I can't stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. I was stunned when a few days ago I was looking up something on Google Maps and started seeing advertised locations/suggestions.
Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning.
Don't know what really is going on at Google at the higher levels, but from an outsider's perspective is seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price? But to invest in what? Maybe to compete with Apple and Amazon? I can't be the only one who thinks it all seems odd - going from "don't be evil" to shutting down a massive number of projects with a lot of potential (e.g. Inbox, Fiber)...
Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but looking at the bigger picture, it looks like Google's strategy is going through some changes and I'm not convinced this would play out well for them in the end.
Well said. Thanks Google for cluttering my life with more unwanted spam.
I used to think of the Google brand very highly. Lately my subconscious associates it with the expectation of a sub-par user experience and some slightly creepy tendencies.
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
There are two main ways an ad business grows. Create more inventory to sell, and increase the value of that inventory.
Maps data had presumably been doing the latter behind the scenes. Now it appears to also be doing the former.
Would you be ok with them using the data to improve their targeting models as long as they didn't include the placements in the Maps experience itself?
Wall St only cares about growth. If you make $100B profit two quarters in a row, that’s 0% growth and you’re dead to them. The approach makes sense with smaller companies, but it seems to kill those who reach global dominance.
> "seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price?"
it's interesting to note that google is tacitly admitting that their tentacular data ingestion products (like maps) and their vast machine-learning infrastructure by themselves can't generate the value they're expecting, so they're resorting to direct monetization. otherwise they wouldn't take another PR hit like this.
Maybe now that they changed OpenAI from a non-profit, to what they dub a new type of legal entity: a non-profit that pays out “profits” to investors - and they further claim this will be the most valuable company in history by orders of magnitude - maybe they want to milk google users which they can write off by investing in the non-profit they control effectively own (even though legally non profits don’t have owners).
There's no conspiracy, just unrestrained capitalism. This is what big business does; it's entirely unsurprising. Growth becomes an end unto itself. Google was "not being evil" while doing so served their purposes; they benefitted hugely from virtuously investing in open technologies like the web, RSS, email, and early Android. But now that they've become more powerful they don't need that stuff any more, and they stand to benefit more from building barriers and consolidating control.
Our Google Maps bill went from ~$100k per year to $380k per year as a result of these changes. Needless to say, we're moving over to Mapbox.
What Google seems to miss is how this will affect customers' receptiveness to other Google products in the long-term. Having pulled the rug from under us once, there's no way we could consider e.g. a migration to Cloud in case the same happened again (where moving to a different provider would be far more painful).
I agree. I get that when you build your business around someone else's API that you are responsible for any changes and you should be prepared when business models change, but this would be analogous to milk prices going from $1/pint to $3.80/pint.
A 280% increase in pricing after you've gained dominance in market share is a tough pill to swallow and left a really bad taste in developer's mouths.
I too have moved on to Mapbox, and I suspect the OSM group was thrilled at the changes since now their mapping efforts probably increased tremendously. We're probably going to roll our own map tile servers based on OSM since Mapbox as well is pricey, but not Google Maps pricey.
Google seems to launch a product, see if it dominates and then monitorises it or drop it like a stone. But offering a free product, advert free, building up customer base for years and then flipping the switch - has become the norm. What they seem to be gearing towards more and more, is offering customers subscription deals to opt out of adverts etc.
Pretty genius really from a company/marketing perspective and equally an approach that only a company the scale of Google with the pockets, could pull off. They effectively rope in lots of developers, then flip the switch on them, knowing some will jump, but equally most will hang in there for various reasons. They are now looking at tapping into the other end of the pie with customer subscriptions.
The upshot and what you end up paying for is the ability to get real support - least that is the vertues many a Google 1, user are trumpeting.
But the real upshot is moves like this will only fuel development of alternative offerings and more so, boost existing alternative offerings.
As with most things beyond death and taxes, there is some sort of choice. It is surprising how many companies in various forms count on consumers not exercising those choices.
I'm using their search with autocomplete as a convenience feature in our app. My bill will go from $0 to $3,000 per month.
I'd be happy to pay them a reasonable price, but this costs more than our whole infrastructure, so we are moving to a vendor who offers a more realistic pricing for us.
One of my absolute favorite things about switching to iOS is how minimalist Apple Maps is. No more nagging "suggested businesses" (ads), no more promoted locations, no more prompts to rate or tag things. Just a map, a search field, and sometimes a subtle prompt for directions to a location I actually go to on a regular basis. I love apps that aren't constantly trying to sell me things. Unfortunately they feel almost alien in today's world.
