
Google Maps is about to get a lot more ads - chippy
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/24/11761794/google-maps-promoted-pins-announced-ads-coupons
======
heavymark
Google was great because it surfaces the most relevant results, but more ads
infiltrate everything it surfaces results with the largest wallets who rarely
are the most relevant. On the bright side it's good news for Apple whose
business model isn't reliant on ads. While Apple can't yet beat Google's
mapping technologies, I think instead it's hoping in the long run Google will
ruin itself that people will prefer an inferior technology but one that values
their privacy and relevancy.

~~~
Brakenshire
Good news for OpenStreetMap, as well. And a good illustration of why it is an
important project.

~~~
legulere
Openstreetmap sadly has some relatively big flaws (this is coming from a
regular openstreetmap contributor).

* The copyleft license ODbL probably will mean that there never will be a huge adoption. The situation simply is different with a geo database compared to software or one art piece.

* Vandalism very easily goes unnoticed, as there is no review at all for edits. If something that went wrong is found, reverting is very hard to do, often left to some expert group that only does that.

* Tags indicating when things were last checked are hardly in use. So the database contains tons of information that might not be true anymore or might never have been true.

* The data model lacks persistency, the tags of a shop might go from a node to the building area it's in or otherwise effectively loosing the history. It's very hard to find out where something really came from (editor and source).

* The data model also lacks a good way of dealing with areas (especially ones with holes in them), multipolygon relations are a hack barely supported in editors that often lead beginners to feel overwhelmed. On the other hand there are no curves, just straight lines, because bezier lines are supposed to be too confusing for beginners.

* All the data is in one huge database, not split up into layers.

* There are hardly any volunteers in America. It's an import desert.

~~~
Spivak
> The copyleft license ODbL probably will mean that there never will be a huge
> adoption. The situation simply is different with a geo database compared to
> software or one art piece.

From OSM:

> You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as
> you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. If you alter or build upon
> our data, you may distribute the result only under the same license.

How is this not an absolute necessity for the long term success of the
project? Without it, someone can just slurp up the data, add their own, and
then shut OSM out.

~~~
maxerickson
I think if there was no share back requirement you would still have one
project that would be the social nexus of the data. Forking and closing the
database just to add some trails in Wyoming would not make much sense (as a
silly example).

In essence, careful respect for the license isn't the main driver for
contribution.

I think it would certainly lead to more competitors, people would take the
data and do their own value add, but I think it is quite an open question
whether they would be able to actually become considerably better databases.

(I'm roughly indifferent to the share back requirement. I don't think it is
needed but given how much support there is for it in the community it isn't
worth discussing over and over)

------
studentrob
So it's going to get even slower? Awesome!

I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else.

Honestly, what a sell out. What was once neutral territory for businesses is
now available for bidding.

Does Google need this revenue? What is the problem with the existing maps that
they are solving?

I see the full keynote is here [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW1LS94wLJw)

~~~
IBM
Google is increasing ad sizes and frequency because growth is slowing.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-
frequenc...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of-
ads-1464105600)

~~~
studentrob
The solution to Google's dwindling advertising market is to increase the size
of ads on content I watch?

Noooooooooooooooo =(. Sounds like a good chance for competitors to jump in.

Thanks for sharing this though, I didn't know that =)

------
Agustus
Google is on track, albeit slowly, to the AltaVista destination.

When in 1999, before the first collapse, the competitors to Google were
inundating users with in-result ads, crazy load times and odd results. This
was pushed by the stock's need to show constant revenue growth.

Google now is adding more ads, configuring the ads in-line to increase clicks
(yes, they are 65% relevant), integrating an obtuse implementation within
Maps, and so forth.

DuckDuckGo becomes more viable each day as an alternative.

~~~
rudolf0
I can't deny any of that, and DDG has a better UX, but Google is still by far
superior when it comes to returning relevant results. I do a lot of Googling
for my job (and life), and nothing I've tried seems to compare to Google's
results yet.

~~~
Agustus
Absolutely. Google is far and away what I fall back to when I need to really
find something. That being said, I use Bing and DDG as my defaults to see if I
get good enough results.

~~~
hackney
Even though I have the latest version of Maps installed I never use it and it
is disabled and blocked from the net. Osmand works great, aside from when it
tells you to get on a freeway; it doesn't, and will say something like "veer
right", which has caused some headaches. Searching within osmand for an exact
address also sucks. I have to enter Los Angeles for cities such as say,
Reseda, when it should know better. Thankfully the fdroid apk AddressToGps
fixes the search perfectly, allowing you to enter an exact address which then
uses a google api to pull up the exact coordinates which is then seamlessly
handed off to Osmand. All you do after is tell it to map the route. Without
addressTogps, osmand is practically unuseable. GEO Bookmark, fdroid repo, is
also an excellent companion ap to osmand.

------
makecheck
Between this and the total redesigns that keep making things harder to use for
no reason, Google seems to have no interest in people actually using their
products. I’ve never seen a single company with more cases of “geez this stuff
is all great if you’d _just leave it the hell alone_ …”.

For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so
that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky
they’re even in this business.

