I share the frustration but maybe if Google hadn't gained a monopoly status Google Maps wouldn’t have been in its current sorry state.

My assessment is that EU is doing too little too late, the fine should have been something like 20B and used towards creating a non-profit, open and extendable map service ideally with the people who already do great mapping tech that don't show up in Google search results at the top.

EU is too vanilla, too unopinionated towards the tech, they go over the problem after the damage is done, take the money for themselves and force a non-solution that doesn't fix the problem and often makes it worse because they leave the implementation to the convicts who make sure to make it maliciously compliant.

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f6v 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> if Google hadn't gained a monopoly status Google Maps wouldn’t have been in its current sorry state

What's up with Google Maps? It's great for me.

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mrtksn 14 hours ago | parent [-]

On mobile its navigation is terrible, takes you into strange routes that might be technically faster but are hard to drive at or sometimes non-existent. Sometimes tries to be smart, makes everything worse. i.e. suggest a route that it says its 5 min faster and shows no traffic and you find out that there's no traffic because of a road closure further ahead. The UI when driving is not as good as the competition. I only use it because it has superior business listings with decent reviews and photos.

On desktop the web app is jittery, occasional freezing of UI, buttons stop working(most often the street view figure just doesn't show the available street view or would refuse being dropped at a location). Textures wouldn't load, sometimes will downgrade the UI to non-webgl version.

Also, businesses are often frustrated when it comes to changing their address, no proper support exists to fix mistakes or do updates.

I would loved if EU forced Google to open its maps business data for a year for download so competing services can achieve parity in this regard. After all, Google has this data because its a monopoly - people simply uploaded their photos and reviews to Google Maps because most people use it because Google forced it down the throat of everybody.

Ah, also Google is pretty evil when it comes to maps. They jacked up the API prices to ridiculous levels once the become the absolute dominant service and they also tried to make iPhone undesirable by not making their Google Maps app in some countries when Apple screwed up with Apple maps and Apple maps was practically useless outside the US.

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nolok 14 hours ago | parent [-]

It was a not specified but clearly meant part of his question that it's asking in the context of "... that could be tied to decoupling".

Eg this has nothing to do and thus can't be hand-wavy blamed on for things like "On mobile its navigation is terrible, takes you into strange routes that might be technically faster but are hard to drive at or sometimes non-existent. Sometimes tries to be smart, makes everything worse. i.e. suggest a route that it says its 5 min faster and shows no traffic and you find out that there's no traffic because of a road closure further ahead. The UI when driving is not as good as the competition. I only use it because it has superior business listings with decent reviews and photos."

	▲	mrtksn 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's the same thing with Internet Explorer, they can get away with low quality and orders of magnitude prices increases and restrictions on the API because they can and they can because of the monopoly. Early decoupling could have allowed competition which might have had good data, more open or more fairly priced api, better UI and navigation since it could have made commercial sense to invest in these things.

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nolok 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh, on the other hand the EU has now effectively forced usb-c for devices after apple refused to play it clean for years and they still got people who complained (how dare the regulator be opiniated toward tech !).

The EU loves to play it the european way, and while on the surface it seems "oh that means regulations" in reality it's a "figure it out yourselves and please behave like adult, we don't want to deal with that" and we ask for some sort of regulatory association or whatever that we can refer to to talk to them all.

It's worked in a ton of industries including ones where we have no moat but somehow tech companies are always incapable to behave. At least the US ones, eg for the phone thing it ended up being Samsung who told the EU "hey I've been playing ball for years and Apple isn't , make them or I stop too".

	▲	murderfs 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Eh, on the other hand the EU has now effectively forced usb-c for devices after apple refused to play it clean for years and they still got people who complained (how dare the regulator be opiniated toward tech !). They almost forced micro USB for devices, which would have been far worse: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/06/10-companies-agree-t...