
Did Google Maps's "consistency" help it climb to #1 in maps? - j053003
http://www.41latitude.com/post/1059847167/consistency
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csmeder
Really? Is the author too young to remember that Google maps was the first
company to not do maps horribly?

Before google maps, online maps were an insult to the user. You would get a
200px by 200px image of a crappy map surrounded by 10 ads that flashed at you.
If you wanted to scroll to the right you had to click an arrow. It would then
take about 30 seconds for the map and adds to reload.

Google did maps right, and eventually yahoo and map quest followed, but by the
time they did it was too late everyone was using google maps and had no reason
to switch.

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cstuder
The author updated the article with a special message for us: He basically
appologizes that somebody submitted his blog post with a misleading title to
Hacker News and emphasized again, that consistency isn't the reason that
Google Maps is still #1 on the market.

~~~
csmeder
Okay, now I feel bad. I skimmed the article and posted a reaction. I am wrong
for doing that. (Honestly, it was probably a reaction to how much I hated pre
2005 online mapping software and not the article. I guess it is such a strong
hate that to this day it gets a reaction out of me...)

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vladk
For me, and many I know it was speed. Scroll speed, zoom speed, search speed.
Even today GMaps wins in that category.

I barely ever use satellite view for anything but casual amusement.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
yeah.. never used satellite view except for "shit, i can se e my house on
google maps!" type of amusement.

Also before Google and Google Earth, online maps for many countries were not
very good. Those with the data was not very interested in creating online
maps.

Speed and ease of use is what made maps a killer product for me

~~~
andrewvc
Satellite view's actually really useful for mountain biking. You can see a
good number of trails on it (though sometimes its out of date).

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gojomo
Love the attention to detail and animated visual aids; don't buy the thesis at
all.

I don't expect feature labels to remain identical between views; the
background intensity and purposes of the views are so different it makes sense
to change their labeling. For example, there's less room for text if people
are looking at the photographic detail between roads. (This also explains why
some of Google's competitors move the road labels over roads on satellite
views: it is reasonable to assume that people switched to satellite view to
see non-road details, which you wouldn't want to obscure with labels.)

I also don't rapidly toggle between map and satellite views, and tend to look
at the satellite views at a greater zoom than the map views.

Once you drop the idea such consistency is optimal, the causality could be the
reverse: because the other services are behind in usership, they're being more
innovative in optimizing satellite labeling.

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Sam_Odio
Based on the first paragraph, it seems the author already realizes this, but
he needs to claim less and show more. His argument:

1\. The most popular mapping site also has the most consistent
satellite/street maps. 2\. The inverse is true with the least popular mapping
sites. 3\. Because there's correlation, there's causation.

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mryall
I don't really agree with the author's proposal, although it is well
explained. As many others pointed out, Google's usability was (and maybe still
is) much better than the others.

Another big point in Google's favour is how their maps _look_. Back when
Google Maps came out, the other maps were bitmapped and horrible to look at on
the screen and in print. The quality of Google's maps is much more like what
you see in a proper street directory. And they've made it look that good at
every zoom level. Quite amazing.

I've never used Bing Maps, so it was interesting to learn in this article that
they've improved the design of their default map view recently. It looks good.
If the appearance of Google's maps was some part of their success, we should
see Bing's market share rise in the future if they can convincingly beat
Google in this area.

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contextfree
Bing Maps does a lot of cool stuff but always feels perpetually in beta to me
(and not in the way that Gmail used to always be in beta). The end-to-end UX
is never quite all there.

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kqueue
I bet you most of the users did not notice this difference. What they noticed
probably is speed, and the fact that you can scroll and move around the map
without clicking the side arrows (mapquest style).

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closedloop
Hate to be contrarian, but I actually agree with the author. It's often a
collection of little things like this that puts one site over another.

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knorby
Looking through all the comparisons, Google Maps is also the only non-ugly
one.

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protomyth
I would actually like to see one of them have an updated ariel view of some
rural areas. Something in the last 5 years would be nice.

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barredo
Remember he is not saying consistency is the _only_ feature that make
GoogleMaps #1

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alextgordon
Honestly, I doubt it's got anything to do with it.

The reason Google Maps is #1 is that, at the time, it was _far_ better than
anything else. And nobody has offered an equally compelling leap since.

To move masses, you need equally massive advancements in usefulness (also,
marketing).

~~~
barredo
You are not wrong.

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slmichalk
I use google maps because it has the most usability IMHO.

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aneth
Google maps won because they provide accurate directions and maps in a really
simple, clean, fast interface. Competing products have caught up quite a bit,
but I still cant bring myself to go to mapquest because of how much it used to
suck.

I don't think most people switch to satellite view, or care if those views are
consistent.

