
Ask HN: What improvements would you want to see to Google Maps Nearby feature - sova
Google maps, as powerful as it is, still serves primarily as a navigation tool.  It doesn&#x27;t have the fine-tuned sense of a concierge or a recommendation service for particular events or happenings in the area.  As a diverse and somewhat stratified collection of tools and layers on Maps, what would you like to see in the instance of locality and nearby recommendations?  What sort of improvements do you think could be made on the model Google has with dominant market share?
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jolmg
You mean that "Explore nearby" thing? I wish it would just stay down. Every
single time I open the map I have to drag it down. It uses too much space, and
what do I want to explore in my home city for? I know all the places I want to
go to. It really serves no purpose on the average use of Google Maps. There's
an "Explore" button that brings it up, so why does it have to take up 50% of
my screen every time I open Google Maps? "Explore" by its very nature is not
so useful that the UI needs to prioritize it at the same level as the map
itself.

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londons_explore
Agreed. Google maps is too bloated, slow, and cluttered, and I suspect the
explore feature is a big component of all of those things.

Don't get me wrong - it's a nice feature and sometimes useful. It just isn't
useful enough to be worth taking 2 extra seconds to load anything.

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alok-g
Aside: Most importantly, I would like to see the older Google maps interface
back that did less trying to predict what I want to click. The current version
continues to mispredict nearly all the time.

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gesman
+1

This seems to be pattern with all services that got infected with "Clippy"
syndrome and keep stepping on your toes trying to predict/help/correct without
being asked for. Then they pimp themselves on how advanced they are in
leveraging AI.

I find myself learning to make explicit "wrong" choices so they're auto-
correct me in the actual direction I want to go.

