On another note: it's interesting that it wasn't until I saw this design refresh that I didn't realise just how stale the old design was. It seems like Google revolutionised the maps world when they first released it, and then they let the interface stagnate ever since, so this is nice to see.
We'll see how the new look works in action - I can't say I see a huge improvement, though there are definitely a few features that make it more at-a-glance effective.
Anyone making graphics-intensive sites (maps, photos, landing pages, etc) that isn't serving @2X versions is now officially Doing It Wrong. The retina iPad has been out for ages, and we now have a sub-$1500 laptop (and of course all of the high-end Apple stuff) on which all of this low-res stuff makes your brand and product look like crap. Seriously, it's not that hard.
Japan/Korea/etc are essentially not covered at all ... they don't even seem to have any roads except for the most major highways—Tokyo on here.com literally has like five roads!—and what very little data they do have is often wrong.
Even Apple does vastly better... oO;
I've used it in South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia, and was very impressed. Little tracks that hardly qualify as a road are there, and reliable. The other big deal in that part of the world is that both maps and navigation are 100% functional when offline.
Now, since I did have MapsGL enabled, it says it's been integrated into the new Google Maps that's being previewed here.
Currently, the biggest security risk in WebGL is, indirectly, your graphics driver. As an example, the latest security problem with WebGL was in OS X and had to to with exposing uninitialized memory contents. Of course, it is true that graphics driver writers are only now warming up to the fact that a webpage shouldn't cause a kernel panic and that it shouldn't leak uninitialized memory. Still, the WebGL spec itself has fixed all of the early problems it had.
Sorry if you were aware of this distinction! I hear many people talking about WebGL security issues as they existed in the draft, and I think some clarification of the public opinion is in order.
(And, to be perfectly nitpicky, in Windows you'd be blaming Direct3D drivers ;) ANGLE compiles WebGL to Direct3D.)
Not caring about attacks from the local user is what got Microsoft tons of (justified) bad PR not ten years ago.
It is not ready for prime time and I shudder to think what people on older machines or laptops are going to experience.
Dear god, Google still thinking it's a cute little startup. It really is the Microsoft story all over again.
Sure Google can handle scale better than anyone, but a stampede is still a stampede. Soft launches are way safer and easier to manage.
Spoken like someone who has never tried to buy tickets to Google IO!
But on a serious note, there are some products at Google that clearly scale well beyond what most other groups are capable of, but there are some products at Google that... don't.
Like any big company, things aren't completely uniform across the board.
Who knows, maybe it might still be running. I'm not sure if there were other factors but personally it never made sense to me.
I believe if Google really wanted to, they could go from 0 to 1 million users in minutes.
That seemed like the perfect way not to introduce a product oriented toward collaboration.
Fact is, they can't satisfy everyone. The algorithm used to differentiate the few from the many will obviously upset some groups.
Would you rather they charge for it? That'd be the Microsoft thing to do .
Also, for Google I/O it would have served to have people apply, and review applications to pick real developers and not dumbass unable to read a line of code but hoping for a cool gadget to flip on ebay.
Anyway, as much as I want to try the new map right away I would do the invite system like them: you get to ramp up your userbase progressively, and people trying it actually want to try it (not grandma opening Maps and being completely confused by the new UI and possible bugs).
Gmail and Google Groups have both had random rollouts for changes, with optional rollbacks. That seems more fitting (to me at least).
It's the same disconnect that we know from Microsoft, that couldn't see itself as the monopolist they were, because their self-image was still that of the little startup that took on the mighty IBM.
Of course it could all just be marketing, like every word out of Google these days is just marketing without substance.
Either way, Google doesn't listen to user feedback and is perfectly capable of rolling out a new product on a global scale. "Request an invite" is BS.
How do you know this? I find this Request a clever way to stagger the release of the update. In case there happens to be any issues then only those who volunteered for the update would be affected, hopefully resulting in slightly higher patience.
What? Since when has launching a product to a small audience and gathering feedback been something that only a startup is allowed to do?
Also, your negativity makes you sound very disgruntled.
It actually looks cool though.
I'm not going to complain though, I just want to try it out!
