[HN Gopher] TomTom's new mapping platform and ecosystem
___________________________________________________________________
TomTom's new mapping platform and ecosystem
Author : gru
Score : 519 points
Date : 2022-11-02 08:28 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomtom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomtom.com)
| tempxyz wrote:
| nevi-me wrote:
| It sounds like TT will be a net taker from OSM, I hope they
| contribute as much as they benefit, as otherwise it would sound
| like they're giving up on prop-mapping by cutting costs.
|
| It's a press release I suppose, but saying the world lacks an
| open platform, and processing to use such open platform, sounds a
| bit weird
| kryptiskt wrote:
| That's the nice thing about shared resources, everyone can be a
| net taker, because all of them get everything and nobody
| contributes more than small fraction.
| lukeqsee wrote:
| Every company starts as a "net taker" until they find their
| contribution niche, so I'm not concerned. Besides, the positive
| effect of more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about
| its quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of
| examples of this.)
| petesergeant wrote:
| > more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about its
| quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of
| examples of this.)
|
| I'd love to hear more about that
| lukeqsee wrote:
| I doubt what I saw will really add to what Doctor_Fegg says
| in his talk. However, a few examples:
|
| https://daylightmap.org is built by Meta (Facebook) to
| allow their maps to meet their quality needs consistently
| while still pulling and encouraging OSM updates. This
| unlocks OSM data for a large amount of sensitive
| corporations.
|
| I personally have made quite a few edits on behalf of
| customers who pointed out errors in the map.
|
| The popularity of OSM-based navigation apps has made it
| useful for people to download editing apps to ensure their
| locale is as up-to-date as possible (this is getting better
| and better every year).
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6k78gxozZw - my keynote
| from this year's OpenStreetMap conference basically talks
| about exactly that.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Why so negative? OSM is now business critical to a lot of
| companies. These companies are of course being selfish. But the
| side effect of this is a lot of investment in the data and
| community itself.
|
| Tom Tom have got their work cut out, this space is super
| competitive. Just passively taking the data is not a way to
| compete in this space. You need to step up to stand out. Tom
| Tom is doing this out of necessity. They've been active in this
| space for a long time but they are now getting a lot of
| competition from other companies; many of whom are pooling
| resources via open data efforts, like open street maps. That
| gives these companies a cost advantage because maintaining maps
| is an expensive business and the base map is now a free
| commodity.
| fs111 wrote:
| I worked at Tele Atlas/TomTom until 10 years ago. There is
| literally nothing new in this announcement except that they are
| going to "steal" data from OSM now.
|
| sensor derived data, user generated content, camera vans all of
| that is not new. All this existed when I left, so did the people
| mentioned in this announcement that are still running the show. I
| always hoped they would eventually realize that they need a fresh
| top management, but they seem to just keep doing the same old
| stuff with the same old people until the final collapse of the
| company.
| molly_radstowe wrote:
| How is it stealing data? Most geospatial companies use OSM
| data, with OSM's permission, and it's a smart thing to do b/c
| they have a great map. Why wouldn't a mapmaker work with OSM
| data?
| askldfjaliwejf wrote:
| except google. They copied OSM data in the past, and used in
| their proprietary offering that includes reselling the data.
| A blatant offense of the OSM license.
|
| They were caught red handed in 2018 i think, and blamed on
| some contractors. But most interesting, despite this being a
| widely know fact for the mapping community, i can't find any
| mention of it anywhere today.
| mda wrote:
| As someone who has some first hand knowledge in the area,
| Your claim is not correct.
| pietervdvn wrote:
| As hardcore-OSMer: this is pure FUD.
|
| There are suspicions, but no hard proof has ever been found
| about this.
|
| However, there is a well-known (and non-problematic) case
| where OSM-data is used in GMaps. Some polish bus agency
| used OSM to create their GTFS-feeds, which were ingested
| into GMaps. Selecting the bus line will thus show an OSM-
| based line layer; but as that line layer is clearly
| attributed with OpenStreetMap, that is totally fine; both
| legal and ethical. See https://twitter.com/MapAmorePH/statu
| s/1453863816110952450?t=...
| heed wrote:
| I don't know what OP meant by "steal" but the complicated
| thing with using OSM data as a mapmaker is that if you
| "derive" any other data source with it you have to make it
| available which means (as I understand it) you have to
| contribute it back to OSM.
|
| If TomTom was planning on conflating OSM data with other
| sources then in theory it hurts their business model because
| they will potentially have to make their entire map (or large
| parts of it) freely available in OSM.
|
| If they can somehow set up clean room conditions and keep all
| their other data sources physically separated from the OSM
| data then it might be avoided, but then how do you do the map
| conflation? And that would certainly impact how quickly they
| can make updates.
|
| Maybe they came up with some clever way to avoid having to
| contribute data back to OSM and that's what OP means by
| "steal."
| revel wrote:
| Google Maps has one of the most abusive license practices I've
| seen; effectively they force every one of their competitors to
| use OSM. As a consequence, OSM is the default for every company
| in this space.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A business decision regarding IP is not abuse.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Abusive means "extremely offensive and insulting",
| according to Google
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Only if you're part of the entitlement generation that
| expects everything to be free and nobody should be paid
| for their work.
| beej71 wrote:
| Their non-abusive license forces everyone else in the space
| to use OSM. :)
| baggachipz wrote:
| Yeah but they changed their logo!
