
Google Maps Has Forsaken Us - rorhug
http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/10/google-maps-has-forsaken-us/
======
joel_perl_prog
Is this where we get to complain about how horrible Google Maps suddenly is?

Because wow. I can speak about this. It's terrible. First and foremost, and
they have their "reasons" of course, but my Samsung Rant (yeah just a feature
phone) always had great maps. Just a simple Java app, built on the maps API.
Well that doesn't work anymore. Like, nothing. Google basically says "Get an
Android phone, sucker." F U Google. Is what I think of that.

Secondly, the desktop (and basically the tablet experience too is the same)
has gotten terrible. It takes a really long time before my mouse event
matters. By this time, the screen, since it's still resolving and moving
things around the canvas or whatever the hell it's doing, well by the time my
mouse event registers, the object I wanted has moved away. I'm now doing
something else!

Directions. Just so retarded. The accordion shit on the left. Just show me the
effing directions, like you used to. I don't want to tab around a widget in
the upper left. Plus you have toggle it open in the first place, and it's not
very responsive, either.

Also, just simple double-clicking to zoom. Extremely less useful than it used
to be: just this one simple thing.

I could go on. How awful. What happened?

~~~
Pacabel
What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps
today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was
pretty much unusable.

As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down
to one thing these days: "hipsters".

Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this
happen before. A relatively well-established product has a usable UI. It isn't
perfect, and maybe even looks "dated" in some ways, but it generally works and
is understood by its existing users.

So-called "hipsters" (that is, people who have an uncompromising view that
they're talented "designers" or "UI experts", with a massive ego to back this
up, and a fixation on being "trendy") get involved at some point. These people
are often relatively young, often have limited experience, and are usually
more focused on making designs look "pretty" and "modern" rather than usable.

Needing to create work for themselves, these hipsters, coupled with managers
who need to appear to be leading something seen as "productive", start on a UI
redesign. Often this is done without the involvement or insight offered by the
existing developers of the product, nor any of the product's users. Changes
are made purely to look "better", with limited to no consideration of how
it'll impact the usability of the product.

The end result is a total cock-up like this, or like the poor UI of Chrome
(and the imitations of it by Firefox, Opera and IE), or a project-killing
release like GNOME 3, or an abysmal failure like Windows 8.

UIs were generally far more usable in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first half of
the 2000s, before "hipsters" got involved with design. What we see today is a
total jumble of inconsistent and incoherent UI design, where usability and
efficiency are considered significantly less important than "looking trendy".

~~~
joel_perl_prog
Yeah I hear ya. Whoever guided this Titanic into the iceberg...well he ain't
no Steve Jobs. That's for sure.

It's hard to overstate how just plain awful Google Maps is now. It's amazing,
in a way. I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all
together, fail to observe the obvious. Manifestly obviously just shit awful.
To observe this one only needs a few seconds with Google Maps. A few minutes
cements it. Yet here we are...

~~~
kevrone
I've been bitching and moaning about the new g-maps for so long! And this
thread makes me feel...vindicated? I guess? Too bad I'm still stuck with it.

The funny thing is that it's possible the UI could have been screwed while
keeping the search stable, but as the article points out, the search is
killing me. It's Apple Maps-ish in a way. I mean, if I'm zoomed in to a
particular level and I do a search, there's a good bet that I'm only
interested in results within those bounds, right? I'm not crazy to want that
am I?

~~~
shyn3
Click on the ? at the bottom right, then select Return to old Google maps
lastly click on the classic yellow ribbon which appears at the top asking to
remember your preference.

6 more months of classic maps then they will probably phase it out, sadly.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Is there a way to switch to classic view permanently?

Every time I start Google Maps again - it starts with crippled version.

Update: I just noticed that after switching to Classic, Google Maps is asking
me if I want to remember that choice permanently.

The question is not prominent enough though.

~~~
shyn3
They do this with every service/option they don't want you to use.

For example, if you enable delay e-mail send in gMail, you get a tiny pop-up
to undo your message... I guess you just have to learn to always look at the
top middle for Google's hidden/minimally displayed functions.

------
jsnell
This is a bad article. It tries to draw some kind of causality link between
the new maps UI and a couple of bad search results that the author received.
(And then tries to blame it on some completely random academic paper written
by Googlers, which as far as I can tell doesn't even have a hint of being from
a geo-context, and doesn't look particularly applicable to geocoding or local
searches). Of course blaming the new UI is a real crowd-pleaser, as can be
seen in the HN comments, which must be good for getting some page hits on a
Saturday afternoon.

The reality is that Google Maps has always had a (frequently changing) set of
searches producing bad results. Some of those failures would have been much
more visible, widely publicized, and serious than a blogger not finding the
closest burger joint. This article presents the past as searches always just
working, which just wasn't true. As such there's no compelling evidence there
of the search result quality having actually degraded over time.