I stopped using Google Maps a few years back. I received a notification on my phone that a store I was near was having a sale. It was clear that something was leaking my location, and that was being used to push ads to me through Android itself.
A little investigation revealed that the culprit was Google Maps. I uninstalled it at that point and never looked back.
Using your activity as a substrate for ads has always been Google's business model, and never been a secret. You don't have to go along with it, but it's not a revelation.
When I first got my Pixel 2 a year or so ago, I was stunned when after a few weeks I started getting notifications like "Check out the McDonalds 1 Block Away!" or "Starbucks is 0.25 miles from you" (or something along those lines). I took about 20 minutes and found all of the setting related to this in Maps and Notifications, and disabled all of them. No, I'm not going to McDonald's daily during my walk to the train, despite what Google is suggesting.
Google is really leaving the door open here for Apple to step in and offer a services bundle with a monthly fee that doesn’t involve stuffing advertising into every nook and cranny of the user experience.
I generally prefer Google’s services to Apple’s but there might be a tipping point soon where I’m willing to sacrifice some features in exchange for a generally less creepy product.
Google tracks your exact location every few seconds. They know which stores you visit, which restaurants you frequent, which friends you spend the most time with, how often you go to the gym, who you're sleeping with and much more. The targeted advertising and surveillance capabilities that are possible as a result of this level of data collection are absolutely terrifying.
What evidence is your statement based on? On iPhone Google Maps only has access to your location while the app is in use, that means either when A) the app is open or B) it's in the background and there is a blue background around the clock indicating the map is in use.
> Before the changes, Owczarek’s startup got 750,000 free map views a month and then was charged 50 cents for every 1,000 views on top of that. Then Google started charging after 30,000 views and the cost was $7 per 1,000 views. His costs jumped from nothing to $5,000 a month.
Ouch. How could that possibly be worth it? Are they just trying to squeeze money out of businesses that are already locked into the Maps API? It seems hard to believe that your average startup that needs a map widget (like, for food or pharmacy delivery) would go with Maps instead of OpenStreetMap at that price level.
Although I appreciate the effort that has gone into and continues to go into OpenStreetMap the reality is that their data set is still pretty poor in comparison to Google Maps. I would not want to create a delivery business that depended upon it for success.
Just last month I found myself in need of a source of map data for a personal use application and thought of OpenStreetMap which led me to looking up my home address. Unfortunately I couldn't find my address by searching, so I zoomed in on my neighborhood. About 50% of the street names in my neighborhood were incorrect, so I spent time correcting them. The last time I had visited OpenStreetMap was about 4 years prior. On that visit about 1/3rd of the streets in my then neighborhood didn't appear.
Maps has been awful and getting worse for a long time.
If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names.
Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.
A few months ago, I noticed navigaton saying thing like "take the next right, after Key Bank". Clearly an ad, as there is nothing ambiguous about the turn. Haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else, am I the only one?
It's not an ad¹. A lot of humans navigate that way, for many reasons. Google has done research on that through the years. Landmarks might be easier to spot and are an useful confirmation that you got the turn right. Do you never ask yourself if you just made a mistake? Perhaps you got distracted by a passenger, another vehicle or a pedestrian.
The street name you are turning onto might be not as visible because the sign is small, covered by a large truck or not well lit at night. Key Bank is probably harder to miss.
Or there might be no street name at all, which is often the case in places like India, where Google has been testing this for many years. In that case you have no choice but to use landmarks.
¹Or, at least, one that you can purchase now. It might happen in the future, but of course they'd have to be careful when rolling this out. Imagine if they used a business that is not very distinguishable and thus not a real landmark. That would diminish Maps' utility.
It has been happening to me for about a year now, with specifically Jack-in-the-Box. Seems like a win-win situation, street names are harder to detect while moving at higher speeds than a huge sign for a fast food place, and businesses get advertised. That's how I give directions to people as well, using landmarks.
I guess that explains why Google started nudging people to log in when using the iOS maps app.
They made it really hard to click through and use it without an account recently. Between that and that story about giving map data to LEAs[1] I removed it from my phone entirely.
This article is rather confused about the Google Maps service for users and for developers/webmasters.
They aren’t starting to show ads in Google Maps because they have been doing that for a long time. They just started limiting the free service for developers a few months ago.
