. It uses latitude/longitude, just like UTM and GPRS. The distance between longitude 90 and 91 is fixed. If you want to specify a certain segment between those two lines, say 1 metre: It will require 5 digits to achieve.

Using lat/long makes the calculation of secondary co-ordinates consistent. It also means secondary co-ordinates can be reverted to lat/long and point-to-point calculations performed. Your idea of ignoring water areas has two problems:

1) Labeling land areas only, will result in non-adjacent zones. eg. Japan is zone 27 and Alaska is zone 28. Such compressed co-ordinates will require a large table to remember that arbitrary spacing.

2) If terra-forming, floating cities, undersea cities, or volcanic land masses arise, the numbering system will be inconsistent as there is no room to insert a new zone into the map.

Re:And people don't live in multiple story bldgs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I need an Amazon Prime delivery while on an oil drilling platform, eh?

Wasted codes, my ass!

Not an alternative to adresses

[houghi]

Adresses are used for more than people to drive to. Adresses are used to send packages to people. Adresses can be PO boxes and can include apprtment numbers, so there is a difference between a person who lives on the 2nd floor and somebody on the 3rd floor. There are plenty of places where the code will be useless and an adress will be needed.

Besides meaning a location, in many places an adress is also a legal part of other things, like the location of an address. You can not just replace the adress with a pluscode on your legal company letters in many countries.

Then there are the places that not even HAVE an address, so there is nothing to replace.

What it is is an alternative to the Geographic coordinate system

This does not mean it is a bad thing or useless, but it is NOT an alternative to adresses. If anything it complements it, not replaces it.

And then there is Geocoding that started in 1960.

Re:Not an alternative to adresses

[tomhath]

They are an alternative to addresses when an address (i.e. PO box or house number, street, and city) doesn't exist.

Google created “Plus Codes” for addresses that are not easily located through conventional descriptors like street names or house numbers. In fact, according to a World Bank estimate, half of the world’s urban population lives on unnamed streets.

Re:Not an alternative to adresses

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, this might be more useful. I often get packages and mail that are not delivered to me, but my neighbor because people are getting confused because the addresses are so close. If I could write 76X6WCR8+97, they wouldn't get it confused with my neighbor. 76X6WCR8+96P. (This isn't really me, I just looked up BFE on the map and it threw me to the Houston/Tomball area.)

In this case, yes, it would greatly simplify things. They know the street address by 76x6wcr8, then get the exact grid location by the +96P and +97.

One could feasibly use this system, as it is logical. Go north, the number goes up. Go south it goes down. West goes down, East goes up. It is literally a grid, not unlike lat/long.

If the postal carrier wasn't an idiot, I would think that, provided the plus code, he/she could easily determine addresses... especially if the people who wanted their mail delivered to 76X6WCR8+96P marked their mailbox with that number. But... I've had a package "out for delivery" for 6 months now, and they still can't find it.

Re:Not an alternative to adresses

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed - they really "solved" the wrong problem. Hell, lattitude/longitude plus a cheap gps is enough to do what they desire.

What I would love to see is an added layer of abstraction - so rather than "send to 5 widget way downtown blah-blah" or "send to lat+long", how about "send to unique-person-id"?

Also multiple designators refer to single addresse

[Anonymous Coward]

Also multiple designators refer to single individual addresses, creating fraud and obsfucation opportunities. Two people could claim the same building using different addresses. One could be a fraudster.

Even simpler solution

[fahrbot-bot]

I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, "Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile." I spent last summer folding it. I also have a full-size map of the world. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, "E6".
-- Steven Wright

Thank you!

[rnmartinez]

After spending a significant amount of time in Korea and Portugal I applaud this because some people simply do not know where they live. Sure they can give shitty directions like head south on the roundabout where Tonyâ(TM)s restaurant (which of course has no signage) then go down a ways and take a left but donâ(TM)t even know the name of their street or building number. Thank you google now roll this shit out globally asap

Re:Thank you!