~~~
DanBC
So they had a project with usable interface and sub optimal searching, and
they decided to "fix" the UI but not the searching?

~~~
jsnell
No, of course not. What kind of a comment is that anyway? You appear to be
doing exactly the same kind of conflating of the UI and the backend that I was
complaining about. There's a bunch of people whose job is to improve the
search quality. They're largely not going to be the same people who'll work on
the UI, so it's not some kind of either-or choice.

But it's a very difficult problem where it's rare that a change is uniformly
beneficial, that's insanely dependent on frequently changing input data, and
that users are very unforgiving about. My theory on the last point is that a
map search is much more concrete than a web search. People have an intuition
both about what the right answer should be, as well as an expectation that
there is a right answer in the first place. But of course that's not the case,
and the results are never going to be optimal. (I.e. your "sub optimal
searching" bit is a bit of a truism).

I used to work on the Google maps geocoding team a long time ago. At that time
amazing amounts of CPU and engineer time would be spent on verifying the
quality of all algorithm and data changes, both during development and during
launch. Changes that were unevaluated or were a net negative on quality would
only be launched under very exceptional circumstances. Now, the evaluation
would of course not be a fully deterministic process, it'd always need to be
based on some kind of sampling. But on average that should still mean quality
ratcheting up slowly. Maybe things have changed since then and stuff is just
randomly launched with no regard to quality, but I have no particular reason
to believe so. To me it seems much more likely that the anecdotes from the
article don't represent any kind of trend.

~~~
anon1385
>At that time amazing amounts of CPU and engineer time would be spent on
verifying the quality of all algorithm and data changes, both during
development and during launch. Changes that were unevaluated or were a net
negative on quality would only be launched under very exceptional
circumstances.

Maybe they should actually try using the product instead of relying on
automated algorithms to generate metrics when they evaluate changes. For
example, it's quite obvious that something is going wrong with the
prioritisation of name place text for the UK at the moment:
[http://imgur.com/kL0GHfe](http://imgur.com/kL0GHfe) (for the non-UK readers,
no there is not a large important city called "Town Centre", Edinburgh is far
larger than Kirkcaldy, Birmingham is the second largest city in the country
and not labeled at all).

I'm quite curious about how much real human testing they actually do. I've
always had the impression that testing by actual humans is the antithesis of
Google culture (automate everything and reduce everything to comparable
numerical metrics).

~~~
jsnell
It's a good thing that I didn't say anything about "automated algorithms used
to generate metrics", then... This was machine-aided human evaluation.

Search quality evaluation can't really be done without humans in the loop. If
you had an algorithm that could distinguish between a good result and a bad
result, you wouldn't use it to evaluate results. You'd use it to generate the
results.

~~~
anon1385
>Search quality evaluation can't really be done without humans in the loop.

I wasn't talking about search though. I was talking about the map rendering.

------
jxf
I have to say that I've had completely the opposite experience from the
author. GMaps almost always find what I'm looking for in a timely fashion, I
find the offline maps useful when I'm traveling to a different city, and so
on.

One of my favorite use cases is having GMaps give me directions by public
transit, especially if there's a metro, which is nice if you're in a new city
and want to save a few bucks on taxis or Uber.

That said, they've definitely made a few changes I haven't been a fan of. For
example, offline maps must now be refreshed once every 30 days, and if you're
offline when the timer runs out you won't be able to see the map. (Previously
there was no time limit.)

~~~
goostavos
I agree. On the whole, maps is still awesome -- and with the google now
functionality? Holy crap, I feel like Iron Man when I'm driving around and
command my phone to navigate me to the closest Taco Bell.

That said, I do absolutely, 100% think the everything-is-now-done-through-the-
search-box approach is remarkably horrible and unintuitive. I honestly thought
that you couldn't customize directions any more. Hell, there were so many
little features -- simple things like Search Nearby -- that I thought went
away entirely. The UX is _that_ terrible.

Want to customize the route your currently on? That's easy! Ok, so just close
what your currently doing -- hey! Why are you looking in the settings? Why
would settings be in Settings? Listen to what I'm saying! So, close out of the
-- No! It's not in the Hamburger button. Settings aren't in the menu. Why
would settings be in a menu? Pay attention! Exit navigation. Back out of the
Directions screen, back out of the location screen. Now, see the single line
search bar? Click on that -- but don't search for anything, there's a small
button in the drop down. Click that! Congratulations! You've found the
settings!

I just want to know how that UX meeting went. Settings!? In a menu!? No, no,
no. Makes no sense from a user experience perspective.

------
buro9
In the example given it's the word "forest" that is the problem.

"Sambisa" would have found it.

"Sambisa Reserve" would have found it.

"Sambisa Forest Reserve" would have found it.

But my guess is that something attempts to understand keywords and context and
when you end with "forest" it looks within the set of forests that are called
Sambisa, and actually there isn't a forest called Sambisa, there's a nature
reserve called Sambisa, which covers an area within a forest landscape.

Yeah, that's pedantic and Google could do a better job when it attempts to
contextualise like that (especially if it's topical), by just doing a second
search internally for exact matches and doing a join/merge on the results.

But still... you're going to have the same problem with Open Street Map for
the same reason:

[http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?format=j...](http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?format=json&q=sambisa)

[http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?format=j...](http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?format=json&q=sambisa%20forest)

[http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?format=j...](http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search.php?format=json&q=sambisa%20forest%20reserve)