I think this is pretty ok news: if Maps gets too annoying to use an increasing amount of people will start using alternatives, which will get better because of this, and in the end it will make it easier to live a Google-free life.
It was a mistake to let so many basic reference sources become ad-supported. The goals of hosting ads and hosting trustworthy reference information are diametrically opposed.
The problem I have with Maps is not the eventual monetization (By ads?), but how much Google sucks at doing that in a non disruptive way; not to mention I'm constantly arguing with the app as what is the best path, but I digress.
If they are to monetize it, they should take a hint from Waze (That, funnily enough, was bought by Google few tears ago) as to how do in map advertizing right.
They also have a lot of missed oportunities: The very few times I had to search something when using the app (Be it having to rush to a gas station, or in desperately need of an ATM) Maps has failed miserably.
Finaly, these apps are optimized for "First World" environments, and they also fail just as miserably in other places (Or other dimensions, as the one my country, Argentina, seems to be in)
Great. I stopped using Google Maps the moment I bought my IPhone. Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority when I say I get a better experience with Apple Maps. Apple Maps with carplay for the past year have been miles ahead of Google maps with Android Auto on all accounts for my trips. I was skeptical at first but I was never rerouted on weird residential neighborhoods / state highways or switch 3 freeways to shave off a minute of my trip, very accurate estimating traffic and transit time, etc... Keep in mind, I was also a huge fan of the Zune.
Apple’s coverage is spotty; quite good in many major cities and certain less urban environments, but there are vast areas where its coverage is pretty sketchy.
Like you I mostly use it in areas of good coverage and think it’s great. But some places I’m SOL and have to switch to google as a fallback.
[+] [-] dininski|6 years ago|reply
Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning.
Don't know what really is going on at Google at the higher levels, but from an outsider's perspective is seems like they are aggressively trying to grow even more. Maybe to raise stock price? But to invest in what? Maybe to compete with Apple and Amazon? I can't be the only one who thinks it all seems odd - going from "don't be evil" to shutting down a massive number of projects with a lot of potential (e.g. Inbox, Fiber)...
Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but looking at the bigger picture, it looks like Google's strategy is going through some changes and I'm not convinced this would play out well for them in the end.
[+] [-] rkagerer|6 years ago|reply
I used to think of the Google brand very highly. Lately my subconscious associates it with the expectation of a sub-par user experience and some slightly creepy tendencies.
[+] [-] technotony|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shostack|6 years ago|reply
Maps data had presumably been doing the latter behind the scenes. Now it appears to also be doing the former.
Would you be ok with them using the data to improve their targeting models as long as they didn't include the placements in the Maps experience itself?
[+] [-] orev|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|6 years ago|reply
it's interesting to note that google is tacitly admitting that their tentacular data ingestion products (like maps) and their vast machine-learning infrastructure by themselves can't generate the value they're expecting, so they're resorting to direct monetization. otherwise they wouldn't take another PR hit like this.
[+] [-] lconstable613|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_brown|6 years ago|reply
Maybe now that they changed OpenAI from a non-profit, to what they dub a new type of legal entity: a non-profit that pays out “profits” to investors - and they further claim this will be the most valuable company in history by orders of magnitude - maybe they want to milk google users which they can write off by investing in the non-profit they control effectively own (even though legally non profits don’t have owners).
[+] [-] jpalomaki|6 years ago|reply
1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/alphabet-...
[+] [-] _bxg1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newsoul2019|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blueski|6 years ago|reply
What Google seems to miss is how this will affect customers' receptiveness to other Google products in the long-term. Having pulled the rug from under us once, there's no way we could consider e.g. a migration to Cloud in case the same happened again (where moving to a different provider would be far more painful).
[+] [-] blantonl|6 years ago|reply
A 280% increase in pricing after you've gained dominance in market share is a tough pill to swallow and left a really bad taste in developer's mouths.
I too have moved on to Mapbox, and I suspect the OSM group was thrilled at the changes since now their mapping efforts probably increased tremendously. We're probably going to roll our own map tile servers based on OSM since Mapbox as well is pricey, but not Google Maps pricey.
[+] [-] Zenst|6 years ago|reply
Pretty genius really from a company/marketing perspective and equally an approach that only a company the scale of Google with the pockets, could pull off. They effectively rope in lots of developers, then flip the switch on them, knowing some will jump, but equally most will hang in there for various reasons. They are now looking at tapping into the other end of the pie with customer subscriptions.