| netsectoday wrote:
| Do you know that Microsoft Bing maps also "steals" the OSM
| data? They did some very clever "reverse stealing" as well when
| they contributed back to the project by providing millions of
| accurate building footprints.
|
| Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's a win-win situation when ANY
| large mapping group joins OSM. At the very least; they will
| accidentally contribute road-level improvements when they work
| with the data. I rely upon OSM data and need these large
| players throwing their weight behind this mapping system.
| timeon wrote:
| License aside Microsoft at least provided Bing satellite
| imagery source for OSM mappers before there was Maxar and
| others. Actually there were others before (was it Yahoo?) but
| that is not the point.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Now imagine if Tomtom and Microsoft both paid users for map
| improvements. That would be super cool.
|
| They could even make an app to submit the improvements and
| even show me ads, I don't care. I would still do it.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| in practice you can't trust a bounty system like this, so
| the next best might be to sell your company products in
| such a way as to minimize the system friction between new
| sales, new data coming in from those new sales, and feeding
| back to the open ecosystem. In that latter case, you can't
| trust the company management, but to my mind .. that's the
| breaks
| olah_1 wrote:
| > you can't trust a bounty system like this
|
| You mean the accuracy of the data? I guess that is why a
| lot of systems have "validators" or something like that
| in place.
|
| But it's a problem with OSM and wikipedia in general.
| swores wrote:
| I think you're missing the forrest for the trees here - they
| put "steal" in ""s because they know it's not stealing.
|
| The point of their comment was to criticise TomTom for not
| doing much interesting themselves, not to discuss the nuances
| of OSM. In this context, "steal" makes sense because it's
| something that TomTom can claim to be innovative with while
| actually the innovation credit belongs to OSM.
| afknewsagency wrote:
| 10 years is quite a long time for things to change though. Sure
| many sources might have existed for a long time, but it sounds
| like the way the company is going to use them, how quickly it
| will turn them around will improve. It's not transactional per
| se any more, more real-time (depending on the specific use or
| update). As for the same management, depending on your
| perspective, that might be a sign of stability. Judging by the
| press release this morning, company has solid order book and is
| reporting a record 2.4 million euro automotive order book.
| pojzon wrote:
| As someone who worked there over a year ago (no NDA on me
| anymore).
|
| Its still the same as person before you explains.
|
| TomTom is trying to create competition to HERE map making
| platform.
|
| And I agree a change id upper management is needed / despite
| new CTO being hired.
| ugh123 wrote:
| How are they stealing? Are they breaking some kind of licensing
| agreement with OSM?
| eecc wrote:
| That Riak based platform they presented eons ago at a Meetup in
| Amsterdam could have been a mind-blowing real-time traffic flow
| optimizer. But I think it just withered to an API for syncing
| your POIs across devices. SMH
| steve_john wrote:
| lightedman wrote:
| Ahh, TomTom. I quit using mine in the late 00s and kept a local
| map for when I did pizza delivery, because there were false
| streets all over the TomTom map that the TomTom wanted me to
| take, including false exits off a freeway.
| pixelfarmer wrote:
| Reminds me of an encounter in Nepal, where a Chinese guy with
| Baidu maps was lost finding his hotel, and Google on my phone
| wasn't exactly much better. OSM to the rescue (and thanks to
| everyone who contributed data for that)!
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Searching the article for the words:
|
| "open" - 19 results
|
| "open-source" - 4 results
|
| The "open-source" refers to using other's open-source data, no
| mention of TomTom's.
|
| e.g.
|
| "The world lacks a truly open and collaborative mapping
| ecosystem, one that doesn't follow a one-size-fits-all model but
| is flexible so that businesses can build according to their
| needs. One that fosters collaboration, data sharing and open
| innovation."
|
| What does "open" really mean in their doublespeak?
| kridsdale2 wrote:
| Open for business.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| TLDR: they're offloading their mapping business to OpenStreetMap.
|
| Many of their devices have Lifetime Maps support and it's
| probably costing them too much, since they're not getting paid
| for the updates.
|
| BTW Garmin has been using OpenStreetMap for a LONG time.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| So who is going to be the first to merge street data with a
| driving sim so I can race around familiar streets at my wont?
|
| Of course it'll eventually lead to GTA VR ugh but I can at least
| get what I want...blasting a Jesko on the Dallas north tollway at
| full chat
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Guess for most places there is too little data for 3D models
| and design factors, making the places hard to recognize ...
| yaddaor wrote:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine
| pt_PT_guy wrote:
| I really really really hope that these companies make donations
| to OSM...
| pietervdvn wrote:
| They do: https://2022.stateofthemap.org/#sponsors
| [deleted]
| TT-392 wrote:
| And contribute data back
| tekchip wrote:
| OSM and OsmAnd seem great except when you want to search for
| something. If I search for "mcdonalds" typed lazily I get 5
| results hundreds of miles away. To find the local Mcdonalds
| restaurant I have to type "McDonald's" very specifically. This
| lack of fuzzy search makes these apps unusable.
|
| Its an unfortunate situation of the two parties involved in this
| software each pointing at each other and blaming the other with
| neither willing to budge.
|
| OSM, I would argue rightly says it's up to map makers how to
| query the data their project puts out there. The app makers claim
| (this sounds like BS) that OSM's data or API makes that too hard
| to do.