~~~
SeanDav
or it could, I don't know, maybe search on closest matches to locations
containing the words "Sambisa" and "forest" with priority to those areas
containing the words in the correct order - like maybe "Sambisa Forest
Reserve".

Oooh maybe they can take out a patent on that idea first...

(Sorry OP, not having a go at you - just getting incredibly frustrated with
companies I used to love and respect - like Google and Amazon.)

~~~
pjscott
That sounds way too obvious for them not to have tried on a large corpus of
(search string, correct result) pairs. If it actually gave better results, do
you really think they wouldn't do it? I understand wanting to vent about the
magic not being magical enough, but just how stupid do you think they are?

~~~
TillE
Google has a bad habit of trying to be _too_ clever. For a very long time,
searching for "yore" (an English word) on the Google Play store only gave me
results for "your", without even bothering to tell me what it was doing.

Google is very concerned about giving users what it _thinks_ they want, rather
then what they actually asked for. Sometimes that's great (I love basic
stemming), sometimes it fills my results with irrelevant garbage.

------
jameshart
Something is, indeed, terribly terribly wrong in Google Maps algorithm land.
For at least the last couple of weeks, Google Maps has been insisting that
Basingstoke in England is called "Town Centre", and is one of the most
important places in England. On a view of the entire country, it's displaying
a label in the same font-size it uses for Southampton, Bristol and Liverpool
marking Basingstoke as "Town Centre". Manchester and Birmingham aren't
labelled at all. If this is the quality of mapping Google is providing for a
major first-world English-speaking market - you should be grateful it even
knows Nigeria exists.

~~~
blibble
Basingstoke one of the most important places in England? pull the other one

~~~
felicopter
He was referring to "Town Centre".

------
bambax
What's happening with Google Maps is reminiscent of IE6: a beautiful product
appears, light-years ahead of the competition, and free. The competition in
question, being light-years behind, and non-free, promptly dies.

Then the beautiful product gets frozen in place, and its team "locked up in a
dark dungeon" (Spolsky, 2004), which creates a huge opportunity for (open)
alternatives.

OpenStreetMap + Leaflet is to Google Maps what Firefox was to IE6... but there
is still a very long way to go.

~~~
mhurron
Frozen in place would have been more useful. Even just talking about the new
UI, Google Maps has become a giant pain to work with.

~~~
gdulli
Exactly. The problem is, Google has all these employees they need to keep
busy, which translates into "upgrading" or redesigning products whether they
need it or not. Products always suffer from this pattern.

It turns out that Google isn't smart enough to avoid the same mistakes made by
the companies it supplanted.

------
cocoflunchy
The worst about that Sambisa Forest thing is that the autocompletion finds it
([http://imgur.com/kWgcByo](http://imgur.com/kWgcByo)) and then when you press
enter, you get a not found error
([http://imgur.com/GyhVSaO](http://imgur.com/GyhVSaO)) !

~~~
solutionyogi
Exactly. I don't know what they have changed but earlier, typing partial
address (pressing enter) based on what you saw on auto complete used to work.
In new version, you MUST use arrow key and select the auto complete item for
it to work.

------
Yossarian_Lives
My pet peeve as a Londoner; the disappearance of the transit layer when
searching for a place. If you've not searched for anything, New-oogle Maps
will happily show you the card that lets you activate the transit layer and
superimpose the spiderweb of tube lines on to the London map. However, the
second a marker gets dropped, good luck seeing that layer ever again.

I mean, even if you clickity clack through the directions>origin>transit,
Google will mark up its suggested routes while still refusing to superimpose
the tube lines. It's maddening! For all the sophisticated route-mapping that
I'm sure Google is bringing to bear on the problem, I'd much rather just look
at a map that simultaneously shows a search result marker and the tube network
at the same time and figure out my own route. And heaven forbid that I might
want to see a collection of results for DIY shops and figure out which one I
can get to quickest with reference to the underground network -- it seems that
Google would have me route-map each of them in turn, write down the results
and then decide. It's so deeply counter-intuitive that I struggle to think of
any possible rationalisation for the decision.

I don't suppose anyone has a bookmarklet that toggles the transit layer?

