
Google Maps will soon give you better recommendations - rajs123
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/google-maps-will-soon-give-you-better-recommendations/
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baby_wipe
I would prefer a faster bootup time and search field that doesn't lag for 3
seconds before bringing up the keyboard.

Maybe it's because I'm using an iPhone 5S but it would still be nice.

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icelancer
>> Maybe it's because I'm using an iPhone 5S

It's not.

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danvayn
It definitely could be. Apple literally admitted to slowing down older
generation iPhones. I don't know how you can really consider it a non-factor.

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nsp
2 reasons. 1) they’ve only acknowledged doing this on iPhone 6 and later. 2)
it’s slow as shit on my brand spanking new iPhone X as well. A slower phone
def doesn’t help, but it’s not the primary issue here.

~~~
magduf
Whoa, really? I noticed Google Maps being slow as shit on my Galaxy S5 and
thought it was just because it was an old phone. I guess getting a new phone
isn't going to help then?

(I've been meaning to upgrade to a new _er_ phone, maybe an LG V10 or V20,
soon for several reasons; the S5 has been great but it's now 4 years old. But
I guess Google Maps being slow isn't a valid reason any more.)

~~~
derefr
It's really strange to me, that Apple Maps is so smooth in comparison to iOS
Google Maps. (Whether or not it is _helpful_ is another question that I'm
disregarding here.)

In a technical sense, both apps are displaying all the same _kinds_ of things:
satellite tiles, scalable road vectors, rotated outlined text for street
names, 3D buildings if you like, etc. But Google Maps is dog-slow compared to
Apple Maps at doing it.

Is efficient painting logic for a maps app on mobile a genuinely-hard problem
that Apple Maps is being really clever at solving? Or is it an _easy_ problem
that Google Maps is being really _stupid_ at solving?

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danShumway
> "Google will soon launch a new version of Google Maps that will give you
> more personalized recommendations"

I've used enough of Google's products by now to know that the word "better" in
this title is probably inaccurate. :)

~~~
gboudrias
I'm looking forward to the momentum this will give OpenStreetMap through the
sheer annoyance at Google.

But I sure wish Google would stop trying to read my mind and just do what I
tell it to. Guess the descent is inevitable, since we're the commodity we have
to fight with the service, explicitly or implicitly. But oh how I yearn for
the days of old when they pretended to be nice.

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magdadc
Hi everyone! Less than happy to read this news, as my husband and I have been
working on a similar solution for some time now. We've created an app
[https://maplog.it/](https://maplog.it/) which allows you to create different
lists, share them with others and give you better recommendations for places
to go out. We are currently working on an iOS and Android apps. Do you think
it makes any sense to continue or should we just drop the idea? Would love to
hear what you think!

~~~
lukeqsee
Hey magdadc,

I founded a company competing with Google Maps on another level (map tiles &
other geoservices), and I think it's super important to have competition in
the mapping space (just look at how much it costs if you want to use Google's
data anywhere!).

Your site looks super polished. Keep up the good work!

One thing I don't particularly like is having to sign in to see a map of
things nearby. I'd love a main view that shows me just the map with
interesting places marked as pins. (E.g., "Places Near Me" takes me to a
signup page, which immediately turns me off.)

Best of luck!

~~~
magdadc
Thanks so much for the feedback and encouragement! Good point on 'nearby'
being locked. All the best luck to you as well!

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nathan_long
> “Today, our users aren’t just asking for the fastest route to a place but
> also what’s happening around them, what the new places are and what the
> locals are doing in their neighborhood,” Google VP for engineering and
> product management Jen Fitzpatrick noted in today’s keynote.

Are users really asking for this? I only ever use Google Maps for driving
directions. I like that I can type the name of a place and it finds matches
near me, but that's all the personalization I've ever wanted.

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assblaster
I use Maps as a gateway to new areas. If I can't see new places automatically,
if I'm not notified, if I'm not otherwise aware of new places, how am I going
to come across them?

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kovek
I think asking locals can be one solution. If not, check out a blog of the
city you are visiting, they might publish new places there.

~~~
6cd6beb
I get a local newspaper that shows restaurant openings and closings; it seems
like a much better fit for that kind of information than something global like
google maps.

Google maps should be answering two questions: Where is it, and how do I get
there. "What's cool and new in my city" seems like a feature that's being
shoehorned on because it's a possible revenue channel.