|
| Either way absolutely unusable. If TomTom can just make a search
| that works better than this and layer that over the OSM data
| they've got a win IMO.
| CivBase wrote:
| Yeah I tried switching to OsmAnd for a while. It works fine as
| a map. Interface is a little clunky. The real problem is I
| mostly use Google Maps to search for places and OsmAnd was
| terrible for that. I reluctantly switched back to Google Maps,
| but I look forward to the day I can drop it for an OSM-based
| solution.
| Ptchd wrote:
| OsmAnd is also very bad in many states where you can't search
| for addresses because they don't have the data. Georgia is one
| example.
|
| I often have to use a third party to convert address to GPS
| coordinates.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| That McDonalds thing happens to me even with Google Maps.
| Sometimes shows locations in another state instead of the
| closest ones sorted to top.
| Aachen wrote:
| > I search for "mcdonalds" typed lazily I get 5 results
| hundreds of miles away. To find the local Mcdonalds restaurant
| I have to type "McDonald's" very specifically.
|
| Very true. I do cut them some slack when I remember that
| they're essentially competing against the world leader in
| search. (Not that I use their search engine, but it's not for a
| lack of quality that I stopped using it.)
|
| > If TomTom can just make a search that works better than this
| and layer that over the OSM data they've got a win IMO.
|
| Exactly! I'd love to pay for such a product. Even better if
| they don't reinvent the wheel and instead just polish OsmAnd
| that can almost do more things than any individual person can
| ever know about.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I wouldn't say that makes it unusable, I use it. But it is
| annoying using third parry to search and then using OSM for
| navigation.
| drtz wrote:
| Someone should build a good, open, web API-based search for OSM
| data. Not everyone cares about 100% offline capabilities, and
| improving search would be a massive gain in usability for
| OsmAnd and other OSM clients.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| I don't see why Lucene couldn't be used for this application.
| Aachen wrote:
| Why could it? Don't you somehow have to teach it which
| words are synonyms and common combinations for autocomplete
| etc.? It seems to me at least that this is where the major
| work would be, and even then it's expensive to run this for
| the whole world just for free.
| karussell wrote:
| Like https://github.com/komoot/photon/ or
| https://github.com/pelias/pelias ?
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| Maps should be a common, like any other infrastructure-like
| software or data. It's a model that will play off in the long
| term IMHO.
| martyvis wrote:
| The article says "Many of us know TomTom for its PNDs" - yet I am
| sure nobody would know what a PND is as that acronym. (I haven't
| looked it up, but from the context I am sure it is Personal
| Navigation Device - you know the thing that everyone wrongly
| calls a GPS)
| pixiemagic wrote:
| Yeah, I worked with TomTom a while back and you are correct, it
| was an acronym that was commonly used internally, but at least
| the people I was working with knew that nobody outside the
| company had any idea what it meant.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Of all the fundamental shifts in my life that smartphones have
| enabled, having an ever-present map with GPS has been subtle but
| gigantic. I (we?) interact with cities so differently now
| glonq wrote:
| I was _hot shit_ 15+ years ago, using TomTom as the car
| navigation system on my Windows CE phone.
|
| ...haven 't really heard or thought or cared about poor TomTom
| since then though.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Also discussed on HN 5 months ago when they announced job cuts
| due to "improved automation":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31580264
| wokwokwok wrote:
| I'm not sure what I just read, but it felt like it was AI
| generated.
|
| ... full of words, and absolutely no information.
|
| Even the linked page (https://www.tomtom.com/tomtom-maps-
| platform/) really doesn't make it even remotely clear what
| they're announcing, or why we should care.
|
| > The world lacks a truly open and collaborative mapping
| ecosystem, one that doesn't follow a one-size-fits-all model but
| is flexible so that businesses can build according to their needs
|
| What does that even mean?
|
| I'll tell you what it means: no, our API pricing for whatever
| this service is will not be public, not be self serve and not be
| for small time developers to play with.
|
| Ah wait, I get it!
|
| > With its new map, TomTom is using AI and machine-learning
| techniques to speed up the process and make a much greater volume
| of changes in a much smaller period of time. With the masses of
| data used, the quality of the new map will be a step above what's
| currently available on the market
|
| I see! You're going to compete with google maps and others but
| you're going to pour The AI Machine Learning on your offering to
| make it better than the others.
|
| ...well, I guess we'll see how it goes.
|
| That approach (same as everyone but we have AI!!!??!?...?) is
| really a bad business model.
|
| The problem is that everyone is doing it; and only a very small
| number of people are doing it at a level that makes any
| meaningful difference, and for those companies it's a core
| competency, not a value add.
| [deleted]
| acomjean wrote:
| "We'll dive deeper into how TomTom will use OSM data soon, so
| stay tuned."
|
| So this was an announcement of an announcement...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It reminds me of several Dilbert strips.
| afknewsagency wrote:
| I take the exact opposite away...
|
| > a flexible thing that businesses can build on according to
| their needs.
|
| And if you go to their dev website... you can find the pricing
| for their current APIs/SDKs... So it's not like they're hiding
| it.
|
| https://developer.tomtom.com/store/maps-api
| [deleted]
| kuon wrote:
| Tom-Tom is worse than Google map for direction, and also dash
| unit is always not up to date, no traffic... But I really like
| open streetmap, and in my area it is better than google map. I
| hope they will be able to innovate against google.