~~~
adwf
Yeah, I have the exact same complaint. Took me 10 minutes to find out how to
get the transit layer back. Then I found out it was practically unusable
because as soon as you scroll across London, it disappears...

Have you tried using Citymapper? I've only used it a couple of times as I'm
not a Londoner, but it's quite good (it knows to avoid the circle line!).
Coincidentally, the first time was to get to #HNLondon where one of the
Citymapper guys was giving a talk.

~~~
Yossarian_Lives
Citymapper is excellent, especially their mobile app's get-me-home feature
(ideal for instant bus combos after the tube's closed). However, it's not
designed for the vaguer queries -- nearby cafes, haberdasheries, etc -- at
which google maps used to excel.

------
infinotize
I will go against the grain a little and say I don't mind the new Google Maps,
and it's getting better to the point where I might even say I like it more
than the old Maps. They have been steadily improving it - initially the street
view UI was terrible, and there wasn't even a distance scale. I think we've
gotten to the point where releasing such poor stuff and calling it beta
doesn't fly anymore when you consider how many people will be using it.

I've gotten used to putting in unnecessarily verbose context in searches, and
I assume that's why I don't have search issues in sending me to other
irrelevant parts of the world.

I guess there is a lot to complain about. But for me it's still the best map,
and pretty usable.

The Google approach of changing things on you - too bad! - is obnoxious.
Pushing out Chrome notifications in OS, enabling them by default, and having
to find blog posts on how to disable because it's not in settings or
documentation, this kinda stuff is just getting old.

------
ignostic
I can't say that I've had problems figuring the UI out, but I have had
problems with the algorithm lately. If I had to guess I'd say it's Google
often failing to factor in the location at some points, because I can rarely
repeat the errors.

For example, I searched Maps for a Mexican restaurant with my phone recently.
It directed me to a place in Florida (hundreds of miles away). Seriously, when
there's a highly-rated place on Google Maps with the same name not 3 miles
from where you've located me? When I returned home and searched, I had no such
problems - it pointed straight at the place. I've had the reverse happen as
well.

Is it the fact that I'm blocking so many cookies that Google is relying on? Or
is there just a signal somewhere that tells Maps to override reason and
relevance?

I have tried alternatives, but the top contenders - like Bing and OpenMaps -
have their own very special set of problems.. I'm not sure what to use at this
point.

------
gyardley
The Google Maps product really is lacking outside of the United States.

I was down in Chile's Lake District last week, and Google totally failed me,
both in Pucón and Panguipulli. These are not particularly tiny towns - in
fact, Pucón is a major tourist destination. But Google was completely lacking
in street information for both places. I ended up having to use Bing.

Google wasn't even second - both Nokia's HERE Maps (which powers Yahoo) and
Apple's map product were better (although Apple was still pretty atrocious).

Here's a couple of links for comparison - Pucón in Google Maps
([http://goo.gl/maps/rm1D9](http://goo.gl/maps/rm1D9)) vs Pucón in Bing Maps
([http://binged.it/1gR5K55](http://binged.it/1gR5K55)). If Bing Maps had a
dedicated iOS application, I'd just switch permanently.

~~~
milliams
I quite like using Geofabrik's MapCompare tool for things like this. For
example, take a look at
[http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/#14/-39.2756/-71.9824&num=4&mt0...](http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/#14/-39.2756/-71.9824&num=4&mt0=mapnik&mt1=google-
map&mt2=bing-map&mt3=nokia-map)

~~~
gyardley
That's awesome! Thanks for the link.

------
noir_lord
I was trying to find out how much it costs to use Google Maps in a business
product (SaaS) I literally could not find a price without the "give us your
details and our sales team will be in touch" which to me translates as "We
need to work out exactly where to stick the hose to suck out the money".

Compare that with this
[https://www.mapbox.com/plans/](https://www.mapbox.com/plans/).

I know who will be getting my money in the near future.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
Have you looked at OpenStreetMap? Is there anything in particular that it
lacks compared to Mapbox?

~~~
noir_lord
Commercial backing.

I know that sounds somewhat daft but I like been a paying customer as it means
I can get some support plus the documentation for mapbox is lovely as well.

~~~
liotier
Do you realize that what Mapbox gives you is Openstreetmap data ?

~~~
noir_lord
Yep, I researched the options thoroughly.

I like that mapbox wraps it all up, clearly documents it and provides it at a
reasonable cost, to me that is a value added worth paying for is all.

~~~
liotier
> Yep, I researched the options thoroughly.

Interesting - someone used you comment as validation that Mapbox provides
insufficient attribution to Openstreetmap:
[https://twitter.com/Anonymaps/status/465216595242274817](https://twitter.com/Anonymaps/status/465216595242274817)

~~~
noir_lord
Ah thanks for that, I commented on the twitter thread as well.

