| ▲ | stevesimmons 5 days ago |
| If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users... |
|
| ▲ | jldugger 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users Seven interviews later and 1 PR later: Fails in A/B due to declining user engagement |
| |
| ▲ | mhss 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's funny cuz is true. Except it'd probably be one long design doc with 10 rounds of review, 15 CLs (PRs) and months of rollouts later ... fails A/B due to declining user engagement. | |
| ▲ | sreekotay 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nailed it in one. Or (similarly) never makes the priority/cut-off list because "what metric does it move?" | | |
|
|
| ▲ | jasonkester 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| While you’re at it, can you find and punch the guy who thinks it’s a good idea to zoom the map to “actual size, 1cm = 1cm” mode for your entire trip? I assume he’s also the one that taught it to spitefully let you drive off the side of the screen if you ever zoom out manually so that you can see more road on the phone than you can in real life. (With a “recenter” button that will zoom you all the way back in). Satnavs had this all figured out in 2005. |
| |
| ▲ | Symbiote 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Also punch the guy that allows Google Maps navigation to flip back to a route that's been specifically rejected. Earlier this week Google prompted me with "your route may be affected by tsunami warning". Indeed, so I chose the longer, inland route rather than the coast roads. 15 minutes later I realise it's rerouted me "due to traffic conditions" -- obviously the coast road isn't as busy! (This has happened many times before, but this was the first time I had a safety reason not to take the faster route.) |
|
|
| ▲ | hsbauauvhabzb 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| While you’re there can you add a ‘how much I value my time’ input field for tolls? Google suggests I spend $20 through 3 tolls to save a single minute. Constantly. Edit: and while you’re there, move the ‘speed camera ahead, is it still there?’ Dialog. IT COVERS THE DAMN SPEED LIMIT ICON. |
| |
| ▲ | Twirrim 5 days ago | parent [-] | | And also while you're there, if no car ever in the history of your app goes down the road at the speed limit ever it's a good indication you'll never be able to ever do it at that speed. e.g. small narrow single lane country roads which are only theoretically 60mph roads. | | |
| ▲ | xp84 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Imagine the data they must have on the speeds people actually drive on every mile of every road, they’d easily be able to warn you not that you’re “over the speed limit” as in driving 70 on the freeway, but more usefully, if you’re in the top X percentile of speeds usually or even currently driven, which actually is a decent measure of unsafe was and would also be a great predictor of likelihood to get a ticket. | | |
| ▲ | yonatan8070 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I saw this video recently where the author set up a camera to record sections of highways and measure the speeds of drivers, and make cool graphs out of it. https://youtu.be/TYTaNsnBjcw | |
| ▲ | sebastiennight 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | With the data you're mentioning, it's probably just as easy to build an accident predictor model as well. | | | |
| ▲ | Flimm 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I share your intuition that your likelihood of getting a ticket is related to the speed of other vehicles. Presumably, police choose to prioritise ticketing the worst offenders when there are too many offenders to handle. But I don't share your intuition that safety is also relative in that way. If you're driving dangerously (too fast, or while drunk), you're driving dangerously, even if everyone else is driving dangerously too. If you're in a country where nobody wears a seatbelt, it's still prudent to wear a seatbelt, just as much as in a country where that is the norm. I don't think Google Maps should encourage people to drive as dangerously as everyone else. Quite the opposite! | | |
| ▲ | xp84 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | "dangerously" and "fast" are not synonyms (while drunkess obviously is dangerous regardless). The 280 in San Mateo County is designed for 80MPH, with banked turns, gentle curves, etc. The speed limit is of course 65. If most people are driving 80-85, and you enter that highway and drive 60, which is a perfectly reasonable speed according to the speed limit, you are much more likely to cause an accident than if you just drive the speed of the people around you. It's fine to point out that many people are terrible drivers and that a given crash that happens is more dangerous at a higher speed and if everybody were to drive under 60 at all times we'd all be safer, but clearly that will never happen unless we install a totalitarian government, put governors on all cars and give prison time for disabling them, with enforcers stationed everywhere to monitor. But no democracy would vote for that, so I don't think it's worth spending much mental energy on such hypotheticals. > encourage I think just the opposite: My feature would encourage people like me, who drive a "fast car" and can occasionally accidentally go too fast if a road is especially uncongested, to slow down to the speed that is customary or that others are driving, by reminding me that I could get a ticket and that driving faster than everyone else is dangerous. | |