| drsopp wrote:
| I will never forgive TomTom's bait and switch: I bought a
| lifetime subscription of their app for my iPhone for about $50.
| After a few years they stopped the service claiming that
| "lifetime" meant the lifetime of the device.
| [deleted]
| nashashmi wrote:
| What's the advantage in Tom Tom traffic data that google
| traffic data or apple provided data cannot give?
| drsopp wrote:
| Not the data, but the user interface.
| Youden wrote:
| Can't speak for the parent but for me it's not the traffic
| data but the in-car UI. Different apps give different
| experiences. The HERE maps bundled with my car for example
| tell me the best lane to be in ahead of time. Not just on the
| highway but also in the city, which makes it much easier to
| be in the right lane at the right time.
| djaychela wrote:
| Me too. They swapped it into a miles based subscription, which
| I wasn't interested in, saying that the old app couldn't be
| supported any more, as if they were forced into writing a new
| app and changing business model. This was on Android, and I did
| try the new app, which was not good. Been using Google maps
| ever since, despite it not being anywhere near as good in terms
| of giving directions at junctions, etc.
| gehsty wrote:
| Out of interest how long did you expect them to support a
| lifetime subscription for?
| drsopp wrote:
| As long as the existence of their service through an iPhone
| app.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| In your original comment, you said they stopped the
| service, and now you're saying you expected to have it
| until they stopped the service.
|
| Did you mean they stopped your particular subscription
| only, for having changed your device?
| drsopp wrote:
| The app was still available in the app store, but from a
| certain date they wanted more money for me to still use
| it on my unchanged device.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Oh, so they meant neither the lifetime of the device nor
| the lifetime of the offering... That's messed up. Small
| claims?
| drsopp wrote:
| Time is too precious.
| max51 wrote:
| For as long as the service exists, that's the entire point of
| a lifetime subscription. Companies need to stop lying about
| their software services. Don't call it "unlimited" if it's
| not unlimited or "lifetime" if they pre-programmed it to cut
| you off after a couple of years
| bombolo wrote:
| People saying they use google maps have never used OSM and
| realised how bad google maps is.
| beders wrote:
| Apple maps finally good? ;)
|
| To be fair, it has become much better and AFAIK it uses TomTom
| data.
|
| This announcement is a master class of marketing blurp with
| nuggets like "accelerated innovation" and low on actual content.
|
| Seems like they are on early access with important-enough
| customers.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| I used to love my TomTom ! Especially the ux ! Was so easy and
| responsive
| knocte wrote:
| but don't deny that GMaps is much better
| Yuioup wrote:
| Is TomTom going to contribute back to OpenStreetMap?
| pietervdvn wrote:
| Yes. They sponsored the last annual State of the Map-conference
| and already did some mapping work. They also released some
| analysis datasets which highlighted possible problems in OSM
| (with the intention to improve OSM)
| kleiba wrote:
| For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading
| manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as
| an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a
| time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone
| had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket.
|
| I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant
| by society progressing. I actually still use an old TomTom in my
| old car that doesn't have a screen (well, it does, but didn't
| come with a GPS built in - adding it after the fact would have
| been around 1000PS), since I don't have a smart phone. But it has
| been years since I updated the maps, probably wouldn't even be
| supported any more?!
| gambiting wrote:
| I have a modern car with a built-in satnav as well as Android
| Auto support, and yet I still use my TomTom 5000 - it's just
| better. Definitely better than crappy Google Maps, definitely
| better than volvo's built-in maps, and it's without any kind of
| comparison how much better it is than Apple Maps. You get in
| the car, it auto-selects the destination based on the patterns
| it learnt(so if you get in at 7am on a workday, it
| automatically selects "work" as your destination. Then around
| 4pm, it will select "Home". At 8pm it doesn't select anything
| because it has no record of you going anywhere around that time
| usually) - something super basic that no one has ever done.
|
| And it has a lifetime subscription to traffic updates with a
| built-in SIM card that works internationally as well. Drove
| with it across Europe several times and it's still the best
| satnav you could have.
| kawfey wrote:
| > ou get in the car, it auto-selects the destination based on
| the patterns it learnt(so if you get in at 7am on a workday,
| it automatically selects "work" as your destination. Then
| around 4pm, it will select "Home". At 8pm it doesn't select
| anything because it has no record of you going anywhere
| around that time usually) - something super basic that no one
| has ever done.
|
| This is exactly how Apple Maps works, for me. It suggests a
| destination based on my patterns.
| EwanToo wrote:
| Waze does this "trip suggestion" feature, works pretty much
| as you describe it
|
| Since Covid, I don't go anywhere consistently enough for it
| to know what to suggest :)
|
| https://support.google.com/waze/answer/9747181?hl=en
| spockz wrote:
| Waze had this auto learning feature as well. It is agressieve
| in rerouting but I feel it has hit the sweet spot between
| saving time and the extra hassle of getting off the highway.
| hotcoffeebear wrote:
| Tom Tom used to charge for map updates, which became a no-go
| for many. The same thing thing with built-in ones. Toyota
| asked 60 euro for the map updates and unfortunately no
| android/ios auto.. i am going between google maps / apple
| maps. I find routes better in google maps but i love apple
| maps voice indications better. I still have also a free
| lifetime update tomtom but it very slow to add destination
| etc.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Tom Tom used to charge for map updates, which became a
| no-go for many._
|
| There was also an instance when they unceremoniously
| stopped supporting updates on "old" devices that were not
| actually that old and were in fact still actively being
| sold in stores (in the UK at least). I know people who
| switched to alternatives (the smartphone option in all
| cases IIRC) and vowed they'd never pay for another TomTom
| device again after that.