Interesting that was the conclusion someone projected though.

------
dochtman
I've used Google Maps with the new UI for a long time, and it was pretty
screwy. It used to be much, much slower than the old UI. These days,
performance is a little better, though it's still not quite snappy.

Some parts of the new UI still _suck_ , though. Just today, I wanted to print
route directions. However, there's no print thingy anywhere in sight. You now
have to click "List all steps", and only then a printer icon appears...
Completely non-obvious. My wife mentioned that she had already reverted to
just using Print Screen a few times because she couldn't find the stupid
widget.

------
dalek2point3
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Mapping is too important a thing to
let one company control the experience. The debate is not about whether Google
Maps is good or bad, but if its bad _for you_ there is little choice. You
can't fix it. It's not a 100% there, but get on the OpenStreetMap train, fix
your local area and have fun. And enjoy all the good stuff startups are
building on top of that data.

Here is an easy way to get started:
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/fixthemap](http://www.openstreetmap.org/fixthemap)

------
lohankin
There's a simple explanation for recent GUI disasters across google
applications: Google+. They decided to make a Swiss Army Knife under the
banner of Google+, and needed kind of "consistency" of style. Everything is
consistency ugly now, and Google+ guy is gone. Situation may improve as they
starts dismantling the monstrosity. With respect to search quality - they
hired some AI astronauts, neural networks do wonders for them. The goal is to
train their system to accommodate astronauts' brains. They say it openly.

------
greggman
100 times YES!

I've gotten this behavior for years and it drives me nuts because I can't
understand how it's not fixed? I remember in 2009 I was driving down from SF
to LA. I stopped in Santa Barbara. I needed my bearings and I didn't not know
the address or the name of the street I was on but I did see an Albertson's
supermarket about 200 feet away so I searched for Albertsons and Google gives
me some place in Texas. (I think this was on a SonyW810)

I've searched for Pizza in Tokyo last December and had it give me some place
in Chicago. It's so infuriating. It knows I'm in Tokyo, it's pinpointed me on
the map. So in what situation would I EVER want Pizza in Texas unless I
specifically asked for "Pizza, Texas"?

There's other things too. It mostly feels like maps hasn't changed in years.
Sure, there's the new maps UI which many people, including me, feel like it's
a change for the worse. The geek in me loves that it's slick and live and
webgl but can you figure out how to get a short link to a place? Clicking
"Share" just brings up a G+ form. Not what I wanted. I wanted a link I could
msg to someone. Didn't have that problem with the old maps.

How about how to print? The old maps had a print button and it would format
for printing. The new maps has one but I can never remember where it's buried
in the UI. Picking Print from the browser directly doesn't do this.

Trying to figure out the UI that pops up and down. Here's one. Pick any marker
on the map or search for something like Best Buy. The popup UI should show
some details on whatever you picked or the one it picked for you. Now click
"Directions". Ok, now how do you get back to the state just before you clicked
"Directions"? There's no back button, clicking the X in the corner goes all
the way back before you selected anything. In other words there is no back. If
you clicked directions by accident well, I guess you just have to start over
and type your search in again. If you clicked some dot on a detailed map, well
now you've lost your place.

Even more frustrating is who can compete with them? How do you compete with
free? If they're not going to do a good job then I'd love for someone else to
try but the moment that someone else does try they'll finally feel some
pressure to up their game and you're out of business.

And where's the ads? Maybe you don't want ads but I do. I want to see logos of
places. Maybe I'm looking for McDonalds. Even if I'm not the logos serve as
landmarks. You'd think it would be in their best interest to sell ads on maps
since 90+% of all of Google's revenue is ads. And, if done right it would be
extremely useful for users as well. It would even fit their mission statement
if done well.

Sigh....

~~~
DanBC
A lot of Google changes end up making me feel really dumb.

I have no idea how to create a link to what I'm looking at in Google Maps (app
on iPhone). I don't know how many inscrutable buttons I am expected to click
to discover this.

There's a bunch of stuff with email that I needed to do a websearch to get
instructions.

Very very frustrating.

~~~
Crito
> _I have no idea how to create a link to what I 'm looking at in Google Maps
> (app on iPhone)._

I voiced this complaint about the new desktop/browser version of google maps
on here a few months ago. FWIW, apparently the permalink functionality has
been removed because the address bar is now updated on the fly, so whatever is
in the address bar is now always your permalink. This of course is not
communicated to the user anywhere that I can see.

I don't know if this helps you on iOS or not.

------
zatkin
I am grateful that we are able to revert back to the old Google Maps for now.
I hope that they keep this regression available to their users for a while.

~~~
thotpoizn
I am a little annoyed that I have to keep going through clickrobatics every
time I change back to old Google Maps, and explain why each time. I've already
explained a dozen times, quit pestering me. Also, get off my damned lawn.

