You'd say that Google Maps hasn't improved much in the last 20 years?

You'd say that Google Maps hasn't improved much in the last 20 years?

My best friend bought a house. She noticed within the first month that the name of the road she lived on was misspelled in Google Maps. Specifically, it's a slightly unusual spelling of the road name. Like "Chickorie" vs "Chickory". It's particularly annoying because there's a road the next town over with the traditional spelling. It doesn't even share address numbers, but Google Maps still frequently misdirects people. It's correct everywhere else. The road sign, the municipal tax parcel GIS, the post office, Apple Maps, MapQuest, OpenStreetMaps. All of them had the correct name, except Google Maps. So she reported it through Google Maps. And reported it. And reported it. Every few months she reports it again. She's asked friends to report it as well. It's still wrong. She bought her house in 2015.

My best friend bought a house. She noticed within the first month that the name of the road she lived on was misspelled in Google Maps. Specifically, it's a slightly unusual spelling of the road name. Like "Chickorie" vs "Chickory". It's particularly annoying because there's a road the next town over with the traditional spelling. It doesn't even share address numbers, but Google Maps still frequently misdirects people. It's correct everywhere else. The road sign, the municipal tax parcel GIS, the post office, Apple Maps, MapQuest, OpenStreetMaps. All of them had the correct name, except Google Maps. So she reported it through Google Maps. And reported it. And reported it. Every few months she reports it again. She's asked friends to report it as well. It's still wrong. She bought her house in 2015.

My "oh google maps" story was that I was hanging out at a new cider bar in my neighborhood and asked the owner why I couldn't find it on google. They said they got a message that they'd been banned for listing boosting - which they said they didn't do any had no idea. So I reached out to an acquaintance who knew a lot of maps people. Some investigation later it was entirely unclear why the bar was banned - it was some conflict with overlapping systems deep in the map bowels - and the bar is visible again. It's just good luck that the owner happened to talk to me and I happened to know someone who looked into it!

My "oh google maps" story was that I was hanging out at a new cider bar in my neighborhood and asked the owner why I couldn't find it on google. They said they got a message that they'd been banned for listing boosting - which they said they didn't do any had no idea. So I reached out to an acquaintance who knew a lot of maps people. Some investigation later it was entirely unclear why the bar was banned - it was some conflict with overlapping systems deep in the map bowels - and the bar is visible again. It's just good luck that the owner happened to talk to me and I happened to know someone who looked into it!

This kind of support should be mandated for any digital utilities company such as Google. The difference between small business success and insolvency was based on the shier luck of being graced with the presence of someone in contact with the priesthood of Google, where no real contact from the plebian citizenry is allowed. Exactly this kind of thing is why the EU feels the need to regulate the shit out of U.S. big tech.

This kind of support should be mandated for any digital utilities company such as Google. The difference between small business success and insolvency was based on the shier luck of being graced with the presence of someone in contact with the priesthood of Google, where no real contact from the plebian citizenry is allowed. Exactly this kind of thing is why the EU feels the need to regulate the shit out of U.S. big tech.

These things can accumulate and ruin lives. I'm surprised that there haven't been more class action lawsuits against "errors" like these. Because it might seem like a benign accident -- but how many people have lost important parts of their lives – banking, photos of their children and more – because "computer says no?" Eventually, these systems will be mostly artificially generated, and perhaps the machines will have fewer error rates than the humans. Perhaps not. But how many humans will understand the machines well enough to ask these questions in the first place? Machines were supposed to free us from bureaucracy. Not freeze it everywhere with few avenues for escape. I have had an encounter with something like this via Wise / Transferwise. It has been half a decade and nada. And I estimate that it has cost me north of $20k+ over that time. Google, Wise and heck Maps were started with the ambition of adding something to the world — e.g. Google's original "organize all knowledge" mission - but over time cruft accrues and these companies rapidly accumulate negative side effects / drift away from their core mission. When was the last time Google / Alphabet / whatever did something that involved improving access to the world's knowledge? They've degraded their search to the point of uselessness and beyond. Slowly alienated their best researchers and engineers. And done their best to turn away from the entity that made Google Books — "we'll scan all the books for the good of all humankind."

