I find it interesting that many of these complaints essentially boil down to: listen, I know you have vast amounts of data about who I am as a person, so why aren’t you using this data effectively?
I agree with the article, but i hate the way the author just admits defeat at the end. “I hate everything about it! But i won’t realistically leave. And actually you can keep doing it all, just let me hide hotels pretty please”. Ugh.
I can’t claim I’ve managed anything more, beyond periodically re-testing the alternatives, but i just hate to see it written., Feels like it undermines the whole argument when they make clear that Google will see no consequence.
The biggest hurdle for me, is that many businesses and other points of interest are missing in the alternatives. And if not missing, then useful data like opening hours, reviews, etc aren’t there.
But i hate every moment i spend in Google Maps due to the advertising and bad UX, and I will jump ship as soon as something comes even close (on Android).
Most annoying thing for me is being unable to filter businesses out of my search results. I cannot tell you how many times I have been looking for coffee shops and had to scroll past dozens of gas stations that sell coffee. It’s also a problem that I can’t filter out fast food or massive chains. Yes Starbucks is a coffee shop, but if I want something small or local I’m shit out of luck on Google maps because they dominate my results.
This is such a simple feature for a SEARCH ENGINE COMPANY to implement but I’m sure they don’t want to risk upsetting potential ad revenue by allowing users to filter out the advertisers business.
My biggest gripe is that it can’t handle multi part trips with turn by turn directions. By that I mean - let’s say I want to go across town to my destination and that involves using the subway that I need to walk to. For some reason Maps doesn’t give you turn by turn walking directions to the subway part, but will show you the map with your location to the subway then to destination. You have to start and stop turn by turn directions to each part separately. That’s such a pain in the butt and is nonsensical.
Really? It does that for me just fine. Maybe the subway movement data isn’t properly uploaded to the Maps system?
I’d love to see a video of it working. As far as I know, there is no way to do so. You cannot plan a trip that has public transportation and have it give you turn by turn walking directions to the pickup point, have it automatically turn off those turn by turn directions when you’re on the public transport, then automatically turn the turn by turn walking dirrections back on when you’re off the transport.
It simply shows you the overhead map and tells you to walk to the transportation. It does not allow you to see turn by turn directions to the location when you’ve got a mixed mode of transport (walking and pubic transport).
Hmm, I just tried a route and it looks like you’re right, it draws it out but doesn’t give you turn by turn. I could have sworn it does when I’m actually following it, but maybe not. I’ll have to actually test it.
#6.) If you’re using a browser that prevents fingerprinting (Firefox), road badges display as garbage in Google Maps.