~~~
graeme
You can get around this by bookmarking a location. I bookmarked my address in
the old maps, and use that as my entry point to google maps. It doesn't ask me
to switch to new.

------
microcolonel
[http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=71064](http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=71064)
[http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=71065](http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=71065)

Keep in mind that Mapquest, Yahoo maps, Bing maps, and Nokia HERE have no
record of it at all. So this is really between Google Maps and OpenStreetMap.

------
chapel
This blog post is way off. The issue isn't that Google Maps couldn't find
Sambisa Forest, it is that it has an issue with how it handles auto complete
and pressing enter without selecting the choices it brings up. It quite
frankly looks like a bug. You can see for yourself here:
[http://i.imgur.com/vX1xqp2.gif](http://i.imgur.com/vX1xqp2.gif)

~~~
aeturnum
I disagree that the blog post is way off and I think the issue is that google
can't find Sambisa Forest (it can't - as your gif demonstrates). It can find,
"Sambisa Forest Reserve," which is great, but not the point of the blog.

They are saying that google's ability to take natural language requests
(sambisa forest, in-n-out east bay) and come up with an answer that
corresponds what you searched for has seriously degraded. Personally, that is
consistent with my experience.

What is causing the problem (bug, difference in focus, etc) is also worth
discussing. Why does google have so much trouble finding answers to queries
that seem straightforward? Why can it suggest "Sambisa Forest Reserve" (based
on "sambisa forest") and then have no idea how to find "sambia forest?" The
title might be a little grandiose, but I think it's a fair question.

------
ktran03
Among the points already mentioned, I really hate the 'shake to report issue'
feature. Stuck in traffic and frustrated, that thing comes up every time I hit
a pothole. The thought that comes to mind everytime is "No Google, I don't
want to report a problem, AT THIS MOMENT".

Overall bad choice of control. Much more sensical to stick that in somewhere
fitting, like settings.

~~~
roryhughes
They could just put it in settings too and when you shake to show it there
would be a button saying 'Don't show again on shake'.

------
davidw
Some other things:

* Start in San Francisco by typing San Francisco. It still manages to find that city. Do 'directions' and type in Eugene, OR, USA - my home town, which is a fairly straightforward drive north. It can't find it and gives you bad results.

* THEY KILLED TERRAIN MODE! This was a super-useful feature that I still use on my computer, but can no longer access on my mobile devices.

~~~
User9821
Terrain mode is still there, you just have to type _Terrain_ in the search
bar, and it'll switch the view. Then X out of the search to return to the
normal map view. Otherwise, if you click the input box, you should get a
terrain button in one of the many expanding boxes.

I don't know who came up with the above concept for switching modes, but it's
absolutely awful.

~~~
davidw
In mobile, putting 'Terrain' in the search bar gets me "no results for
Terrain".

------
asaikali
With the old google maps I could count on the fact that I could hope on Google
maps 60 seconds before I needed to head out find the directions I needed hit
print and be on my way. Or I could have some one on the phone talking to me
and saying something hey I am lost I am kinda in this area of town I could
pump that into google maps and give walking directions or even driving
directions realtime over the phone.

The new google maps is frustrating to use. All the ways that I used to use
google maps for just don't seem to work with the new maps either because they
removed the feature, or moved the UI elements in such a way that they don't
exist on the same page any more or its just too slow on my very fast laptop
and my very fast internet.

I really hope they fix it fast, I am loosing all hope that maps will ever be
usable again.

------
jhoechtl
Frankly, I would not even stop at Maps. Since a year or so Google makes so
intensely use of all sort of metadata (my browsing interests in the future,
the places if have visited, my contacts on G+) that the internet has become a
small world for me. I find myself increasingly using duckduckgo just because
of this. Heck, as I use the public DNS servers of google, even deleting
Cookies or using browser porn mode doesn't help much.

It's an example that overly smartness actually degrades the experience for me
rather than being and improvement.

~~~
andybak
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

------
Friedduck
It's nice to hear that I'm not the only one that feels this way. Search for
local businesses has become nearly impossible. Whether it's failing to return
anything or results that are wholly irrelevant, search and particularly maps
have taken a large step backward.

There's a great market opportunity here. (Really) old guard companies like YP
still haven't responded to the shift and I infer from Google's backslide that
it's not a priority for them.

We can't buy everything from Amazon (esp. Hachette books!)

------
bowlofpetunias
This is basically endemic in any Google search related functionality. Be it
Maps, Images, regular web search or internal search in Google Apps, more and
more I don't get what I asked for but what Google thinks I want, filtered for
assumed typos, regions and languages until the result has very little relation
to what I'm looking for.

This becomes especially galling when I know the info is there and my keywords
are correct and specific, and the search returns absolutely nothing even
remotely related.

------
wyck
The old google maps allows you to paste KML file URL's into the search, now it
doesn't work, you have to revert to the old version.

ps. KML files were developed by Google for maps...