The upshot and what you end up paying for is the ability to get real support - least that is the vertues many a Google 1, user are trumpeting.
But the real upshot is moves like this will only fuel development of alternative offerings and more so, boost existing alternative offerings.
As with most things beyond death and taxes, there is some sort of choice. It is surprising how many companies in various forms count on consumers not exercising those choices.
[+] [-] sockgrant|6 years ago|reply
Seriously.
I can't say this strongly enough:
Google APIs and platforms are for building toy weekend projects. DO NOT use them for your business.
[+] [-] PerfectElement|6 years ago|reply
I'd be happy to pay them a reasonable price, but this costs more than our whole infrastructure, so we are moving to a vendor who offers a more realistic pricing for us.
[+] [-] _bxg1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnFen|6 years ago|reply
A little investigation revealed that the culprit was Google Maps. I uninstalled it at that point and never looked back.
[+] [-] gowld|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jawilson2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sabareesh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] givinguflac|6 years ago|reply
Android is leaking your location on purpose...
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cageface|6 years ago|reply
I generally prefer Google’s services to Apple’s but there might be a tipping point soon where I’m willing to sacrifice some features in exchange for a generally less creepy product.
[+] [-] joshfraser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jerry2|6 years ago|reply
... and they share this data with the police and then some innocent people get entangled in this mess.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-loc...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorv...
[+] [-] samirm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soheil|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianpgordon|6 years ago|reply
Ouch. How could that possibly be worth it? Are they just trying to squeeze money out of businesses that are already locked into the Maps API? It seems hard to believe that your average startup that needs a map widget (like, for food or pharmacy delivery) would go with Maps instead of OpenStreetMap at that price level.
[+] [-] tssva|6 years ago|reply
Just last month I found myself in need of a source of map data for a personal use application and thought of OpenStreetMap which led me to looking up my home address. Unfortunately I couldn't find my address by searching, so I zoomed in on my neighborhood. About 50% of the street names in my neighborhood were incorrect, so I spent time correcting them. The last time I had visited OpenStreetMap was about 4 years prior. On that visit about 1/3rd of the streets in my then neighborhood didn't appear.
[+] [-] nullc|6 years ago|reply
If it's not routing me 25+ miles further to save "1 minute" (really a multi-minute slowdown in the 90th percentile) then its failing to give comprehensible directions in order to interpose business names.
Maybe the monetization is finally makes competing with it attractive enough.
[+] [-] mch82|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pojntfx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgwxd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puzzle|6 years ago|reply
The street name you are turning onto might be not as visible because the sign is small, covered by a large truck or not well lit at night. Key Bank is probably harder to miss.
Or there might be no street name at all, which is often the case in places like India, where Google has been testing this for many years. In that case you have no choice but to use landmarks.
¹Or, at least, one that you can purchase now. It might happen in the future, but of course they'd have to be careful when rolling this out. Imagine if they used a business that is not very distinguishable and thus not a real landmark. That would diminish Maps' utility.
[+] [-] Konnstann|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsjq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|6 years ago|reply
I don't know if this is a marketing tie-in or a sincere attempt to use landmarks as a legitimate navigation technique.
[+] [-] brianpgordon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dontbenebby|6 years ago|reply
They made it really hard to click through and use it without an account recently. Between that and that story about giving map data to LEAs[1] I removed it from my phone entirely.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorv...
[+] [-] blunte|6 years ago|reply
Also, after submitting my "preferences", I actually got to watch a custom progress meter creep thru the %s until I gave up around 80.
What a fucking disaster our modern internet is.
[+] [-] bscphil|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robjan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|6 years ago|reply
They aren’t starting to show ads in Google Maps because they have been doing that for a long time. They just started limiting the free service for developers a few months ago.
[+] [-] ff_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] growlist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesColeman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericol|6 years ago|reply
If they are to monetize it, they should take a hint from Waze (That, funnily enough, was bought by Google few tears ago) as to how do in map advertizing right.
They also have a lot of missed oportunities: The very few times I had to search something when using the app (Be it having to rush to a gas station, or in desperately need of an ATM) Maps has failed miserably.
Finaly, these apps are optimized for "First World" environments, and they also fail just as miserably in other places (Or other dimensions, as the one my country, Argentina, seems to be in)
[+] [-] decebalus1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|6 years ago|reply
Like you I mostly use it in areas of good coverage and think it’s great. But some places I’m SOL and have to switch to google as a fallback.