>asking locals

I like that for hippie reasons like building community and a sense of
connection to other people, but I'm also a little disappointed I didn't
instantly recognize that the objectively best way to know "what the locals are
doing in their neighborhood" is to "ask them"

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mseebach
If you have access to a local who's tastes (and temperament and budget) are
calibrated to your own, it's a good strategy. If you are in a place for a
while and want the most out of it, researching on blogs etc is absolutely the
right thing to do. But if you are passing by and looking for a place to have
lunch, that's not feasible. Heck, even finding a local who routinely eats out
in the local area (in a great many places, people will eat at home most of the
time) can be a challenge - in touristic areas, the great majority of people
will be other tourists or trying to sell you something. Google Maps, on the
other hand, can instantly tell you if the brasserie on the main square is a
tourist trap or decent, or if there is a small independent café with great
salads on a side street five minutes from you. _That 's_ the problem Google
Maps is solving.

~~~
6cd6beb
Fair enough, but I have a hard time google maps is building this system purely
out of altruistic intentions, and not to sell us on the locations that pay
their way into the "hip local venue" group a la yelp.

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joncrane
Two things:

1) I generally don't want to do what everyone else in a given area is doing. I
prefer the off-the-beaten-path stuff. Will Google know this?

2) Will Google monetize the inclusion in the "local hot spot tonight"
recommendations?

~~~
gagege
Yes. The kind of recommendations I want are things like: "Go for a walk in
this park you've never been to. There are benches to read on." and "Go for a
bike ride on this route. You'll see parts of the city you'd normally never
see."

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hkmurakami
idk about recommendations, but I've started using Google Maps more than Yelp
for calling restaurants and sharing addresses with friends because Yelp takes
way too long to boot up compared to Google Maps.

Speed matters!

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maaaats
Never thought Gmaps was considered fast.

When I open it on a new, top shelf Android, it takes a few seconds to boot.
And it boots directly into whatever I searched a few days ago. Then I have to
click back, wait for it to not lag, back again, repeat. Then finally I can
search. Most often I click back and close it...

~~~
hkmurakami
Just tested on my iPhons 6S+. Maps took about 2.5 seconds to boot, 1 second to
load search predictions, then showed exacty results instantly after I chose
the search term.

Yelp took about a second longer on each step, with worse search predictions
with partial string input, making me spend more time typing. Also the text is
harder to read and the search box is harder to activate. So UX seems to also
be a factor adding human lag time to the equation.

Maps isn't instant but it's the better of two nonideal options.

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dsfyu404ed
Take a moment and ponder what would happen if you hooked a trailer full of
racing shells up to a 14-passenger bus, tossed a set of keys to the assistant
coach of the crew team and told them to get to the Charles river.

Yes, better restaurant suggestions is exactly what will make Maps more
competitive. /s. The Valley Filter Bubble(TM) rears its ugly head once again.

Just giving people an "I don't know the area, please don't give me a route
with a million steps and rapid fire turns when there exists an alternative
with a fraction of the complexity that only takes several minutes longer"
check box would differentiate them from every other consumer grade route
planning software and make using maps for a route in an unfamiliar area
(example use case: picking something up on CL) or when driving something
bigger than a SUV in a dense city way less stressful.

A little warning that "this route contains under-height structures" (the
location and height of which is publicly available) with a little icon on the
map for each one would probably reduce the number of rental trucks, motor-
homes and mini-buses that get can opened by an order of magnitude or two.

There's a lot of little low hanging fruit but reducing the number of routes
your route planning software sucks at isn't as sexy as trying to predict what
restaurants people will want to eat at.

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colanderman
Honestly I'd appreciate it if Maps _stopped_ giving recommendations. They
always pop up whenever I open the app, and I _never_ want them. Unfortunately
there's no way to turn them off, so every time I need to open Maps, I'm forced
to wait for recommendations to load, and then swipe them away, before it's
useful to me.

Terrible UX, thy name is Google.

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gregmac
Largely via Android Auto, I've had mixed experiences with Google Maps
recommendations in the past.

What I really want it to do is look at my calendar, and if I have something
scheduled soon with a location attached, suggest providing navigation to that.
This _has_ worked sometimes, but it's completely not reliable as it sometimes
simply doesn't do it.

What I really _don 't_ want it to do is blindly suggest navigating to
locations I've previously been to. The last couple times I went to the dentist
(something I do approximately twice a year) it's asked if I want to navigate
there every day for the following week.

The only thing I've found (mostly) reliable about it is if I get in my car at
the end of the day, the navigation suggestion is 'home', and in the morning,
it's 'work'.

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chrissnell
The feature I want can be found in Microsoft's MapPoint for DOS back in 1993:
the option to plot the shortest route based on distance. I drive a slow, old
truck that tops out at about 60 on flat roads and I prefer to avoid
interstates and to take the shortest mileage route, since the lower speed
limits of small roads are rarely applicable to me. On a drive from the Midwest
out to the western deserts, 150 miles makes a big difference.

~~~
magduf
Google Maps (and in fact just about every nav program) has an option for "no
highways". That'll probably be better for your objective than just plotting
the shortest route, which may very well follow a highway at some point since
highways frequently are more direct.