~~~
maxerickson
Keyhole created KML for use in their earth viewer. Later, Google bought them
and branded the software as Google Earth.

Supporting KML in the web maps was just a neat thing Google also did.

~~~
wyck
Ah did not know that, it was for sure a neat thing they did. I manage a site
that uses KML files extensively for bike and running paths and this switch did
cause a minor bump.

------
nextstep
I'm glad tha Apple maps is steadily improving. There needs to be competition
so that free services will compete for users by improving the user experience.

I think iOS 8 will include major updates to Apple maps that will integrate
transit directions. Apple recently bought the mapping company Embark along
with a few other transit-related acquisitions.

~~~
abruzzi
The problem is Apple Maps isn't usable outside an iOS device or a specific
"Maps" app on Macs only. Share links open google maps, unless you have the
above machines. This makes it less than useful for general use.

------
nailer
Google knows:

\- Home is in London

\- Work is in London

\- My most recent restaurant reviews are in London

\- My IP address is in London

\- My location, if you ask my browser, is in London

Stop showing me a map of the US when I open Maps.

~~~
maxerickson
I'm in the U.S.

If I open [https://maps.google.co.uk/](https://maps.google.co.uk/) it shows
the UK.

I expect there are people in places outside the U.S. who would be frustrated
by maps.google.com showing their current location, so it isn't an easy thing
to solve for everyone.

------
Mithaldu
Interesting thing here: Reading the article i was wondering what's the fuss,
because Google Maps looked and acted like it ever did. Turned out that,
because i was using Opera 12, it was still giving me the old Google Maps. So
if you really want the old one on the desktop, that's one workaround. :)

------
mark_l_watson
The author is complaining about product development siloing at Google. I know,
because I consulted there, that they are working on better cross business
integration for internal systems (this is a goal of all large organizations).
That said, don't you want some degree of siloing between products? Certainly
share infrastructure, share some data as appropriate, but it just seems to me
that by having smaller independent teams that you get more creative products,
and better productivity with smaller teams.

BTW, I love Google maps and Google Now - my fanboy'ism is based on both pretty
good functionality right now, and I my expectation that it will keep getting
better. I have some privacy issues with these products but at least for now I
consider the functionality worth some loss of privacy - I can see my opinion
changing however.

~~~
cliveowen
Id' really like to have some opinions about Google Now that everyone seems to
find awesome. Let's start with the fact that if I want to set a reminder and I
don't have an internet connection I can't. Since when having an internet
connection is a prerequisite for even basic tasks? Secondly, of all the
suggestions it gave me over the months based on my search history none has
been helpful. None. If you search for the same things everyday you'll not get
related suggestions, but as soon as you search something like the name of that
actor that now eludes you, you'll get 2-3 tabs with the latest news on that
actor, even though there's no value in it: you already found what you searched
for and it was a one time thing. It keeps telling me the time to work even
though by now it should've known when it is appropriate to do so. I mean, it's
4 pm, I didn't move from home, do you really think I'm gonna be 7 hours late
to work and it's now a good time to remind me?

~~~
mark_l_watson
I was praising Google Now for its potential. I agree that some of the
proffered help can be silly.

I find the most useful alerts come from the automated reading of my email; for
example: plane schedules and also information on package delivery.

So, I really do believe that Google Now has a lot of potential, but I have
concerns about privacy also.

------
meritt
You can still switch back to Classic Maps via the question-mark icon in the
bottom right. Classic for life.

~~~
pgrote
I am having trouble locating it. Am I looking in the right place?

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

~~~
meritt
Your screenshot looks like you're already in classic maps, this is the bottom
right of the new version:
[http://i.imgur.com/K9PJI5V.png](http://i.imgur.com/K9PJI5V.png)

~~~
pgrote
Well, this is embarrassing. Thanks for the follow-up.

------
surana90
Continuing the rant - I would speak for India, if you are going from Point A
to Point B it shows you 4 ways to get there. You could filter it with options
like - Buses, Trains or Least Transfer, Less walking etc. Now there are times
when there are more then 10 buses running between these two points and with a
frequency like of 20-30 mins.

So if you happen to use Google Maps then it would show you only 4 results even
after you filter down to Buses. Why not show all the options Google? When you
have it in your results, just show it.

Because I and lot of people that I know have been in this situation where we
are waiting for the bus that google maps is showing and in the process missing
out on the ones that are not shown.

------
charlus
It's completely stopped working for me on Chrome / Linux (Rats! WebGL hit a
snag error) I've tried a few times to fix this but ultimately I've
transitioned to always using my phone for maps.