[bistromath007]

I think they only talked about India because that's where it's most relevant to the urban population. Send a postcard to 87J8FPCW+HF sometime. :V

Why is this needed

[bn-7bc]

What is wrong with signed floatingpoint numbers giving lat/long/alt, whu do we need n differen systems?

Re:Why is this needed

[edtice1559]

I'm struggling with the same thing. Addresses are convenient in places where they work because they facilitate the final, local navigation especially in dense urban areas where GPS may not be accurate enough to find individual buildings. For remote places, lat/long seems like a just fine identifier. There are some cities without (good) address systems where maybe this will help. Maybe this really does assist somehow in India, but we'd need more problem description to understand it. I don't see value in North America or Western Europe.

Re:Why is this needed

[bistromath007]

Lat+long is a point, not an area. If you want to know why that's a problem, see how your GPS directions deal with a mall parking lot.

Better than eircode

[Tomahawk]

This is much better than the Irish eircode system...

With eircode, each dwelling get's their own 'postcode'. This means that in an apartment block, each individual apartment has it's own postcode. Which is nice.
But... they went to great strides to ensure that your neighbours have a completely different eircode. The codes are 'random' in order to ensure this. So it means that if someone sends you something but they wrote the code down marginally incorrect, your package will be delivered to someone several km away and not to your neighbours.

It also means that you need to either have (and have to buy) a copy of the ever-updating database locally, or have online access in order to lookup the eircode to see where you are going. And if you need to look up many of them, they'll charge you.

*sigh*

At least Google added them to maps. But they aren't a very well thought out system. This Plus system makes a lot more sense.

Do we need another grid system?

[91degrees]

So, it's yet another rectangular grid system. They have their uses, but street addresses are not one of those uses, and the areas where it is useful already have their own grid systems.

A long string of letters and numbers is not easily memorised. There's no mnemonic aspect to it. We're wasting a lot of bandwidth since a large number of grids exist entirely in the ocean, and we get a huge number in the arctic and antarctic despite the very low population density in these regions. Regions by the borders of larger blocks have completely different codes from their neighbours (unless they reverse alternating rectangles, but I don't think they are). There's no recognition even of what country someone is in.

Street address systems need to be human based. Streets are human creations. We think in terms of countries and cities, and streets. And there are several working implementations of these, each with their own pros and cons.

GPS locator

[p51d007]

Shoot, just let skynet get it over with. Implant GPS devices in every human being and be done with it.

Re:GPS locator

[Anonymous Coward]

That would only work for the Male cyborgs. Female cyborgs would still have no clue how to process the information.

US Army grid coordinates

[known_coward_69]

google just reinvented what the military has done for decades. they even have math equations to convert grids to GPS coordinates and back the other way

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[Scarred Intellect]

Yup, MGRS: Military Grid Reference System. Used by NATO, actually. If I recall correctly, 4 digit is 1000m x 1000m, 6 digit is 100m x 100m, and your 10 digit is 1m x 1m.

I guess MGRS isn't "cool" enough. "Plus codes" are "hip" and "cool" or whatever the kids are saying these days.

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[bistromath007]

Does MGRS consistently provide similar codes for nearby areas? Can you give an 8-digit code to get 10x10, or are you stuck at that more awkward jump?

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[Scarred Intellect]

Yes, I left it out for brevity. Thought it would be understood. Theoretically, you can go to 12, 14, 16, etc....can even go down as low as 2 digit if you really want to.

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[bistromath007]

Interesting. I wonder if there's a reason they didn't just put this in Google maps. Is it possible that it being a military system means they'd need permission or something? Also, does GMRS avoid easily confused characters?

I saw in another thread that plus codes apparently get more precision out of fewer characters. That would make it easier to memorize.

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[Scarred Intellect]

Perhaps. I've not looked into it.

