cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17574522
Over the course of 2024, Google Maps for Android has been working on a redesign that drops most fullscreen UIs in favor of sheets…
It’s amazing to me how much these companies spend on redesigns that add nothing but rounded corners one year, then sharp corners next year, and so on…
A friend of mine worked for a FAANG company and he taught me that people get promoted for creating something “new” rather than improving something that already exists.
Bullshit. You are just regurgitating the same tired crap that’s been repeated on the Internet for years.
As someone who’s worked for such companies since the mid-90’s, it’s common knowledge that run-and-maintain isn’t appreciated, only doing new things is.
Someone who keeps things from failing is much more at risk during layoffs than those who work only on new projects.
Gonna call me a liar now?
As someone who works for a similar company now, this notion and the success of this strategy/mindset greatly exaggerated.
Considering how often new projects get axed at Google you couldn’t possibly be safer on average than working on a golden goose (like Search/Android/Maps/etc).
You got get that W, you don’t get a W for making shit work. You are a cost center haha
You got me. I made up a story so I could get my one upvote.
It’s repeated because it’s true. This is very common in the industry.
I work at a FAANG adjacent company and it’s exactly the same thing here. I believe it 100%
It’s busy work to justify a lot of positions. Think how many people are needed even for a minor change like that in an organization as large and bloated as google
I literally can’t even tell the difference between the first set of pictures other than the new one looks like it has an added advertisement on the center panel.
Fuck Google Maps. I’ve been requesting to fix my road for 6 months now (new house I just purchased this year). They refuse. So now any website that uses google apis to validate addresses fucks me over. My road turns from “<road> Drive” to “<road> Court” at a junction with another road. Google maps just calls the whole road “Drive”.
The road signs even show up in street view. And the other roads around me that have the same structure are all correct.
Use OSM (Organic Maps app). I’m almost certain someone in the OSM community has mapped your road. If not, let me know, I’ll map it for you.
It’s mapped properly in every other database outside of google (including Waze which is now owned by Google). But I can’t make websites not use Google’s database for address validation. I don’t use google maps personally.
For daily use, if you want something that uses the same data as OSM but has a Google Maps like experience, use Organic Maps instead. Its really good and very modern. Its also completely offline so it works without an internet connection. Slight warning though, it uses a cache of open streetmaps and not realtime data - this gets updated once a month.
I just downloaded it and tried it. Unfortunately, since I live in the vast suburban sprawl of a major US city, its ETA is way off because I doesn’t take traffic info account. Compared to Google Maps, its ETA was off by a significant margin (12 minutes OM vs 20 minutes Google Maps and 38 vs 54).
Glad to see this is an active project though.
Yes, the ETAs inherently cant be as accurate as Google because it is an offline map. Google Maps uses your location in addition to traffic data it collects to adjust time.
This is less of Organic Maps’ fault and more of a data science problem.
Maybe with a better algo, it could calculate the time better, but without the realtime data itll be tough.
Additionally, I don’t think the OpenStreetMaps database collects speed limit data. This is one area that could actively be improved. Edit: I am wrong
I can’t get Google Maps to recognize that my driveway is connected to the street I live on, not the street behind my house.