------
swatkat
The new maps.google.com is completely broken for me. Page doesn't load
properly most of the time. First thing I do is to revert to classic maps. Maps
app on my Android phone works fine though.

------
justzisguyuknow
Not long ago I did a Google Maps search (on Android) for "restaurants" in my
brooklyn neighborhood... and got directed to the Restaurants.com offices in
New Jersey. Effing pathetic.

------
keehun
This is beyond creepy: [http://www.theheraldng.com/us-marines-satellite-
locate-missi...](http://www.theheraldng.com/us-marines-satellite-locate-
missing-girls-sambisa-forest-bringbackourgirls/)

TechCrunch randomly chose a thing to search and that's where they are?
Granted, it's a huge 60,000kmsq area... But of every place TechCrunch could've
searched for on Google Maps, it's the same place?

------
mhartl
I didn't understand what the big deal was until I drove to downtown LA last
night. Google Maps turn-by-turn directions instructed me to make a U turn in
the middle of the 110S freeway (which would have crashed me into the center
divider). Then, on the 10W, it kept trying to have me get off the freeway and
then get right back on.

I don't know WTF happened, but this is an all-hands-on deck situation for
Google: must fix ASAHP.

~~~
maxerickson
In a small town I know, I think they switched their data provider (I guess to
the Census TIGER data). I don't have a great memory of what they had, but I
recently noticed some alignment problems that I hadn't noticed in the past.

What I think I remember isn't a great point of reference, but a switch to a
cheaper, lower quality data set would explain problems with routing.

------
lindablus
What ever happened to layers? I can't seem to find a way to show bike routes +
terrain or bike routes + traffic or any other combination.

------
g8oz
Glad I'm not the only one suffering. I've got 2 problems with this new
fullscreen Google Maps - 1) Noticeably slower 2) Drilling down to each step in
public transit directions is now very awkward - it used to be very elegant. At
this point Bing Maps is competitive.

------
__david__
I can't get street view to work at all with the new maps. I just get a black
screen whenever it tries. Is that happening to anyone else? I'm on Firefox
beta (30).

------
GigabyteCoin
I concur. Google maps needs some serious work.

It's as if it's running on auto-pilot right now or something.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but something needs to be changed.

------
bla2
I think the new UI is much much nicer than the old one.

------
7952
If you enter a search term and just hit enter Google will try and guess which
result you want (like the I feel Lucky button). The auto-complete will give
more options to pick the correct place name from duplicate names in different
places. I think they do a bad job of surfacing the different possible results.

The Google Index does seem to lack a lot of more obscure names. In this case I
would rather have high quality authoritative gazetteers than an algorithm that
tries to guess what I mean.

------
annapowellsmith
[https://www.google.com/maps?output=classic](https://www.google.com/maps?output=classic)

------
ejain
I blame the current state of Google Maps on micro-optimization, and
overconfidence in the ability to predict what you want.

------
takeda
For me the most annoying thing is that apparently I no longer can see traffic
and directions at the same time.

------
personZ
Trivia, but Gleghorn-South Kilgore is in Arkansas (AR) rather than Arizona
(AZ). It is an interesting case and I wonder how Google decided that location
was important to him.

Contextual search is really tough, and the same choices that might give great
answers for most answers can yield infuriating answers for other questions. In
this case he is searching for something that doesn't exist, and a forest that
probably gets searched a dozen times in aggregate a day on Google Maps, likely
contrived for effect. That doesn't excuse those cases, but it isn't correlated
with the cases where people got surprisingly cogent answers to their
questions.

------
hackbinary
It seems to me that Google hired the Gnome Dev (team) that screwed up the
Gnome 2.x GUI.

------
morganvachon
I stopped reading when the screenshot showed AR (Arkansas) and he said it was
Arizona (AZ). If you are that geographically challenged, even Google Maps
can't save you.

EDIT: I forgot that a sense of humor is not an option here. Geez.

~~~
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289)

~~~
morganvachon
My point stands that if the guy is so incompetent that he can't figure out
which state he's looking at, he shouldn't be writing an article critical of a
mapping system in the first place. I'm more of a hardware hacker than a
programmer, therefore I don't go around writing articles criticizing the
latest version control system; I'd end up making a fool of myself as I
wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about.

And just to be clear, I actually agree with him that the new Google Maps seems
less useful than the old version.

------
uutr
I don't see how citing 3 month old tweets is in any way relevant to a webapp.

Also the selectiveness of tweets and bug reports makes it all seem very
labored and seedy and betrays a lack in of understanding in how complex
software development (btw directwrite is behind a flag in Chrome 35)

And when you take into account that the author has a history of shitting on
Google, it appeals like an attempt in catering to a like minded audience:
[http://techcrunch.com/author/jon-evans/](http://techcrunch.com/author/jon-
evans/)