MGRS DOES have additional information I left out. It was originally a paper map system. So there are what's called Map Sheet Designators. Each Map Sheet Designator is good for something like 100km x 100km or something like that. And then the coordinate pairs in there refer to the region of that map sheet. So 3456 7834 alone wouldn't be clear, you'd need to know which map it went to. Can easily read up more on Wikipedia, but it looks like I got the basics right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Map sheet designators can have letters such as o or i (capitalized, of course), but all coordinate pairs are numeric, so there is little chance to confuse those.

In all honesty, a grid system is the simplest, and breaking it down into as few characters to remember as possible is I think all that Google's accomplished.

Still, interesting.

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[Anonymous Coward]

... get more precision out of fewer characters ...

MGRS uses an alphabetic base-20 Latitude band and an alphabetic base-24/base-20 Map Sheet Designation, then switches to base-10 for the metric offsets. Google location codes use a (different) base-20 throughout, meaning distance calculations are more difficult but co-ordinates are shorter.

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[flink]

No permission is needed and there are open source tools that can convert between lat/lon and MGRS.

Re:US Army grid coordinates

[david_thornley]

As far as I can tell, two houses 5m apart could have seriously different plus codes if a large area border ran between them, so it looks like the plus codes don't consistently provide similar codes for nearby areas. It simply can't. It's mapping a 2d surface onto a 1d representation (the code itself), and it's impossible to do that while preserving proximity.

What these things are is basically base 20 encoding of longitude and latitude, with alternating digits of longitude and latitude.

Just used to it

[sjbe]

I agree conventional addresses are a lot more useful to the pedestrian or even the driver without a GPS unit of some kind in hand.

Only because we've built up our infrastructure with conventional addresses in mind. It would be an expensive but straightforward proposition to change that to something more universal. Every system will have its flaws but I'd be supportive of a system that didn't require an intimate knowledge of local geography to navigate and that was consistent no matter where you went.

No checksum

[petes_PoV]

Since all the characters contribute to the address, there is no redundancy. So just like with phone numbers calling the wrong person, an incorrect character will send your stuff (or visitors) to the wrong place. Possibly even to the wrong continent if one of the early characters is mistaken.

SHE IS THE ONE!

[Anonymous Coward]

https://78.media.tumblr.com/tu...

Eircode - but they have street names and addresses

[iTrawl]

Eircode assigns one post code per address. Yes, you have your own post code and you don't need to be Richie Rich. Talk about browsing a database by index key.

maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people don't want Google knowing where there are within a 3 sq-meter area.

And the bad news is

[Anonymous Coward]

Wherever you go, we will find you.

---try to deliver this line in Liam Neeson's voice

You can run, but you cannot hide

and office and apartment numbers?

[Joe_Dragon]

and office and apartment numbers?

Gee, what a great name!

[drinkypoo]

So we've got google plus, with its plus tagging, and now we have plus codes, which have nothing to do with plus or with plus tagging. That won't confuse anyone at all, ever!

Re:Gee, what a great name!

[fmoliveira]

Everything Google does other than search is a plus

Not metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does a roughly 14m x 14m area get evenly divided into smaller 3m x 3m areas?

Conspiracy theorists want to know if those metric measurements are just rounded off equivalents of US imperial measures!

Re:Not metric?

[fmoliveira]

https://plus.codes/ show it's really 12m x 15m

Like longitude and lattitude?

[Anonymous Coward]

Godd idea. Why have noone thought about that before?

Yo what up

[bistromath007]

Reppin the 87J8FP, y'all know how we do

I live at...

[CRB9000]

I live at VW7V+RG and work at VXX7+39. How do I get a license plate that shows this?

Re:I live at...

[fmoliveira]

We still need the city or the area code to properly stalk you on street view

Convenient Bombing Coordinates!

[Zorro]

Google Military Prime!

When is absolutely positively needs to be blown up in two days!

It's not an address!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an alternative to a street address - the thing about a street address is it tells you what street you should be on, which helps when you're trying to actually go there.

It's an alternative to, for example, giving the GPS coordinates of your house.

Except that your GPS can already navigate to a set of coordinates, and can't navigate to a Google text string.