| gambiting wrote:
| So I'm not sure what device you have in mind, but the one
| I mentioned(GO5000) still receives regular and free map
| updates despite being 12 years old now.
| cinntaile wrote:
| > Tom Tom used to charge for map updates, which became a
| no-go for many.
|
| This is what led to their demise, no?
| gorbachev wrote:
| That's definitely why I stopped using TomTom. Like
| gambiting, I really liked their product. They were
| compact, fast and the UX was great. But Google Maps is
| free.
| rapind wrote:
| > But Google Maps is free.
|
| We need a new alternative word for "free" when it comes
| to advertising companies. Something short to say "the
| cost is too abstract and indirect to understand fully or
| describe, but does impact society at large". Maybe "free-
| ish"?
| diydsp wrote:
| Hear, hear! One suggestion: costs a drop of blood.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| That is all already assumed by the word free, if one
| understands it, which most do not.
|
| Nothing is truly free as people commonly conceptualizer
| it in their mind. Just alone receiving something at all
| comes with strings, even if they are not apparent. There
| is a term that describes this issue rather well in
| German, "vogelfrei". It refers to being as free as a
| bird, which is assumed to be a great thing, but it also
| means you are free to be hunted and predated.
|
| Free is also the theme of a deal with the devil. I will
| self-censor here a bit about what is the devil, because
| the devil's censorship is more consequential than if I do
| it to myself for the time being.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| There is no free lunch. Its more like you expect some
| idealized absolutism in market economy from people who
| need to eat and pay their mortgages. Its uncommon to meet
| an adult with such expectations, its mostly reserved for
| children up to certain age.
| rapind wrote:
| > It's uncommon to meet an adult with such expectations
|
| I don't think this is an accurate assumption. Many adults
| probably have a nagging feeling about this version of
| free, I doubt most of us can accurately describe the cost
| (and most wouldn't care to try).
|
| I mean it really does "feel" free in that the costs are
| so abstract and externalized. In fact I'd argue that it
| has completely changed our perspective on pricing, value,
| and entitlement.
|
| Anyways, total tangent to the main topic.
| yencabulator wrote:
| "Costless" or "zero-payment".
| ferongr wrote:
| Google Maps is "free" in the same way healthcare is
| "free" in many countries. The usage of the word seems
| fine.
| caf wrote:
| Closer to free-to-air TV.
| toyg wrote:
| No; their demise was the rise of smartphones who can do
| pretty much everything they can, for free. GPS navigation
| was commoditized as part of the smartphone arms race.
| cinntaile wrote:
| What do you mean no? You're saying the same thing, you
| just added a step to explain why the alternatives were
| cheaper (free).
| rat9988 wrote:
| No, it was not a price point only problem.
| cinntaile wrote:
| That's not at all what I am saying? Tomtom's updates were
| very expensive though. A smartphone with non-free map
| alternatives won't get you there so it's not the
| smartphone either. Both developments were necessary,
| either one on their own isn't sufficient.
| [deleted]
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31582257
|
| DonHopkins 5 months ago | parent | context | favorite |
| on: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automati...
|
| I worked at TomTom in Amsterdam from 2007-2009, and had a
| fun time and learned a lot working with some smart people
| at a great company that treated us well and had good
| leadership.
|
| But TomTom was just on the cusp of a small company
| turning into a big company.
|
| And the savings and loan crisis was about to cause the
| economy to collapse.
|
| Then TomTom got into a bidding war with Garmin over Tele
| Atlas.
|
| So they ended up borrowing a whole lot of money at a
| really bad time.
|
| Just as the iPhone was hitting the market, and Google and
| Apple were rolling out free maps and turn-by-turn
| navigation on smart phones that everybody already had.
|
| I wrote about that earlier in the discussion about Etak:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015
|
| DonHopkins on Feb 27, 2017 | parent | context | favorite
| | on: Who Needs GPS? The Story of Etak's 1985 Car
| Naviga...
|
| "Etak eventually became a part of TomTom, ensuring that
| its map data, some of which was first digitized back
| during the Navigator's development in 1984, would live on
| to this day."
|
| The story of how TomTom and not Garmin ended up owning
| the data originally digitized at Etak is interesting. At
| the time, there were only two digital map companies: Tele
| Atlas (from which TomTom got their map data) and Navteq
| (from which Garmin got their map data).
|
| From Wikipedia [1]:
|
| "On July 23, 2007, a EUR2 billion offer for the company
| by navigation system maker TomTom was accepted by the
| Tele Atlas board. This was then trumped by a EUR2.3
| billion offer from United States-based rival Garmin on
| October 31, 2007 initiating a bidding war for Tele Atlas.
| TomTom responded by upping their bid to EUR2.9 billion,
| an offer which was again approved by the board of Tele
| Atlas. Garmin had been expected to counterbid once again:
| with Tele Atlas' main global rival Navteq subject to a
| takeover bid from Nokia, the company had stated that it
| did not wish both companies to fall into the hands of
| rivals. However, after striking a content agreement with
| Navteq through the year 2015, Garmin withdrew its
| takeover offer, clearing the way for TomTom. On December
| 4, 2007, TomTom shareholders approved the takeover. The
| European Commissioner for Competition cleared the
| takeover in May 2008, and it closed in June."