These things can accumulate and ruin lives. I'm surprised that there haven't been more class action lawsuits against "errors" like these. Because it might seem like a benign accident -- but how many people have lost important parts of their lives – banking, photos of their children and more – because "computer says no?" Eventually, these systems will be mostly artificially generated, and perhaps the machines will have fewer error rates than the humans. Perhaps not. But how many humans will understand the machines well enough to ask these questions in the first place? Machines were supposed to free us from bureaucracy. Not freeze it everywhere with few avenues for escape. I have had an encounter with something like this via Wise / Transferwise. It has been half a decade and nada. And I estimate that it has cost me north of $20k+ over that time. Google, Wise and heck Maps were started with the ambition of adding something to the world — e.g. Google's original "organize all knowledge" mission - but over time cruft accrues and these companies rapidly accumulate negative side effects / drift away from their core mission. When was the last time Google / Alphabet / whatever did something that involved improving access to the world's knowledge? They've degraded their search to the point of uselessness and beyond. Slowly alienated their best researchers and engineers. And done their best to turn away from the entity that made Google Books — "we'll scan all the books for the good of all humankind."

Google just lost a lawsuit by an unnamed big media company in Germany because its AI kept telling people the media company was a scam. This is the only form of feedback that companies like Google actually listen to.

Google just lost a lawsuit by an unnamed big media company in Germany because its AI kept telling people the media company was a scam. This is the only form of feedback that companies like Google actually listen to.

My anecdote is worth just as much as yours. I moved cross-country in early 2016 (for work at Google) and noticed when we closed on our house that the next street over was mis-pronounced by Google Maps. I reported it and it was fixed within a week.

My anecdote is worth just as much as yours. I moved cross-country in early 2016 (for work at Google) and noticed when we closed on our house that the next street over was mis-pronounced by Google Maps. I reported it and it was fixed within a week.

you moved there --to work at google; you reported it --while you worked at google. What is different hmmmm

you moved there --to work at google; you reported it --while you worked at google. What is different hmmmm

If they reported it via the normal Google Maps reporting function, it doesn't actually make a difference, does it?

If they reported it via the normal Google Maps reporting function, it doesn't actually make a difference, does it?

The difference is the location of the house.

The difference is the location of the house.

Google Maps put a town label near my parents' house that is a name that was on some old maps in the 1910s, but fell completely out of use before the current suburb was built in the 70s and 80s. I had never heard it once in my life until I was in my early 20s and met a transplant who had picked up the name from Google Maps. I attempted to report it as inaccurate (USGS has had it as being out of use for decades) multiple times over the years, but no reply.

Google Maps put a town label near my parents' house that is a name that was on some old maps in the 1910s, but fell completely out of use before the current suburb was built in the 70s and 80s. I had never heard it once in my life until I was in my early 20s and met a transplant who had picked up the name from Google Maps. I attempted to report it as inaccurate (USGS has had it as being out of use for decades) multiple times over the years, but no reply.

Google puts the "Warsaw-Berlin Urstromtal" (glacial valley?) right in the middle of the river near the Friedrichstraße train station. You can be browsing the area and suddenly, yep, there's a glacial valley there in the middle of the river. According to Google. This is a large-scale geographical feature that crosses most of Germany and Poland. But actually it's in the river next to Friedrichstraße station.

Google puts the "Warsaw-Berlin Urstromtal" (glacial valley?) right in the middle of the river near the Friedrichstraße train station. You can be browsing the area and suddenly, yep, there's a glacial valley there in the middle of the river. According to Google. This is a large-scale geographical feature that crosses most of Germany and Poland. But actually it's in the river next to Friedrichstraße station.

Most of the neighbourhood names in my large European city were like this on Google Maps. Either old names or hyperspecific landmark/street names that I had never heard being used as synecdoche for the area. This was definitely true 4-5 years ago. I looked now and it's mostly better at most levels of zoom.

Most of the neighbourhood names in my large European city were like this on Google Maps. Either old names or hyperspecific landmark/street names that I had never heard being used as synecdoche for the area. This was definitely true 4-5 years ago. I looked now and it's mostly better at most levels of zoom.

Google maps uses suggestive names (e.g. a park walkway given a name by the municipality) as official road names, and when it does that it marked it as a cycling path. Both are invalid and cycling on them is illegal. This has been going on for years.

Google maps uses suggestive names (e.g. a park walkway given a name by the municipality) as official road names, and when it does that it marked it as a cycling path. Both are invalid and cycling on them is illegal. This has been going on for years.

It redirects cars on foot/bikepaths near rivers, with the danger of sliding in.

It redirects cars on foot/bikepaths near rivers, with the danger of sliding in.

Google Maps have an address API some companies use when filling out addresses for shipments. Despite my building existing for over 10 years, putting in “flat number, building name” into that system will be rewritten to “house number, building name road” which is an address on a he other side of town (and London ain’t exactly small). I’ve had multiple orders go missing as a result.