People literally lust into ads for "things they cannot have".
That's also part of the success of all the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" style shows and magazines on the poor/middle class.
Thanks for point it out.
A 13 year old wanted "more than anything" a ...Gmail invite of all things?
It's not that weird really.
That said, I think it makes sense. Ask Apple how it feels to make a drastic change with maps.
I'm tired of Google request-an-invites, and it was a reaction completely independent of the comments here (which I hadn't yet seen).
Something to think about, I guess.
… on second thought, I'm sure even Google knows they'd be preaching to the choir there.
I remember reading about this a couple years ago. Is it still an issue? Can you point to any recent sources?
Basic IR intro, skip this paragraph if you know the drill: Basic text search can be thought of as "looking for your search terms in relevant documents" (ala TF-IDF). More sophisticated search layers on various other metrics. Google famously employed its Page Rank algorithm as one such example. Modern search engines with enough traffic can also use click streams themselves as a search metric: for the given search terms, which link(s) were actually clicked on?
Back on point: What users click on and where they go (if the data is available) and how many times they go (again, if the data is available) are usable metrics, physical equivalents of click-stream traffic.
Likewise, information from other sources about relatedness of locations can also be integrated. Think "semantic fisheye views." E.g. you clicked on a pub, and Google knows about other pubs and bars in the area. Or perhaps you clicked on a Yoga studio, which causes different location relationships to be (de-)emphasized. Google at very least can draw on their classic search data as well as the more structured location and business data they've been building for some time.
It's like the way pagerank works. It doesn't rely on explicit rankings, it relies on extracting implicit trust and authority information from the natural and organic ways that people link things on the web.
You think when Google Maps was launched their primary competitors (e.g. MapQuest) had anything comparable? Maps was one of the first, large scale, Web 2.0/AJAX applications. At the time, most other mapping products were still reloading an iframe or the whole page everytime you needed to change the map.
Gmail was lightyears better in both performance, spam filtering, organization, and speed compared to other major WebMails at the time.
The New Google Maps is a quantum leap over competitors like Bing Maps, even native iOS maps.
It seems a far easier strategy to create a social service where identification is a presumed requirement, and then sprinkle a bit of that across all of the other services. By 2011, half a billion users had been trained by Facebook that logging in with your real identity was the norm. After all, all of your friends were doing it.
Thus, Google+ was born. It was the first time that all of Google made a consolidated step toward identification across all of their services. It was a rally point internally and externally, was easily understood, had a clear product roadmap, and opened the door to all kinds of new, stickier products.
I think that the expectations of G+ being a Facebook killer were misguided. Google would love to replace the FB News Feed, but I think it's already achieved much of what it set out to do.
Fast forward this is officially FourSquare rip and FourSquare is officially going to die.
Apple Maps might need to ally with other Google rivals to get the mindshare/critical-mass needed to have any competitive chance.
They are just trying to get a 95% default solution to prevent Google from using its leverage to make changes to the OS e.g. sending more user information to Google. And by all accounts they have achieved this.
Granted, I'm sure that interface can evolve, but the fact of the matter is that Waze's technology is not defensible.
Waze can tell you if there's an accident along your route, and point out where it is, and it is pretty accurate most of the time. That feature alone has saved me countless hours. As far as battery usage goes, it's no worse than Google Maps.
I'm not a huge fan of the interface, or the gamification aspect, but the data is just that good.
That said, it works really well where I live, and I don't live anywhere near a major tech hub.
The way I usually browser through a list of results is by clicking each map bubble and taking action based on the details that pop up (open a new tab, call the place, refine my search, ignore the result, etc). This new version of maps seems to infer from me clicking on a bubble, that I like the underlying result. Which of course is not true because I clicked the bubble in order to figure out if I like it. Anyone else think they have this backward?
Re the invites, I suppose when you get to the scale of Google you simply have to limit uptake or the service will be swamped on the first day and everyone will go away with a terrible impression. Better that they get the kinks out first, and they must have decided that request an invite is the simplest way to limit access to the beta while showing it to people who care about seeing it.