|
| TomTom (where I worked at the time) was shocked and
| dismayed that Garmin outbid them by EUR300 million on
| Tele Atlas, because while it made a lot of sense for
| TomTom to buy their own map data supplier, it would have
| been prohibitively complex and expensive for Garmin, who
| used Navteq data, to switch map data sources and retool
| their entire map data digestion, distribution and error
| correction pipelines.
|
| TomTom was so determined to buy Tele Atlas and keep it
| out of Garmin's hands, that they raised their bid by
| EUR900 million.
|
| In the meantime, Garmin renegotiated their deal with
| Navteq, so they didn't have to pay as much for the data,
| and didn't have to switch map suppliers.
|
| The stunt that Garmin pulled off was, in my opinion, an
| ingenious head-fake that cost TomTom an enormous amount
| of money, almost a billion euros, and at the same time
| saved Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to
| renegotiate a better deal with Navteq, who was faced with
| losing their major customer if they didn't lower their
| prices.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tele_Atlas
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| I would say so (that and the smartphone as ppl points
| out) - they announced subscription service around
| 2009-2011 from what I can see online and we can see the
| interest falling drastically since:
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tomto
| m
|
| .. that's also when I stopped using them I think, and
| what's interesting is that once you get into the habit of
| using a new map+navigation service it seems quite hard to
| switch or is that just me? (I want to try Apple because I
| like them more than Google but I'm just so used to Google
| Maps)
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > once you get into the habit of using a new
| map+navigation service it seems quite hard to switch or
| is that just me?
|
| I don't think it's just you. :) I know a fair number of
| iOS users who switched to the standalone Google Maps app
| during the, shall we say, _rocky_ first year of Apple
| Maps, and who I 've never been able to convince to look
| back -- and these are people who live in the San
| Francisco Bay Area, where Apple Maps is arguably at its
| best.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Silicon Valley - "It's Apple Maps bad"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Man, I remember in the mid 2000's when the Toyota dealer
| said like $600 to update my mom's Sienna's GPS.
| kaushikc wrote:
| They quoted me $350 Australian/year for yearly map updates
| last year. I was hoping they would've humbled a bit in 10
| years.
| maxerickson wrote:
| How do you know that $350 isn't the reasonable price on
| their side of it?
|
| It's likely going to be a niche market even if they give
| the updates away for free (because people will mostly use
| maps on other devices).
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, you can get a base-model tomtom for AU$179 [1]
|
| And the customer's alternatives include "just use year-
| old maps" and "use google maps" so it's not like tomtom
| have the customer over a barrel here.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Updates-Lifetime-
| Smartphone-Messag...
| maxerickson wrote:
| Right, but the customer doesn't have TomTom over a barrel
| either. If producing maps for older devices doesn't net a
| lot of customers, they either charge quite a bit or don't
| bother.
|
| The device you link wouldn't net updated maps of
| Australia. Looks like world map devices are closer to
| $400.
| pletnes wrote:
| I seem to recall that a map refresh would be similarly
| priced to just buying a new one. The device was probably
| sold as a loss leader. Back then the devices were super
| nice, I recall thinking, but the business model doesn't
| make any sense now, to me. They did have products specific
| for huge trucks, such as route planning, maybe it makes
| sense for those use cases still?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > if you get in at 7am on a workday, it automatically selects
| "work" as your destination. Then around 4pm, it will select
| "Home".
|
| OK, but you need GPS navigation and maps to get between
| "work" and "home"?
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Presumably they have a dense network of roads in-between,
| where the optimal route can change daily.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > something super basic that no one has ever done
|
| Errr all maps apps do this.
| izacus wrote:
| It's also important how they're doing this. GMaps in my car
| constantly fails to show anything useful (or even start
| navigation) because there's no signal in my underground
| garage.
|
| Such a simple thing and yet TomTom can do it and Google
| can't.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| That is an edge case that Google could but does not
| seemingly accommodate, but very well could. It's likely
| not just that you have no GPS, it's also likely that you
| have no mobile or Wi-Fi signal reception, both of which
| could inform on your location, if implemented.
|
| That being said, why do you need your navigation to start
| while in your garage? Just start it before you enter your
| garage or right as you drive out of it if you want to
| benefit from GMaps benefits.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| My car's built-in navigation can use dead reckoning based
| on steering angle and wheel speed, so is still better
| than TomTom in this respect. I really think this person
| who is clinging to their old TomTom is a bit oblivious to
| what all the alternatives now do and how they do it
| better.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't know if I'm oblivious - on long drives I usually
| have the TomTom setup and Waze on the android auto screen
| - TomTom knows about traffic and issues on the road that
| are just not on Waze, most of the time. Also Waze keeps
| directing me on most idiotic side little roads, recently
| I nearly got stuck in a muddy road somewhere in the
| British countryside because of Waze because I decided to
| trust it. Again, no such problem with TomTom.
| diydsp wrote:
| waze acts as if it treats all roads as wide, level,
| straight paths, and expects ppl to speed on them bc it
| sends me on twisty, steep, narrow 25mph roads with low
| visibility so they canxt be sped on.
| izacus wrote:
| Mhm - note that with "TomTom" I now mean Android app
| (which has Android Auto integration) and not an old
| standalone device :)
|
| I've also seen that same very app as a builtin navigation
| with all the features (including live traffic) in a new
| Fiat 500e, so it seems like they're licensing the tech to
| car manufacturers.
| shukantpal wrote:
| You can download maps offline in Google Maps
| int_19h wrote:
| You can only download them in explicitly specified chunks
| (not e.g. one whole state, much less whole country), and
| they expire if you don't update them regularly.