| ▲ | hsbauauvhabzb 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Relative speed is important though. Where I live it’s completely legal to drive half the speed limit, and people often drive above it. People driving a consistent speed would reduce lane changes, breakaway traffic etc. imo speed consistency is what’s valuable, not preventing upper outliers. |
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | kirubakaran 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| When I was traveling in Mexico, it drove me nuts that even though I was signed in, Google Flights switched my currency from dollars to pesos every single time I opened a new tab! I think they really don't care. |
| |
| ▲ | bapak 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You know what's even more annoying? Google Maps app on the iPhone uses the local currency for hotels and it doesn't let you change it at all. Oh, "local" as defined by your IP too, so enjoy your VPNs. The only solution is using the website instead, it has a currency dropdown. | |
| ▲ | CamelCaseName 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is super frustrating when you travel a lot. You can change it back to your preferred currency, but it doesn't really stick. | |
| ▲ | galangalalgol 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think they rely on ip for a lot of stuff they shouldn't. Getting a local esim switches me to km until I switch back to my old one. Have no idea about Australia. Edit: after typing this realized this isn't ip, its provider. That maybe does make sense to cue off of. | | |
| ▲ | withinboredom 4 days ago | parent [-] | | You know what’s funny. The browser sends an Accept-Language header that they completely ignore. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | bombela 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| When I worked at Google; 10y ago!; I used the internal googler feedback form to open an issue for this bug. No replies. Every year I fill up the feedback form on Google map to complain about this bug. Some years, I even did it twice. For good measure. This bug is shameful at this point. |
|
| ▲ | 392 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also accepting gmaps work, if only it could preemptively cache the return trip for any trip longer than an hour, so that I'm not stuck with no service trying to remember how I got there. |
| |
| ▲ | jraph 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Suggestion to use an offline app that will save you from such surprises. https://www.comaps.app/ | | |
| ▲ | czbd 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I clicked the link with nothing better to do, and woa, that's a really good maps app. Like, "I haven't seen something like this before" levels of good. Reorients itself with my phone, accurately - and in real time, not after I'd already walked ten steps in that direction. With other maps, I thought that maybe my phone's compass is broken. The default but optional 3D top-down view is the most comprehensible-looking map I've seen in a long time. It barely uses disk space, and going by my short experience with it, it really is very light on the battery. Exceptional, this is what I'm using from now on. Just hope the iOS 15 support is maintained, that's a killer app to keep perfectly good devices productive even after they're restricted from everything else :) | | |
| ▲ | jraph 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Happy to have made you discover something cool :-) > 3D top-down view is the most comprehensible-looking map I've seen in a long time The 3D top-down view with building heights is possible thanks to OSM providing this data, thanks to people improving the map with apps like Street Complete and Every Door. Make sure to check them out :-) There's with this 3D view though: it sometimes hides streets. I usually end up disabling it at some point. |
| |
| ▲ | linhns 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Woah. What a gem you have provided us here. |
| |
| ▲ | moribunda 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Download the map of the area in Google maps. |
|
|
| ▲ | EspadaV9 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Wait, there's a setting for this? I've lived in Australia for over 16 years now but everything is still in miles instead of Kms and I have never been able to find a setting to change it (although it sounds like even if I did find itz it would be mostly useless). |
| |
| ▲ | worthless-trash 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Ive lived in Australia for 45 years, everything is in km.. never had to touch it for miles. However i did go to the US and it showed units in miles on my phone which made no sense. In Gmaps, Tap your profile picture, then select "Settings" and "Distance units". Choose between "Automatic", "Kilometers", or "Miles". Pick the units you want. | | |
| ▲ | EspadaV9 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I got the app wrong, it was Uber. I have my phone set to English (UK) and change the measurement system to metric. Uber doesn't respect that though, so it keeps using miles. | |
| ▲ | stevesimmons 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's in the mobile app. In the web browser, there's no such setting. Or at least, none that I can find. | | |
| |
| ▲ | Symbiote 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It could be using your phone/browser language settings; try English (Australia) rather than English (United States). | | |
| ▲ | EspadaV9 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Ah, thank you, this was it. I had the language set to English (UK), but changed the distance setting to KM. I got the app wrong, it was Uber, and Uber doesn't respect the override, so it always uses miles. Changing it to English (Australia) and Uber switches KM. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | olalonde 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also the currency in Google Flights... It always defaults based on your IP geolocation. |
