OP suggested this was happening back in the day. Either way:
MapQuest didn't suck because of its UI model. MapQuest sucked because it was clunky, slow, and cluttered. Its implementation was crap.
When you look at today's MapQuest, they've largely corrected this. The maps are much less ugly, they now pick a (somewhat) reasonable level of detail based on your zoom level and moving around the map is fast whether you're using their joystick control or dragging the map.
The sad thing is, none of this is rocket science. It shouldn't have taken them this long to figure out. Google Maps steadily, inevitably eroded their market share and last I heard, they were 10% behind.
I stopped using MapQuest because I got tired of the errors in it - locations were often a mile or more away from where MapQuest said they were, leaving me driving around in circles.
MapQuest didn't suck because of its UI model. MapQuest sucked because it was clunky, slow, and cluttered. Its implementation was crap.
When you look at today's MapQuest, they've largely corrected this. The maps are much less ugly, they now pick a (somewhat) reasonable level of detail based on your zoom level and moving around the map is fast whether you're using their joystick control or dragging the map.
The sad thing is, none of this is rocket science. It shouldn't have taken them this long to figure out. Google Maps steadily, inevitably eroded their market share and last I heard, they were 10% behind.