~~~
digi_owl
> For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so
> that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky
> they’re even in this business.

huh?

------
typetypetype
It feels that ad space is in a downward spiral. The more space these companies
convert to ads, the less the ads are worth and the more space they need to
convert. Instagram in particular seems to really be falling into this cycle.

~~~
majewsky
Plus the more obnoxious ads get, the more people [1] will go to adblockers.

[1] Or businesses, e.g. Opera has an integrated adblocker now, and Firefox
blocks tracking while in privacy mode (and they plan to expand this to the
normal mode, IIRC).

------
reustle
I already see plenty of logos on google maps here in Japan (mostly convenience
stores), even without searching anything. I guess this news is only regarding
results?

[http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png](http://i.imgur.com/6eGBKN6.png)

~~~
ma2rten
Those are icons, the post is talking about sponsored company logos.

~~~
jessriedel
That image does show a 7-11 company logo, though.

~~~
jpatokal
Japan has had those for quite some time. I presume it's because convenience
stores are a _really_ big thing in Japan and there isn't really anything like
a universally recognizable generic convenience store sign.

------
sveme
If it weren't for the traffic conditions and satellite images, I would not be
using Google Maps anymore - it's been incredibly slow on both the Android app
and the web. Takes about 30 secs of loading until I can finally switch on
satellite images. Is it change for change's sake that bloats so many company
offerings after a while?

~~~
digi_owl
I think it is the marketing belief that unless they show change over time,
people will think the product abandoned.

You see this in the FOSS world as well. I think there was a presentation
posted recently by a former project lead that had his project co-opted and
forked because he refused to release a new update until he deemed it "ready".

------
djaychela
I think that Google Maps is becoming more and more advert-based regardless of
this; Once a year I run a little "banger rally" thing for friends of mine and
do most of the planning of the route using G-maps. It's impossible now to
search for something such as a landmark, instead you get redirected to
businesses with either the word landmark in their title, or businesses that
will make a landmark for you (funeral directors, etc). It wasn't like this a
few years ago. I know, I know, it's business- and advertising-driven, but I
can't help but feel that we're starting to get both ends of the stick here -
we're the product and our whereabouts are tracked all the time, but on top of
that we get advertised to constantly as well.

Problem is I've not found a solution that is as smooth or useful on Android?

------
Mendenhall
I found myself rarely using google search partly because of paid ads already.
Looks like they are making decisions which will push me away from another
product I enjoyed.

~~~
jrcii
You should consider installing an ad blocker like uBlock Origin. I haven't
seen ads on Google Search for years.

------
gdulli
Sometimes I'm glad that I'm old enough (38) to have lived a significant amount
before the conveniences of the modern internet. The idea of getting around
without online maps isn't strange to me and I have the skill from back when it
was the only option. So when google maps starts getting too bullshitty it's
easy for me to do without it.

One time a few years ago a (younger) friend laughed at me for writing down
directions on a piece of paper. But the piece of paper didn't have to be
mounted, I didn't have to turn on a screen to use it, navigate to the right
app, worry about the screen going off after not using it for a minute, etc.
The piece of paper was the most usable option by far.

------
kentosi
Just a thought, seeing as these ads are undoubtedly pissing everyone off: Why
not have a paid alternative (like Youtube red)?

------
dovdov
You never thought Apple Maps will be tempting.

~~~
milesokeefe
Apple Maps' exclusive access to use the lockscreen, along with (IMO) a better
UI when following directions, make it my go-to when driving despite the bad
reputation it has on the internet.

------
Aoyagi
Man, I wish HERE and/or OSM had an equivalent of StreetView. That's the only
thing which makes me use Google Maps at all.

~~~
maxerickson
Mapillary is a company that is building crowd sourced street imagery.

They have a reasonably open license
([https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html](https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html))
and allow OSM to extract information from the photos.

Telenav is rolling out something similar.

