Google Maps: Bird Mode

[_qbjt]

Fun story. There's something to be said about the importance of naming. Google Maps likely set UX precedents for a lot of other map software to come, for better and worse. Had Google went with "Bird Mode" (and not trademarked the phrase) we would have probably seen it propagate throughout other map apps and the Internet at large.

To this day, I still see the floppy disk used to represent "save" even though we haven't used floppy disks for decades now. It's not uncommon to see it used in mobile apps, especially the less UX-obsessed ones you might find on the Android Play Store.

The next time you assign a name or symbol to something, give it some thought. You never know how others will use it.

[mikeash]

This is an example where it has an impact beyond just the name, too. A lot of people think the “satellite” imagery actually comes from satellites, and thus vastly overestimate the imaging power of actual satellites.

[Stratoscope]

The floppy disk icon is scheduled for deletion the same year that we stop dialing our phones.

[bradknowles]

There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors. — @codinghorror https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/506010907021828096?s...

[jakeisnotadog]

Re: floppy disks as save icons - if you show an elementary-school aged kid an actual floppy disk, they’re probably more likely to call it a 3D-printed save icon now. How things change!

[dmix]

I saw a floppy disk icon (no text) as the save button in the contacts app when adding a number on a friends (very) budget phone today when I was helping them add a number. I was surprised to say the least. Especially in such a critical OS app.

The fringes of Android Chinese manufacturer mods are a mess.

[alpb]

Bing Maps already has “bird’s eye” mode and has always had it as the name of the aerial imagery. Although theirs’ is totally a bird’s eye, you can see buildings from an angle instead of from the top.

[ridiculous_fish]

Steve Jobs on how Apple got its name:

"And we were about three months late in filing a fictitious business name so I threatened to call the company Apple Computer unless someone suggested a more interesting name by five o'clock that day. Hoping to stimulate creativity. And it stuck. And that's why we're called Apple."

[ekianjo]

The added benefit is that at the time you end up appearing very early in the phone books if you company name starts with A. Example: Atari, Amiga... Amiga was also chosen, if I remember correctly, also because it made it appear before Atari (eternal rivals...).

[lgierth]

Reminds me of Banana Driven Development (h/t @pcalcado) -- if you can't come up with a good name right away, name it banana or some other fruit, or generally something that's so ridiculous that you just have to find a proper name for it.

[js2]

> We spend the next few days freaking out. We knew the feature was going to be huge, and now it had this name that everyone on both sides of the Satellite-vs-Aerial-Photography war agreed was silly and horrible. But it was decided.

Or maybe Sergey did that on purpose to force the teams to make a decision, "don't make me pull this car over" like.

[wnevets]

That's what I think happened, pick what you want or you're getting bird mode.

[timdorr]

Interestingly, Bing Maps uses the technically accurate "Aerial" term: https://www.bing.com/maps

[deanCommie]

This reminds me,

Is anyone else remembering when Bing Maps was REALLY good? It had a 45 degree view of cities that looked insanely good, like Sim City. When you zoomed in too close, it switched to aerial imagery.

And it was all buttery smooth. What happened to that product?

[patrickfreed]

and when they first introduced it, I think they called it "bird's eye" view.

[threatofrain]

Bing also uses the term "Bird's Eye" in the right-click options menu. Maybe Sergey wasn't so crazy?

[black-tea]

How is that the Google team couldn't come up with this? The main argument for "satellite" was "it fits on a button". I actually think this was more about egos despite what the twitter story says.

[KKKKkkkk1]

Now, these exec reviews were Larry and Sergey’s favorite place to experiment with crazy meeting ideas (kind of fun, actually). I had attended one review where one founder spent the entire meeting on an elliptical machine. Their new experiment was a huge countdown clock.

If your manager brings fun gadgets into your meetings to keep him/herself entertained, your work might not be important to the company.

[ma2rten]

Or it could be that you work at a startup where the founders are playful, willing to experiment and don't take themselves too seriously. Google did a lot of things differently than other companies.

Larry and Sergey were extremely invested in Google. I don't think that at this point there was a single employee at Google whose work was not important for them. Larry personally signed off on every single hire. And as you can see in this story they got involved in details like what the text on a button is.

[cbsks]

Or your manager trusts you to do what is right, and knows that the meeting is pointless and their input is superfluous.

[ufmace]

I think I saw it in an Dilbert or something, but that reminds me of the Dinosaur Strategy. It involves just ignoring any stupid directives that management puts out, hoping that by the time anybody notices that you haven't actually done it, they will have forgotten about it or left.

