
MapQuest: “We’ve Come Out Of Hibernation” - Anon84
http://searchengineland.com/mapquest-weve-come-out-of-hibernation-15608.php
======
gruseom
_We see Google Maps in many ways as an endpoint of a search query [...] The
people that come to MapQuest are here for the explicit purpose of finding
"where is it, how do I get there and what’s nearby."_

This sounds like dangerous denial to me. I'm admittedly a tech user, but I use
Google Maps precisely to find "where is it, how do I get there", because it
works better and is cleaner than Mapquest.

~~~
trickjarrett
They're fully aware of the threat. That sentence is just corporate rhetoric
for avoiding admitting the threat Google provides.

MapQuest does a fantastic job and I hope they continue to succeed, a shining
example of a niche market that they nail on delivery and suitably monetizing.

~~~
gruseom
If I'm ever in their situation, I hope I spend less energy on misleading
rhetoric and more on improving my product.

------
iigs
The bad:

It seems to default to "Click to center" instead of "click to zoom, centered
here". [Essentially] Nobody wants really precise centering of the Western
Hemisphere -- they want to see their house.

It doesn't take advantage of my 1600x1200 LCD -- it's bannered to high hell
and still fixed-width formatted to fit into a 1024x768(?) screen, and even
then the map would be below the fold. If you're going to put a 400x300px
banner higher than the map at least kill 75% of that huge brand banner at the
top. The "Larger Map" button doesn't work. Grr.

The art is still cluttery -- the fonts aren't as nice as Google's and the
antialiasing is still second class.

From TFA: _There were two things going on prior to that time period that
explain our low profile. There was considerable effort working on our new
back-end technology. It is based on completely new platform technologies that
was consuming a fair bit our effort. There was also a bit of miscalculation in
that we didn’t do much that was visible to the user. In hindsight we should
have been more visible but we knew we needed to get our house in order to do
what we wanted to do._ \-- This is a fantastic example of Mr. Spolsky's
"Things You Should Never Do, Part I" --
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

Google Street View and MS Live Maps Bird's Eye View have both raised the bar
on mapping sites. Hopefully Mapquest has something up their sleeve here.

The good:

Because they're rendering a single layer (by default) it's amazingly fast --
drags out of pre-downloaded range are coming up with only the faintest
flicker, if flickering at all. Of course, when I constrain Google Maps to the
same sized canvas it's really fast too. I guess Satellite view + Streets uses
overlays. Still pretty fast.

I actually believe the VP's comments about their customer base being loyal and
their ad clickthrough rates being higher than people think. Whereas Google has
the Herculean challenge of figuring out how to monetize the proliferation of
mashups and other users of their APIs, these guys target people more like my
mom -- arguably less savvy but more likely to click on an ad.

The takeaway:

 _Because we are profitable_... Excellent! It will be interesting to see how
they compare going forward. I have a hard time believing the big three (G,M,Y)
have profitable maps units.

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dmix
Their new homepage is marginally better...they actually put the map on the
front page.

<http://www.mapquest.com/beta>

It still looks very cluttered. But doesn't everything vs Google?

~~~
aneesh
<http://maps.live.com/>

Just as clean a page as Google Maps. It's one of the few things (that, and
image search) Live does better than Google. Live Maps does local search
better, the map labels are better, and Bird's Eye view is impressive.

~~~
unalone
Live Search also tends to have better results. (Somebody on HN told me this, I
didn't believe them, and I checked for myself - it's true.) I don't like Live
because I think it's overdone in a lot of ways, but it's my favorite Microsoft
product.

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AndrewWarner
They're profitable because the site is littered with ads. I have ad block on
and I still have to scroll through a series of them to get to my map. Then,
once I see what I searched for, MapQuest shows a "pop-up" call out box with
links to more ads. ("Want pizza?" "Movie tickets?") Booo.

------
Devilboy
I fear they may be too late... Google Maps is already the de-facto mapping
tech for 'mash-ups' everywhere.