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chrissnell
Yes, I use this option frequently, but it's still not always the shortest. For
instance, here in Kansas, it will avoid interstates but route you on U.S.
highways, even though there are more direct state and county roads. I want to
see the very shortest route and make that decision for myself.

~~~
magduf
Hmm... usually when I use Google Maps (esp. on the desktop version), it'll
give me several route options at the beginning. One of those is usually the
fastest, and another is usually the shortest distance. You can then pick the
preferred route and it should follow that (though, during driving, it can get
screwed up if you take a wrong turn and then try to re-route you on the
fastest route again).

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leeoniya
instead, how about giving me directions that dont involve 20 turns down tiny
residential streets with 10 stop signs to travel 2 miles. when it can be done
with 1 turn on 2 major roads with 2 traffic lights and an extra 0.1 mile? or
multi-point routes on mobile? or a maps app UI that doesnt obstruct 60% of the
actual map?

so many google products seem to reach EOL at "good enough". see also: Gmail,
etc.

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anothergoogler
How about excluding unpaved trails from bicycle directions? I've been screwed
by that too many times. A gravel trail is not a bike route, for most bikes
anyway.

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magduf
Here's my suggestion for Google Maps: how about handling toll roads better?
It's all-or-nothing. Why not put a little gray box saying "20 minutes shorter,
$1.50", or "1 minute shorter, $29.50"? If you turn on toll roads, it'll
happily _always_ route you on a toll road or toll lane, even if it isn't any
faster. And here in DC, toll roads can easily cost you $30-50 per trip.

Maps already gives you route options to choose from, both when you first
start, and during your drive; why can't they do this with toll roads? Are they
secretly working with EZ-Pass?

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vmarsy
That's actually one of the suggestions I left them on the product.

I've the choice between toll-lanes or not on my way home, I'd love to know how
much faster it'd take if I get on the toll lane...

But in that particular case, I'm not sure how that information is gathered in
the first place, it might be hard for them to figure out which cars are on the
toll-lane, and which cars are not since both the express lane and regular lane
are next to each other.

~~~
magduf
Surely a simple filter algorithm could figure out the toll-lane thing: if you
have a bunch of cars reporting speeds on what seems to be the same road, but
you know that there's toll lanes there, and the speeds reported fall into two
extremely different ranges (one crawling, one highway speed), then it seems
safe to assume that the slow vehicles are on the regular road and the fast
ones are in the toll lane.

Plus, while they aren't perfectly accurate, toll lanes are usually far enough
away from the regular lanes that modern GPS devices in those lanes should be
able to generally show themselves biased in that direction (relative to the
devices stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic).

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niroze
Anyone still use Maps in the car? I use Waze.

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redcomplier
Waze and Google Maps are the same team run by the same management.

~~~
niroze
we know. but they are vastly different.

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thinkingemote
The implication is that as a company you will eventually pay google to rank
higher in the recommendation listings. Listings are advertising.

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davidw
It'd be nice if it stopped harassing me to leave reviews and pictures for
every place I stop these days.

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efm
You can turn that off. Maps: Settings: Your contributions

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davidw
I don't mind it, occasionally, but lately it seems like every single thing...

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edgarvaldes
Mmm. Is it the end of the cartographic value of Google Maps? I mean, I want an
accurate, up to date and objective map. I don't want recommendations, except
when I ask for them.

~~~
DavideNL
If your just looking for routes/traffic, perhaps try "Waze" \- also owned by
Google. It has maps/routes without all the other bloat like recommendations.

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ct0
"better" \- determined by who?

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romanovcode
Ad buyers

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tnorthcutt
[https://i.imgur.com/k2k7SD0.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/k2k7SD0.jpg)

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niroze
I can't remember the last time I depended on Google Maps for directions.

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lukeqsee
I'm not sure I want my map to be giving me recommendations. I'm definitely not
certain I want my map to be _able_ to give me better recommendations because
of how much data that company has on me.

I guess all the more reason to continue using Apple Maps.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I guess all the more reason to continue using Apple Maps.

It is unfortunate that OpenStreetMap doesn't have the resources to create
mapping apps at parity with Google Maps. I just want a map app. Not a
recommendation app. Not FourSquare. Just comprehensive maps, routing, and
_possibly_ traffic data. OSM, please take my money for this!

The only way for us to receive long term value from digital tooling is through
participation, resource contribution, and stewardship of organizations that
can protect these projects (Similar to how Signal received a very large cash
contribution for ongoing support, or how OSM and other renowned open source
projects have official organizations formed, elected governance, etc).

~~~
pronik
maps.me ([https://maps.me/download/](https://maps.me/download/)) might be just
what you are looking for. Maps, routing and traffic, mostly usable mobile app.

~~~
toomuchtodo
This is brilliant! Thank you for sharing! It’s exactly what I was looking for.

