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Google continues the enshitification of the apps that made them such a dominant company.
I mean… We probably should have seen it coming.
They’re not a “disruptor” in an industry when they give away the product for free at a loss…they’re just anti-competitive. We got a free ride at the cost of basically destroying all competition for Google. They got to sit back and chill and now they can reap the benefits of zero competition… eg doing whatever the fuck they want since there’s no competitive alternative.
Uber did this too. Remember when you didn’t have to tip?
Zero competition only for so long, I have seen a notable uptick in for example OSM being used even by companies instead of gmaps.
People are lazy creatures of habit, but once the enshittification starts impacting companies reliant on affected services there will be an alternative cooked up.
Possibly leading to the slow enshittification again, but either way. And it is not like google has some patent on web maps either.
They got to sit back and chill and now they can reap the benefits of zero competition… eg doing whatever the fuck they want since there’s no competitive alternative.
Ah, capitalism. <3
the product
If it’s free, we’re the product.
If it’s free, we’re the product.
That’s where they messed up.
The product is crowdsourced realtime traffic and editing so searchers can use a mapper that will get them there effectively. They need to understand how it affects ad revenue from search. If the app isn’t easy to use, their editor army and distributed telemetry will dry up.
It won’t work. It will just lower the barrier to entry. I don’t disagree that this is their angle, it’s just… Short sighted.
Organic Maps (available on F-Droid and the Play store) is the closest FOSS alternative to Google maps i have been able to find. Routes are not perfect (they work but could be better) and time estimations are best-guess as it is completely offline minus map downloads, but its a great alternative and also has killer hiking trail data that beats Google’s by a country mile. The offline bit also means that it works without a data connection, and for the privacy-conscious it’s a major boon.
Was unaware of Organic Maps, downloaded today. Thank you!
Also available on iphone (downloading it now), ready to drop maps as the degoogling continues.
Reminds me of when they started doing that thing where they pretended to be helpful by having the GPS voice call out the name of a business on the corner where your turn is - “Turn left after ‘business’ on the left” - but in reality those businesses were paying to inject their name into your driving directions.
When it started, I immediately suspected they were possibly paid sponsorships, which was all but confirmed when it told me to turn “after Bank of America, with drive-thru ATM, on the right.” Stealth advertising mid-navigation… insane.
As absolutely shitty as having ads is that 1 feature is immensely helpful especially in big cities. This helps to avoid needing a last minute turn.
Now: Testing a “feature” that adds sponsored stops to your trip.
Soon: This “feature” is rolled out. You can’t opt out.
After: For a small fee, you can use our app without distractions, such as sponsored content.
Even Later: for a small fee, you can get more personalized ads
Honestly I just wish they’d give us the option to subscribe to an ad-free experience now. I’d even make an exception in uBlock for Google ads if they’d apply “ad-free” to other sites and let me buy that experience while still supporting the content makers I support.
I go through a lot of effort to prevent myself from seeing ads online. That overall effort (not just for Google, but for my entire web experience) is probably worth $50-100 per month of my time, and I’d gladly pay that if it meant I didn’t have to put in the effort. I’ve been slowly unsubscribing from streaming services because of their ads policies…
I’ve been testing Magic Earth recently as a replacement for Google Maps for navigation, and it’s generally pretty good. It uses OpenStreetMap as its map data source, so how up-to-date things are depends on how many OSM contributors there are in your area.
The benefit it provides over other OSM-based apps such as OsmAnd and Organic Maps is the traffic data. This is real-time-ish based on the movement of other Magic Earth users who consent to sharing their location information - so the accuracy of the traffic data will depend on how many other ME users there are in your area.
Overall I think it’s an acceptable replacement for Google Maps navigation. However, it’s not good for finding things like restaurants or stores, checking operating hours or reviews, or seeing what a place looks like - for this kind of thing I haven’t found a substitute for Google Maps. I generally find the place I want to go in GM then switch to ME for the actual navigation.
From the FAQ:
Why is Magic Earth free? What is the business model?
Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.
Will Magic Earth be Open Source?
No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.
Back in like 2010 that would have been 100% acceptable and welcome for me, but these days I’m very wary of a commercial entity going down the enshittification route, and having no source makes it so that if they go down that way you have no easy way out, you’re locked. I guess not being in the stock market is a positive, but nothing stops them from being acquired by somebody else who starts mining every byte of data…
There is also Organic Maps
Man, that shit is why i shifted from Waze to gMaps, now they’re also doing this shit.
Both owned by Google, unfortunately, so not a surprise I guess.
If I could just get it to stop tagging Liquor Stores as significant landmarks while I’m driving, that would be great. Otoh, if it tricks people into Liquor Store detours, wouldn’t that be a fun Congressional Inquiry?
Not sure if it affects that, but you can disable Alcohol ads on the Google Ad center.
THANK YOU!!!
spotted the new ad format during their commute
Are people really using google maps during their regular commute now?
It has access to traffic data and is pretty good at estimating trip time
Yeah my commute is either 7 minutes or 30+ depending on traffic so it’s nice to know which before I get on the freeway
Regularly. There are three potential routes I can take to work and which one is best depends highly on the traffic that hour.
I usually only need to glance at the map for the first turn to see which route it picked for me and after that I really only glance at the arrival time.
I used to live in Maryland and work in Northern Virginia. It was a 42 mile drive, but a fast commute was 90 minutes, but could be over 3 hours. I wish I had gps back then to give me traffic info and route navigation.
With as often as folks have to change jobs these days, it doesn’t surprise me.
Some people also work at customer sites that change often.
Yep. It takes me around traffic.
Once Google Maps directed me through the scenic route to work. Turns out there was a massive crash on the highway.
Not only would I have been late I would also have to survive traffic hell.
It also tells you where speed traps are ahead of time. I’ve always wondered how the cops feel about Google snitching on them like that.
Like seeing a young kid take up smoking cigarettes - how depressing
