Google Maps keeps getting worse

https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1648087057233858560

by dralley • 3 years ago

47 35 3 years ago

Can confirm!

I would be what is considered a Google Maps Power User for the last 10+ years, everything from user to developer.

Just last month, I finally had enough and downloaded Open Street Maps. Not because it's "better" overall (i.e. obviously Gmaps is more polished, smoother, cleaner interface, satellite tiles, etc), but because it's better in the way that a normal person would want to use a "map". Emphasis on "map", not an advertising board.

For example, I was trying to find the name of a very prominent river in Alaska, and no amount of zooming in, panning, clicking, or tilting in Gmaps revealed the name. I followed the river from start to finish, thinking it would display the name eventually, with no luck. Same for a prominent mountain. Similar results happen for things like street names, labels, anything that is not the nearest McDonalds or the 17 Starbucks that are in the viewport (that I'm clearly not looking for or interested in, based on either my searches or my clicks).

It's getting to the point where Google Maps should be renamed Google Billboard, because it is having less and less in common with a map.

ocdtrekkie2• 3 years ago

I haven't used Google Maps in like 5+ years, and was absolutely stunned when I saw recent screenshots of it. Who wants that many ads on their maps when better options are out there?

adlpz• 3 years ago

I'm looking for alternatives. What's out there for my two common use cases?

- Car navigation through Carplay that includes traffic data.

- Finding businesses i.e. restaurants, shops, services quickly.

I'm not loving GMaps lately buy tbh it does work as expected in those scenarios.

spaceman_2020• 3 years ago

Same problem for me. It absolutely refuses to recognize some major roads and will keep diverting me through longer routes. Which is baffling because it worked well for yars before that.

rhaway84773• 3 years ago

This issue with not being able to identify street names became a massive problem for me while traveling in Iraly this year.

When walking from place to place in cities, I like to memorize the entire path so I can actually look around on my walk as opposed to having my face buried in the phone. But Google Maps made it almost impossible to identify the names of at least half the streets I would try to know (so I know what streets to turn into, etc). Looking at the text directions doesn’t help because my memorization requires me to have a mental image of the path, and correlating the text directions with the maps image is way too time consuming.

Now, this actual use case might be rare. But the idea that a map cannot be used to identify street names in large European cities is just terrible. And for comparison, I’ve done this for over a decade and I don’t remember this ever being a problem before say 2017-2018 even though I was visiting far smaller cities over that period.

euroderf• 3 years ago

OpenStreetMap has similar problem. Often, finding a street name requires futile, fumbly scrolling and resizing. Quite frustrating.

anenefan2• 3 years ago

If this refers to google maps on the web ... if one is looking for a location without luck, my guess it also uses google location which is a separate and broken service. It's broken as in part either deliberately as a dark pattern or just because no one there cares, despite some of the time, the map actually having the right information hard coded into them.

I only recently discovered ... or the penny dropped why various issues I'd been having in regard to being listed in a neighbouring suburb. I had bounced against the decline in google map information and accuracy for the last 10 years or so. In that same time most delivery services have stopped doing to the door deliveries out in my rural area because they use google maps, those that persist to try a to the door delivery and don't use a local driver in my area, usually waste a couple of hours driving up and down the road ignoring the road markers and preferring what their device is telling them.

Sure I could make an account, hand over more private data and fix my own issue, but so many addresses I've looked up via google in my area are not right. I now tell services to use apple maps which seem to be on the money and ditch their google since it seems to be waiting for half the population to make accounts to sort out their address.

dralley• 3 years ago

He's referring to the map-making features

anenefan2• 3 years ago

I figured he probably was ... but in a round about way I'm sort of inferring it probably also uses the google location service to build a map, otherwise where do the suggested locations come from - if they're hard encoded in the map in the first place, the location is there to see and not selectable.

perryizgr8• 3 years ago

In the night mode, colours are so badly chosen that it becomes hard to differentiate between the path I'm supposed to take and the alternative path it is suggesting. Both are slightly different shades of grey. These things should be impossible to miss, even at a glance. It's an app people are expected to look at while driving.

lern_too_spel• 3 years ago

Nobody who works on it cares. Fixing simple bugs isn't going to get you a promotion.

sangriafria• 3 years ago

I think a lot of companies jumped on dark mode without considering the proper colours needed. I've started using light mode again and I've found that the colour choices are much better, but YMMV.

moi23882• 3 years ago

Not only maps.. look up when Google introduced a working product for the last time. After around 2009 they haven’t actually done anything except launch failing products, or make their already existing products shittier.

WXLCKNO• 3 years ago

That's an interesting take. anyone have a counter to this?

moi23882• 3 years ago

Look it up. There is a list of Google product on Wikipedia. Go ahead and find 1 functioning product that isn’t absolute garbage from after 2009. I dare you :D

michelb• 3 years ago

Another area where Google is asleep at the wheel I think. Too comfortable because there is no challenger and nobody cares about how it actually works. I can't wait for Google to be surprised by smaller competitors with actual product focus.

bibanez• 3 years ago

I don't drive but when I act as copilot I find Waze to be more useful than GMaps for navigation, as an example

hoseja• 3 years ago

Try mapy.cz , it's surprisingly decent even for international use.

mFixman• 3 years ago

To me, the greatest proof of the "lack of love" Google is putting into Maps is seen when I zoom in the city I live in and I get a bunch of hotels.

Adding a "if user lives in $city then he probably won't stay in a hotel in $city" would have a positive impact in all Google Maps users, but the measurable impact is likely too small to make a difference in a Staff Engineer's Perf so it's deprioritised under another new set of check-in notifications.

aww_dang• 3 years ago

I still haven't figured out how to get Google maps to display hotel prices in USD or EUR.

Even if I don't want to travel to that place, I don't mind a somewhat irrelevant result for a resort. Trying to hustle me into registering for that hotel with the localized currency of my current geotargetted location doesn't make sense. I don't bank in 3rd world units and the resort isn't in that location either.

Totally irrelevant, but try changing that setting in under 15 minutes. I haven't found a way.

I might have made an impulse buy. Instead I was annoyed by terrible UX.

PlutoIsAPlanet• 3 years ago

Google's software quality has been going down hill for years now.

kderbyma• 3 years ago

I am beginning to believe it's on purpose.

dr_kiszonka• 3 years ago

What would the purpose be?

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

They really shouldn’t have laid off all the devs and let the PMs just use bard

jasonjamerson• 3 years ago

I can't stand that they hide my starred places during a search. I'm trying to see where the thing is! Maybe it's close to something I know!

nvarsj• 3 years ago

Also, why is the iOS app so bad? All prompts keep disappearing on me and I have to try to figure out how to get a prompt again (I think it’s by tapping in some mystery region at the top of the screen?). Ugh. It’s very frustrating to use.

greatgib• 3 years ago

Long time ago, I used to be excited by available updates for app. New feature and fixes were expected.

Nowadays, I try to not update until we can't use something anymore, because most of the time updates are for useless new UI designs that you did not ask for, updating telemetry/spy features, and limiting features or adding new ways to nag you for money for features that you used to have.

yellowapple• 3 years ago

I still feel that excitement when it's some community-maintained FOSS app.

Google Maps keeps getting worse

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