

Google Maps personalization could hurt public space and engagement - taylorbuley
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/05/google_maps_personalization_will_hurt_public_space_and_engagement.html

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lexandstuff
Even though two people may literally "look at the same map", their experience
of it will be completely different. They will both have different places to
call home and work; they will have their own mental no-go zones and various
other associations. If this article is correct, it seems Google recognises
this and is taking it to its logical next step: literally changing the map for
the individual.

As far as Google is concerned, services like this are very clearly what they
are most interested in offering; convenient personalised digital experiences
based on all the data we're willing to feed it. And, hell, they are getting
pretty damn good at it!

Which is not to say that local community engagement is not a valid problem to
solve. Just that, it's one for a different organisation.

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cromwellian
If you've played with the new Google Maps, this is exactly wrong. I find the
new maps actually encourages exploration. Everytime you click on the map, new
stuff appears, along with photos on the bottom.

It's like web surfing or hunting through Wikipedia. Each click changes the map
and exposes you to more stuff. What's true is that a search will spotlight the
things most relevant to you ("coffee"), but that means the highly related
coffee joints by you, your friends, zagat, are slightly bigger on the map, it
does not eliminate the other coffee joints, just visually ranks them
differently (smaller, or just a small dot)

Compared to the old google maps, where a search for coffee would return
hundreds of little red dots that you'd have to click on before you could even
see what they were, the new maps is far better because it shows more
information up front, and clicking the lower ranked stuff is done better,

I've spent hours just exploring stuff on the new maps, finding places I never
knew about by clicking new stuff as it appears on the map.

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ianstormtaylor
Not convinced by this. If you compare Maps to Search like they did, it seems
like the new maps is exactly what I'd want.

Search doesn't __only __show you sites you 've visited in the past. If that
was it's only metric for displaying results you'd never be able to search in
the first place. Obviously that's a little extreme, but Maps will have the
same requirements as Search; they need to help you find what you want to find.
If you they don't, people will slowly stop using them. If they don't show me
the pizza place I want, I'm going to get frustrated, and next time I'll just
jump straight to GrubHub instead.

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onecommentonly
_giving preferential treatment to the places frequented by our social
networking friends, the places we mention in our emails, the sites we look up
on the search engine._

This all of the sudden looks like a nightmare to me, post NSA Prism. You
aren't getting that info from me. Not Google, not Facebook.

~~~
kaeawc
They're just using the data they have in a new way... you're not giving more.