[matt4077]

That seems to go well with the general Dilbert philosophy of „everyone but me is stupid“.

[rasz]

Or claim it as their own idea, like most of the time.

[gmac]

The title reminds me of an arguably-even-closer-to-bird mode I rigged up for a fun conference exhibit at UCL years ago, using the Google Earth browser plug-in and a Kinect (linked via Processing and Websockets). We called it Pigeon Sim.

Video: https://vimeo.com/41552761

Code: https://github.com/jawj/pigeonsim

[sjg]

Ahh those were the days, gmac. We rolled that thing out for years afterwards, this was truly "Bird Mode" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ye9dfeu7c

[Waterluvian]

As a hardcore GIS person it drives me a little wild watching people of other domains misname things like aerial vs. satellite, photography vs. imagery, etc. Even moreso is when people of other domains re-write the wheel rather than learn some GIS (like stuff I see often in Mobile robot perception/mapping).

The best way I can describe it is that feeling when kids on the playground are speaking like experts about a videogame you knew about years before anyone. You should be excited they're into stuff you're into, but you just wished they'd give a little credit. :)

[petre]

I also work with GIS data. Robot perception/mapping is still useful because it accounts for changes in the environment, like a moved furniture piece. Even for GIS, you need fresh aerial photos to do feature detection, don't you? The UN has GIS analysts working around the clck to supply fresh mapping data for military missions.

[drewda]

For more stories like this, I highly recommend "Never Lost Again" by Bill Kilday: https://www.powells.com/book/never-lost-again-the-google-map...

Kilday was a PM and marketing manager at Keyhole, the startup whose product was renamed Google Earth after being acquired.

His book includes stories and details on Google Earth, Google Maps, the huge amounts of $$$$$, and some of the personalities and politics involved (including Bret Taylor, author of the OP tweet thread).

[ma2rten]

I feel like they were taking themselves too seriously. The company is named after a spelling mistake. I don't think "Bird Mode" would have been too silly.

[loose11]

>> It turns out, when you write the code, you have a fair amount of power.

Best quote, and the same thing what I think all day long.

[ecpottinger]

I had to laugh. All these execs taking the name so serious during the meeting, yet afterwards none raised a fuss because you used a different name.

What that tells me, the name was never that important to them, it was just an meeting to show how important they were to each other - yet in real life their poses meant NOTHING.

[fghtr]

Exactly what Stallman has been saying for decades. Exactly from what he is trying to protect users.

[Raphael]

And if the exec did remember, he may well fire you on the spot for your insolence.

[userbinator]

I would've just gone with "Photograph", given that the other two types shown are "Default" and "Terrain".

(As the old saying goes, naming things is hard, and I've personally experienced a lot of bikeshed over it...)

[samspenc]

Kinda wish they'd gone with "bird mode". In addition to being cool, it looks like it would have been more accurate as well :)

[carlob]

Well, now they can use bird's mode as yet another option for directions. I often wish it was easier to get geodesic distance. It is certainly more useful than that uber and lyft ad.

[bowmessage]

true, because the photos were taken by birds

[Qub3d]

As always, here's the thread for people that dislike the twitter format: https://threader.app/thread/1099370126678253569

[xbryanx]

It should have been called Bird Mode, because all the images are obviously taken with birds: https://birdsarentreal.com/pages/the-history

[mikeash]

The internet is truly an amazing place.

[dstola]

Perfect example of "its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" if the execs remembered the meeting and did't like the naming, and also meshes extremely well with "It turns out, when you write the code, you have a fair amount of power"

[an4rchy]

Why not "Aerial" mode?

Edit: Looks like another reply correctly pointed that Bing uses this.

[aboutruby]

Apple Maps, OpenMapTiles, and Mapbox calls it Satellite. Bing Maps calls it Aerial.

Maybe heavily influenced by Google Maps.

[metaphor]

> [Larry and Sergey's] new experiment was a huge countdown clock. The rule was: the review had to end on time. ... And literally no exec noticed or remembered our review.

I suppose when you're Larry and Sergey, toying with bikeshed product managers can be fun and not actually waste a crap ton of time.

[kkarpkkarp]

Side note: on Twitter, you need to place each paragraph of your essay in a separate post, paying attention to the number of signs.

And people are complaining that the new editor in WordPress (Gutenberg) is bad :)