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| Technically you can download a particular region as well.
| e.g. search for "Belgium", click on the ... > Download
| offline map.
|
| However, it still downloads an arbitrary rectangle, and
| there is still the same maximum size; it just
| automatically centers it on what you selected and gives
| it a reasonable name.
| vel0city wrote:
| I've had some pretty poor experiences with offline maps
| on Google Maps. There have been a few times where I've
| made a point to download the maps for an area a couple of
| days ahead of time because I knew service would be
| spotty. I would then drive out to the areas with spotty
| connectivity, and more often than not Google Maps would
| refuse to generate a route for a route definitely within
| the confines of the selected offline map. I'd have to
| drive back a bit by memory to find reception and then try
| to generate the route again. This would even happen if I
| was on a route, cancelled it for some reason, and then
| attempted to restart the exact same route while along the
| route it was just on.
|
| Google Maps offline has been extremely unreliable for me
| and mostly unreliable when I had the greatest need for
| it. This was true years ago and this was true less than a
| month ago.
|
| If I'm going to someplace with spotty connectivity, I
| make sure to put in all the main addresses and locations
| on my car's navigation system ahead of time. The maps
| might be dated but at least it'll generate a route
| somewhat towards the destination, even if I _might_ need
| to take a detour along the way.
| izacus wrote:
| Despite having my area downloaded in Google Maps, the
| navigation and recommended routes won't load in my
| garage. It usually fails horribly (mostly because, like
| many poorly programmed mobile apps, it doesn't handle
| scenarios with poor connectivity well).
| fork-while-fork wrote:
| Google maps with Android Auto does auto-learn popular/regular
| destinations and suggests them at appropriate times. It works
| pretty well.
| Thlom wrote:
| Apple Maps as well, but I have no idea why I would need
| directions to work from home ...
| mhandley wrote:
| Driving in the London suburbs, I know how to get most
| places I want to go. In fact I usually know several
| different routes that are roughly similar in travel time.
| Google maps is excellent for telling me which one of
| those routes is least congested right now. So I'm not
| really using it for navigation, but for congestion
| information. It very rarely suggests a route I don't
| know, but I use it all the time anyway.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Although the route is (more or less) fixed and static,
| the amount of traffic isn't, so it could be useful to be
| re-routed to avoid congestion.
| acdha wrote:
| Traffic and accidents might push you into different
| routes, especially if you have major decision points like
| which route you take around some geographic feature. When
| I drive in Los Angeles decades back even people who'd
| been driving there for ages wanted traffic reports to
| pick between roughly equivalent freeways because almost
| inevitably one of them would have much worse congestion
| due to an accident and you could save 20+ minutes.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Distances in LA aren't measured in miles, they're
| measured in time -- and the distance between two points
| changes based on time of day, direction, and events like
| sportsball or presidential visits.
|
| Knowing where to switch between freeways and surface
| streets, and what route to take in what conditions, can
| cut half off the driving time.
|
| Some examples of varying conditions from my personal
| history, even with optimal routing:
|
| Commute to work: 22 minutes. Commute home: 1h 16min.
|
| Go visit a friend: 45 minutes. Come back home at night:
| 16 minutes.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Get out of here!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCer2e0t8r8
| acdha wrote:
| > Knowing where to switch between freeways and surface
| streets, and what route to take in what conditions, can
| cut half off the driving time.
|
| Yes - I remember as a kid learning how to read maps and
| noticing my dad's face when I was like "These cities are
| only 10 miles apart. Why does it take an hour to get to
| grandfather's?".
|
| The surface streets are an especially interesting
| blindspot a lot of drivers have. There was a period
| around the turn of the century where I was commuting
| between Santa Ana and Garden Grove and freeway traffic
| was generally manageable early in the morning but on the
| trip home it was often better to cruise down the surface
| streets where the lights were timed around 20mph than to
| sit in stop-and-go traffic on 405 or 55/5.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| You've clearly not enjoyed the benefits of progress yet
| where you are. Don't worry, I'm sure it will reach you
| eventually. It is progress after all.
| newjersey wrote:
| > auto-learn
|
| There is a gate right behind me that is closed with chains.
| It isn't possible to drive through there, though you can
| walk in and out from the smaller gate.
|
| Google still always tells me to drive through the gate. I
| don't think Google Maps auto-learns. Maybe it needs a
| bigger sample size so people don't abuse it?
| acdha wrote:
| If you use the reporting interface they seem to update
| promptly. There's a major road near us where Google used
| to tell people to make a illegal left turn across 4 lanes
| of traffic, which was common enough that I used to see it
| almost every time I went by for years. Once I found the
| well-hidden reporting UI, that stopped two weeks later.
| gambiting wrote:
| There is a no-left-turn street near my work, and Google
| maps keeps telling me to turn left there. I've been
| reporting it every now and then since at least 2018 and
| it does nothing.
| acdha wrote:
| Yeah, don't ask me to defend Google on any customer
| service topic. I automatically believe any lapse you
| report.
| gambiting wrote:
| Does it? I have never seen it do it. Maybe it's only
| region-specific?