Google Maps have an address API some companies use when filling out addresses for shipments. Despite my building existing for over 10 years, putting in “flat number, building name” into that system will be rewritten to “house number, building name road” which is an address on a he other side of town (and London ain’t exactly small). I’ve had multiple orders go missing as a result.

Yeah, the google maps address thing just overwrites my post code, and some senders in the US don’t appear to pay attention to that.

Yeah, the google maps address thing just overwrites my post code, and some senders in the US don’t appear to pay attention to that.

The trick is use the right keywords. "Dear Sir and Madam of google, im writing you to inform you, about a possible liability your software opens itself up to, by referencing emergency vehicles to the wrong road. Example: Regards"

The trick is use the right keywords. "Dear Sir and Madam of google, im writing you to inform you, about a possible liability your software opens itself up to, by referencing emergency vehicles to the wrong road. Example: Regards"

Usually street data comes from an official source. You probably should have reported the issue to the local government rather than Google. (Just because the name is correct on some government material doesn't mean it's correct everywhere.)

Usually street data comes from an official source. You probably should have reported the issue to the local government rather than Google. (Just because the name is correct on some government material doesn't mean it's correct everywhere.)

It’s doing a great job making sure I know where Burger King is when zooming into a city

It’s doing a great job making sure I know where Burger King is when zooming into a city

No kidding. When I zoom in on a few square miles around my house and ask to see restaurants, it shows only a few of them even though there is plenty of space -- it isn't like it has to prune some to make it readable. I zoom in and some appear that weren't there before ... why? There was room to display it before I zoomed in. Gaaah!

No kidding. When I zoom in on a few square miles around my house and ask to see restaurants, it shows only a few of them even though there is plenty of space -- it isn't like it has to prune some to make it readable. I zoom in and some appear that weren't there before ... why? There was room to display it before I zoomed in. Gaaah!

Oh wow I always complain about this, I didn't realize other people were also so frustrated by this. Tons and tons of cafes by my house, but I zoom in with about a six block radius, where there are at least 20 cafes or cafe-restaurants there, and literally 1 or 2 come up.

The grocer on my block is so tiny that I hit the max zoom before it shows up. If you pan around fiddle I can occasionally get it to appear, but it effectively does not exist according to google maps.

This is to force you to use search rather than your eyes.

Not to mention that zooming in will make some listings disappear

Yeah I utterly despise using Google Maps now because of this. In my neighborhood, there are restaurants that will only appear at a very specific zoom level. Zoom in OR out and they'll disappear. I see things when I'm out and about all the time that just never appear on Google Maps -- cafes for instance. You can search cafe, coffee, restaurant, etc and they won't appear. Search the exact name and it comes up with 300 reviews. Sometimes, they'll come up in general search in week 1, disappear in week 2, and reappear in week 3. Google is not good at consumer software and not a responsible company in many ways; Maps really deserves to be replaced with something, but unfortunately there's no competitor to speak of. Apple Maps is nice but listings don't come up because they're literally not in the database.

I'd assume it's pruning to make only the best-paying (to Google) restaurants visible.

Interesting submission on that topic : How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203343

I started to notice "Turn left at the light, after the Chipotle™" last year... ads in my turn by turn navigation is next level innovation

I believe that the initial idea there was to refer to notable landmarks and these company signs are readable from a distance. But yes, they could serve well as ad space.

This also works much better in the vast slabs of the world where roads don't have names, or if they do, they're signposted badly if at all. (India, Japan, most of Africa, etc.)

So you think they weren’t getting paid for this? You think they just freely mention corporate food companies purely for users benefit?

Not relative to its available resources. For example, there's still no option to penalize intersections. I'm still getting absurd side-street routes and unprotected lefts/crossings to save 1 minute on a 20-minute trip.

It is still drawing bike lane networks in cemeteries and random bits of grass and pavement. So no. The way I see it is is actually worse than it was in 2006. When I opened it today it asked me if I would like to see Dua Lipa's recommended restaurants.

Sir, this is Dua Lipas favorites Wendys - do not cause a promotion commotion, not again Sir!

It's been up and down for about 8-12 years. Problems get fixed and new ones get added without a particular direction, at least that's what it feels like as a regular user. Some come back years after they were first fixed.

Maps peaked after Google acquired Waze in 2013 and integrated the data. Since then they've added worthless annoying social features and more advertising.

Go to a park near your house with walking paths in it. Compare Google Maps with OSM. That said; of course Google Maps has improved and is likely better than alternatives in lots of ways, but it’s actually not great or anywhere near the detail and granularity of OSM when it comes to the actual map part.