They don't really come close to StreetView as far as coverage.

~~~
Brakenshire
Mapillary needs some sort of camera you can buy for $50-150, put on the top of
your car, and take decent resolution 360 degree photos. Then the coverage in
major city areas would get completed in a few years.

------
killerdhmo
The irony of having to scroll past three ads to read this four paragraph
article about Google serving "a lot more" ads

------
zkhalique
What about the Google Maps api? Will companies be able to use the maps to
display things, unmolested by google-sponsored ads?

~~~
studentrob
Who knows. If Google's revenue slips, investors get upset and make leadership
changes.

It sounds like leadership is out of ideas if their only ones are to increase
the size and frequency of ads on existing apps. That's a bit sad considering
the talent they have there.

~~~
GantzGraf
Increased ads will bring in more revenue. They're not doing this for the sake
of it.

~~~
studentrob
Right. I'm saying, they've run out of other ideas.

Ads have always been Google's major source of revenue. Now, their to answer to
dwindling revenue is to add larger ads to existing apps [1]

Bigger and more ads is not very innovative for a tech company.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-
frequenc...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequency-of-
ads-1464105600)

------
executesorder66
Things like this instantly piss me off. Then I remember I use an adblocker and
I calm down again.

~~~
greenbast
But what about on the mobile apps? I need a content blocker for apps.

~~~
tapiwa
Use Adaway ..

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway)

It blocks at the Hosts file level.

~~~
coldpie
Sadly requires root, which is a higher bar than I'm willing to clear.

~~~
hobs
As the phone manufacturers are the same as the danguses adding ads everywhere,
the only other option I can think of is to proxy your traffic through another
service that does server side ad blocking, and that seems like quite a
headache if you want to, for instance, unblock certain content.

~~~
majewsky
At least at home, I do DNS-level adblocking, which should be good enough for
all devices that use the DNS resolver advertised by DHCP. (Source code is at
[https://github.com/majewsky/system-
configuration/blob/master...](https://github.com/majewsky/system-
configuration/blob/master/holodeck-damogran.pkg.toml#L289-L407) if you want to
copy this.)

------
swozey
I get absolutely livid when I'm using Waze as my navigation and an ad pops up
and takes up the entire screen WHILE I'm navigating. Awful implementation, I
immediately X them, don't read them or anything.

~~~
Grishnakh
I tried out Waze for some trips in the last few months after hearing all the
hoopla about it, and honestly I don't see why people like it. It's kinda
cutesy, I'll admit, but the only useful feature it has is that users can
inform each other about speed traps. Aside from that, it's really kind of a
PITA to use, and also it doesn't seem to do any kind of re-routing for slow
traffic or have any indication that you can take alternate routes and how that
will affect your travel time. On Google Maps, there's frequently places where
it'll show you alternate routes in gray, and how they'll affect your time ("3
minutes slower"). Waze doesn't have that at all. I was really disappointed, so
I just went back to Google Maps.

------
dbcurtis
There is a lot of hate here for something we haven't even seen yet. While I
aknowledge that they could screw this up badly, my first reaction was
positive. I've done a couple of road trips recently where a pin for every
Peet's, Starbucks, IHOP, and Chipotle all along the route would have been
welcome.

~~~
xviia
I have a good response to this, but first: Are you interested in a home-cooked
meal? Perhaps a Golden Corral(R) "Awesome Pot Roast" could get your stomach
rumbling like no other dumpster food could! Choose from one of our great
buffet options! Green beans, carrots, chicken, we've got it all!

OK, joking aside, here's my issue with intrusive advertising: sure, they
justify the advertising by saying it's to pay for the service, even if you'd
be willing to pay for a subscription service that would remove the ads. But
instead, you get ads for Golden Corral while you're really looking for the
"Oreo Madness" now at TGI Friday's! Today's special includes hot wings with a
creamy Ranch dressing, an ultra hot spicy sauce, and fresh celery sticks!
Choose from one of our new Bacon Burgers, like the All-American Jack Daniel's
Burger. Thirsty? Try our handcrafted cocktails like fresh Peach Sangria!

~~~
antisthenes
That's a great idea. I'm going to disrupt the ad industry by making a startup
that injects ads into commenting platforms like disqus!

------
honkhonkpants
Google also announced this 6 years ago, FWIW.

[https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-
of...](https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of-your-
favorite.html)

------
riprowan
Google, stop being evil, shut up, and take my money.

Why can't I just pay to opt out of all this crap I don't want, and instead
_incentivize the businesses they actually get right?_

------
cromwellian
Waze already has had these promoted pin icons for a while I think.

------
BooneJS
I do enjoy ignoring the KFC pin in Waze.