| |
| ▲ | linhns 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Defaulting to local currency is good since people usually book in local currency, putting switch button at the end is really bad though. | | |
| ▲ | olalonde 4 days ago | parent [-] | | People tend to book using the currency they're familiar with, not necessarily the local one, so remembering their preferred currency makes sense. As someone who travels a lot but likes to see flight prices in USD, this is really annoying. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | mgw 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Another Google Maps request: Places I‘ve labelled used to at least sometimes (if inconsistently) show up in search. Now they never shop up, even when I type the exact name of the label. |
|
| ▲ | kshri24 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Another issue with Google Maps is it not showing Plus Codes for some locations that highlight the entire area. If you however place a pin on that location, it provides a Plus Code. Pretty stupid IMHO. Also it is really, really hard to search for "Nearby" places. Have to do it through "Directions". Really bad UX. |
| |
| ▲ | kevindamm 5 days ago | parent [-] | | You can put "... near <location>" at the end of your query to get nearby places. "... near me" also works |
|
|
| ▲ | fooker 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Google Maps core functionality is sort of in maintenance mode, and things have been slowly bit rotting over the last 3-4 years. Unless you want to launch some AI feature (used to be chat app for ten years and then Google got bamboozled by ChatGPT…) you’ll not find allies and your career will not progress. |
|
| ▲ | Filligree 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I could take a quick look, though I’m not so sure I’d even find the code. Your comment does not constitute a bug report, however. At a minimum: - Are you logged in or out? - What browser? - What country is your profile set to? - What country are you sending requests from? |
| |
| ▲ | RedNifre 4 days ago | parent [-] | | While you're at it, could you also change YouTube so that captions being on/off is a per-language thing and not a "The user turned off subtitles for language X, therefore it's the only they speak, therefore let's turn on subtitles for all other languages." thing? It's really annoying that whenever I watch a video that has a language different from the previous video I watched, the first thing I have to do is to turn off the captions. | | |
| ▲ | opan 4 days ago | parent [-] | | This isn't a proper solution, but if you watch with yt-dlp+mpv, you can configure default audio and sub languages in mpv (globally) and they will also work for YT videos in addition to your movies and such. Plus if you do toggle them on/off for one session it won't mess up your mpv config. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | undebuggable 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users... Similar with "privacy popups" everywhere. Similar with every bank with "remember this device" feature. I add exactly the same device on every login, until it fills entirely the limit of allowed devices. |
|
| ▲ | rufus_foreman 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If you can get anyone at Google to care about that you'll be miles ahead of anyone else. Anyway, how many metric hours are in a fortnight? |
|
| ▲ | ximeng 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How about allowing you to use Google maps while navigating without two phones or opening Apple Maps as well? |
| |
| ▲ | yonatan8070 5 days ago | parent [-] | | What do you mean? | | |
| ▲ | ximeng 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If you are following a route in Google maps in Apple CarPlay you can’t search in the map without cancelling the navigation. So you need to use another phone or another maps app. | | |
| ▲ | yonatan8070 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Ohhh Yeah it makes sense I haven't encountered that since I don't have CarPlay |
| |
| ▲ | daemin 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It would be a very useful feature as on road trips you can have a passenger setup the navigation rather than the driver and then also look around and examine places along the route. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | marzipanWhale 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This, but with 24 hour clock. |
|
| ▲ | withinboredom 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And language. I’m so tired of seeing the map in Portuguese because I went to Portugal 5 years ago. |
| |
| ▲ | undebuggable 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The same here. Oftentimes Google Maps switches to most exotic language "because of reasons". Then I set it manually to my preferred language, for decades now, and it's been the same language all the time. Are they trying to say with poker face "we don't track you"? I don't think my home-grown privacy habits are that good, somehow they manage to show me an ad of "blue sneakers" someone in the household mentioned this morning. |
|
|
| ▲ | sitzkrieg 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| thinking google would ever care about improving ux ever again is hilarious |
| |
| ▲ | xp84 5 days ago | parent [-] | | It’s true, except expand that to all big tech companies. The only time UX is changed it’s either to make ads more effective or to “streamline” things by shoving more and more of the functionality into an endless nested chain of ••• and More menus. |
|