I'm a little hesitant about one aspect of this though because it seems they've decided to include adverts on the actual maps - to my mind a better way to do this would have been for businesses which are already featured by the likes of Zagat to be able to play for a nicer entry, with more images etc. Having paid adverts on there seems a bit cheesy and a bit too close to digital billboards.
Combine this with Google's push to take over our digital lives, and it leaves me with an uneasy feeling - like most of the major corporations (Facebook, Apple, MS, Amazon), they want to control every aspect of your online life that they can. Sometimes I wish software companies would just focus on getting a niche just right, and not try to take over our entire life online, but it seems that's just not the nature of large corporations, and so we have a constant negotiation with them as to just how much of our life we're willing to share.
I think we're still far from the future of a 'one true map' that has it all, unfortunately. I still don't trust Google Maps to return quality results with a query like "restaurants near 14th st nyc"—which, from an idealistic standpoint, I should trust it with.
The biggest thing that Apple Maps has over Google Maps is their partnership with Yelp. Yelp is arguably the best source of business information in cities where it's available. It's up-to-date address-wise, lists pretty much every restaurant and attraction, has hours for many of them, and even menus. Plus decent reviews, and lots of them. Google and Zagat can't come anywhere close.
Love Google Maps. Hate that they dominate this important space so heavily.
This is very helpful, thanks.
And the rest of us aren't looking for places to eat in the Mission using public transit. (BTW, folks in the Mission skateboard, bike or walk.)
Anyhoo, some of us live in L.A. We drive something called cars, often on roads called freeways.
We want to know if we have to make six lane changes from the carpool lane to merge onto another freeway. Or if we can just stay in the carpool lane and make one lane change to the left in a few minutes.
We also want to know how long our trip will take if we use the carpool lane and FasTrak.
Oh, and give us something like Glympse.
Think of it as Latitude 2.0.
Or, better yet, think of it as a Google+ feature.
This isn't Gmail and it's not a freaking social network. When will you learn Google?
An invitation/queue system seems like the perfect answer.
Click on "Close account and delete all services and information associated with it."
Not overly impressed by any of the new features though, looks like they just pushed their recommendation engine more to the front and brushed up the UI map rendering a bit, but that's about it. Still a lot better than any other map service though.
Honestly now that I think about it I have no idea what my "usual" google maps usage is so it'll be interesting to see how much that matters!
- I have a bike, and a pass that gets me on any local bus or light rail car. Busses and light rail cars can carry people with bikes. What are the best two or three route options from point A to B using some combination of bike routes and public transit?
- I am already following a route to get somewhere. Suddenly I decide I want/need to stop at a (gas station | cafe | restaurant | other). Make it easy to find such a place (optimizing for not taking me too far off my route, and doing it soon if it's a long route), add it to the route, and don't forget the original destination.
Google Maps on Android seemed farther along than iOS last I used it, but neither really handled these use cases well, last I tried.
It's unlike any other I've seen, because the screen looks like it is viewed from an upper left angle (like at 0:10). Really brings the video alive; I'd love to use this software to make some video tutorials.
You can replicate the look by recording your tour in one of OS X’s HiDPI modes and then adjusting the perspective in a non-lineair editing suite (such as Final Cut Pro) or post-production software (such as AfterEffects).
I can "send to phone" (SMS) a link, email a link, or send to a car I don't own or a GPS unit I haven't purchased however.
So I have meeting tomorrow, I want to be sure that when I click the Google Maps icon the address I want to navigate to will be the first thing listed.
I do agree getting little things between devices still feels hard. Chrome to Phone works for URLs and works one way, but I feel like things should be seamless, instant, and universal. Still missing in every ecosystem.
As an aside, the new look of the maps reminds me a lot of my beloved Michelin maps. Google used to have zero terrain on the regular map, only forest/park shading, but now they have a minimal amount, just like Michelin. It really does help me "read" the landscape. A lot of the colors also seem to be converging to Michelin standards.
Warning, "monster milktruck demo" and "flight simulator" will take about 4 to 8 hours of your free time. Not as addictive as most video games, but approach with caution.
Eh... not the best feature to be pointing out.