WW1 trench co-ordinates

[Ted Stoner]

World War 1 British Trench co-ordinates were down to 5 x 5 yard squares. 3m x 3m is even tighter than that so good.

What's wrong with Lat/Lon?

[Rick Schumann]

Why aren't lat/lon coordinates good enough?

Re:What's wrong with Lat/Lon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! This!

Communicating a bunch of decimals might be difficult though since humans rely on names, not numbers. Computers rely on numbers, not names.

Sounds like Military Map Coordinates

[Slicker]

This sounds very much like military map coordinates used the by U.S. military... In fact, I wonder if it corresponds identically?

However, the city navigation part is interesting to me. I haven't read how that part works yet but from the description, I am imagining that even if a city crosses over the line partly into another "area code", the coordinates are still useful... For example, if the left of an area starts at 0 and goes right to 1000 then one could speak of negative numbers to mean so far to the left of the area (or over 1000 for the right).. hence giving coordinates relative to the area of focus, even when not in that area.

Seriously though, this sounds like the military map coordinate system which is also usually used up to 10 digits with lesser accuracies at lower digits.. like 6 digits. And maps are made at different scales like 1:50,000 to fit the coordinate system seamlessly. Using the metric system, you can also seamlessly go down to whatever level of precision you like, by expanding it beyond 10 digits. It's just 6 or 10 are standards.

Matthew

You still get GPS coordinates

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, you put any of the encodings into a computer program, and you'll get GPS coordinates, and a route to take you there.

The point of these encodings is to make it make easy for humans to share them.

They are good for machines, not humans.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's difficult for humans to remember or communicate numbers like those in the GPS coordinate system.

The purpose of these various encodings is to accentuate properties that are more amenable to human minds.

Doomed to fail

[scdeimos]

We've already had a Google Plus come and go. Are Google projects so short-lived that they're recycling names now?

what about elevation?

[bobmajdakjr]

i used to live on the 24th floor... with this system so many doors are going to share even that 3x3

Re:3x3 option code almost mandatory (VE IT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Venezia in North Italy. It's not just the gondolas on canals, but their calle (walkways) are so narrow one can usually touch walls on both sides simultaneously, sometimes not even an opened umbrella would fit.

During its heyday the charming water-borne city housed 200k people, being the world's most populous settlement during renaissance era and remains as such like a "time capsule" the so the non-palace venetian homes are positively tiny, there are a myriad of them and their entrances are located in the most impossible places. Dead ends are galore. There are also "sotoportego" (underpasses) where the entrance of one house can only be reached by walking under another.

Furthermore Venezia has no street addresses with house numbers, just six quartiers and a continuously running numbering scheme in each one (i.e. San Polo 3419). It is easy to get lost even today because GPS and mobile network reception often drops to zero in narrow walled up places.

All in all, if a scheme works for Venezia it will work anywhere on Earth and beyond!

And that gives Google access to all your stuff.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Major reason being: Now you need a smartphone with google maps. Google is no longer optional to your life.

And that gives Google access to essentially everything on your smartphone (as I just discovered when trying to shut down some unwanted apps.)

Google Maps itself claims it only needs permission for "your location". Reasonable, you'd think.

But disable Google Play Services and Google Maps starts complaining about how it "won't work unless you enable" it. So it has an unannounced (until you break it) proprietary pipe to the other app.

Google Play Services wants permissions for:
  - Body Sensors,
  - Calendar,
  - Camera,
  - Contacts,
  - Microphone,
  - Phone,
  - SMS, and
  - Storage
(and you EXPECT it to be "phoning home" to google.) Combine that with Maps' permission to
  - your location
and you've got quite the collection of information on you that you've just given Google's app framework permission to report to Google and/or modify.

Seems to me the android Apps -> Permissions interface, by not calling out the other apps that a given app communicates with, along with THEIR permissions, nor refusing an app permission to talk to another with additional permissions, is deceptive and gives false confidence.