Id say it improved until about 2016, since then the additions have generally made the software worse. More overlays and popups More needlessly verbose navigation instructions Less predictable routes. Thats just the start

"needlessly verbose navigation instructions" You ever try to navigate the highway systems in either DC or Houston with verbal instructions enabled? It sounds like someone is having a stroke.

Yep to the point where its easier without the gps.

Apple Maps has been better than Google Maps for at least 10 years and nowadays the way that Google Maps improves is often just by copying Apple Maps

I’ve agreed for a long time… Unfortunately though, Apple Maps just added Ads, so expect them to start having the same issues as Google Maps does (like showing big ads for every location whenever you’re moving around at the map). After Apple Maps being one of my favorite reasons for having an iPhone for the last 7ish years, I’m back to OpenStreetMaps mostly, or still Google to look up business hours. Sad… but having downloaded maps will probably be a good thing long-term

odds of a given street being labeled on gmaps for android still feels like 50/50 unless you get the zoom exactly right

This is my biggest annoyance. Such a crap shoot if I can actually see the street names.

It's rather baffling how little they've improved it in certainly the last 15 years. Waze is certainly the better consumer product, even if it relies on similar (the same?) backend software. Apple Maps has caught up and passed it in terms of usable software, even if the actual map quality is worse in some places. For instance: there's no way to get it to stop killing directions on reaching the destination. Apple Maps puts you into "parking" mode where you can still see the route to the destination—extremely useful for cities where you might have to drive around a bit to find a space.

Google has said to turn right at an intersection where you are turning left for years because it doesn't know about a T shaped intersection that tens of thousands use a day.

My house and street and surrounding streets still aren’t on Google Maps after a month post closing (new development). It’s on Apple Maps and Uber; Amazon and FedEx deliver. Google Maps feels like I’m constantly in an A B test for how bad it can be and I’m always getting the bad side. It repeatedly doesn’t update in CarPlay, showing the same miles to destination as I progress. It doesn’t label streets well either. I try to manually find routes in SF and I have to switch to Apple Maps because not enough streets are labeled no matter how much or little I zoom.

It's a mixed bag at best. The product has had numerous features pushed, but in the US, the navigation feature is objectively worse than 5+ years ago. Too much spoonfeeding of directions to ensure the app is kept on. But the app won't actually tell you the freeway number and direction - which the driver can see on the dozen signs on the road. Or, the incessant "police activity" shit from Waze. That creates all kinds of rear ending hazards as morons try to slow down.

I didn't realize till you said this how it's their fault I have to turn on my screen at every important turn to tell which road they mean, because they won't just say "turn onto the interchange, EXIT 7A".

I used to be able to view maps in 3D. Not anything fancy, just a tilt shift. This year I noticed the feature appears to be gone. Also, if I want to see my home city with an up to date overhead view from this side of 2023 to see what has been built lately, I have to go look up Sentinel imagery. I would claim it has indeed become worse.

Maps thinks it's fine to do a u-turn on the Sydney harbour bridge.

I wonder if it ever does that for the SF Bay Bridge. "Perform Immelmann turn in 200 feet"

Is this like a platform 9 3/4 thing?

Maps straight up can't navigate sanely in Australia I've found. I've switched to OsmAnd for driving because it'll give a sensible main road following route. Google Maps reliably sends me down residential roads and adds a whole bunch of turns and then winds up with idiot ideas like "turn right into this two way 4 lane road we tried to slightly avoid".

It does less than before and it blocks more things and has more spam. Now you have to pay for map embedding on a website. Let's go back 20 years

Google bought Google Earth from Keyhole. I had a Keyhole account long before Google was in the business, and it worked about like Google Earth does now.

Keyhole dates back to 2001 and draws on several precursors, eg: ERMapper (Perth, Western Australia) which offered similar functionality in the 1990s - in addition to computational process pipelines for, say, warping and geomosaicing inputs, multi spectral filtering (adding and subtracting weighted bands to sharpen certain features, etc). ER Mapper was the first software I dog fooded that transferred images without the dial up scan line by scan line top down process that existed to that point in time. The same discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and variation techniques occurred to several entities at much the same time .. some US patent pettiness killed a lot of development for a couple of years from 1999 forward: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LizardTech,_Inc._v._Earth_Reso... .

Over the last 8-10 years or so, I’d say it has gotten considerably worse.

It’s regressed a lot.

I'd say it's much worse than it used to be.

I'd say it's devolved aggressively at least on mobile. Between the firehose of modal bullshit I didn't ask for, sub-optimal pathfinding, and annoying prompts from waze legacy features there's a ton of unwanted friction added to the process.

Google: HOW ABOUT SOME AI ON IT?!? You know you want it. Lmao