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| I believe it does when you set your home and work
| addresses
| AndroidKitKat wrote:
| It learns other patterns, too (which is kinda creepy). On
| Thursdays, I like to swing past a local taco shop on my
| way home after work and when I plug my phone into
| CarPlay, it prompts me navigation to the taco shop; it
| doesn't do this on any other day.
|
| Kinda a neat feature, but it makes you wonder what else
| it is learning.
| msh wrote:
| apple maps do the same and also works quite well. I miss it
| in my tesla.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Strange, I have this feature in mine.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > it auto-selects the destination based on the patterns it
| learnt
|
| Apple Maps does this too
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > It's just better. Definitely better than crappy Google Maps
|
| I struggling to see how anything could be "definitely" better
| than "crappy" Google Maps. To me, GMaps has made navigation
| about as exciting as using a door knob. It works without
| fail, and is so incredibly mundane, that the thought of
| forming a strong opinion about it makes me drowsy.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Same, the integration and sharing and real time traffic of
| Google and Apple Maps are basically impossible to compete
| with, in areas where they are available.
| HollowEyes wrote:
| I just can't get on with gmaps, I stumble with the UI every
| time.
| hbn wrote:
| I try to not use Google services where I can help it, but
| not using Google Maps to me just feels like risking
| screwing up my day. The fact that it's what everyone uses
| makes it the safe bet. They have so many users being
| tracked in real-time to reroute me around detours and
| traffic jams as soon as they happen, I don't really want to
| try anything else.
|
| If I use an alternative and get stuck in traffic, I'm not
| gonna be thinking about how proud I am of myself for
| sitting in traffic in the name of sticking it to Google.
| I'm gonna be thinking "should have used Google Maps"
| groovybits wrote:
| I've been using Apple Maps as my regular navigator since
| iOS 15.0 general release, and I've been impressed.
|
| The audio directions are much clearer - e.g. "Go through
| this light, and at the next one turn right".
|
| The integration with Siri and CarPlay is very handy -
| e.g. "Hey Siri, get directions to Bob's house".
|
| And the traffic data is noticeably better in the last
| year.
|
| Disclaimer: I live in suburban U.S. - I've heard less
| good things about AM in rural areas.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Apple Maps still can't accurately route people to my
| house in suburban California. They end up one block over.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Have you tired submitting an issue? No one could map to a
| place I used to live out in the sticks accurately but I
| submitted a bug/issue to Google Maps and Apple and they
| fixed it.
| jupp0r wrote:
| No I haven't. Will totally do that in order to save time
| explaining to friends why they can't use Apple Maps for
| navigation to my house. I just assumed that submitting
| maps bugs is the same /dev/null form as normal bugs for
| Apple software, but it seems it's a separate process and
| they are actually responsive. Thanks!
| [deleted]
| 98codes wrote:
| It (and all other GPS apps I've tried) work well enough,
| until you try to go somewhere you know well and have to
| turn it off to stop it from trying to reroute you over &
| over again.
|
| If any app would allow me to have some sort of ability to
| let me set a level of "pain" (traffic, stoplights, smaller
| roads, extra turns) that's acceptable vs. a level of time
| savings, I'd use that app and never look back.
|
| The number of times I've gone seemingly way out of the way
| only to rejoin a highway 30 minutes later in order to save
| 2 minutes total (vs the traffic I would have sat in) is way
| too damn high.
| zepppotemkin wrote:
| Yeah, in Chicago at least google maps tends to go into a
| panic attack, it's distracting and has nearly caused me a
| few accidents
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >If any app would allow me to have some sort of ability
| to let me set a level of "pain" (traffic, stoplights,
| smaller roads, extra turns) that's acceptable vs. a level
| of time savings, I'd use that app and never look back.
|
| In all seriousness, have you tried Waze? Gives multiple
| options each time you search, allowing to choose routes
| that are simpler, or maybe partially but not fully use
| tolls.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > until you try to go somewhere you know well and have to
| turn it off to stop it from trying to reroute you over &
| over again.
|
| In those cases I just mute it, there's always a mute
| button.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Google maps actually tried to kill me once. I was driving
| down Hwy 59, to a remote farm I'd never been to before,
| and for some reason Google Maps thought that there was a
| break in the highway. Like someone with an eraser just
| swiped a 1-inch stripe across the highway that was
| impassable.
|
| I trusted it because I didn't really know where I was
| going, and it had never let me down before. So I followed
| its instructions down a series of little farm roads to
| detour around the "break". Except one of the roads
| crossed under a raging stream, and was only passable
| during the dry season. I actually fishtailed a little to
| stop, because the road was slightly downhill and made of
| dirt. If I had followed the instructions, I would have
| died.
|
| Anyway, I submitted a bug report about that highway
| break, and 5 months later Google wrote back and said my
| fix had been accepted! How thrilling.
| gknoy wrote:
| I'd love a setting that would silence directions when I
| am within $distance of home, and have home set as my
| destination. I don't really need to be told to turn on my
| own street, or the streets I always use to get to my
| street.
| snarfy wrote:
| Purpose-built tools are always superior to multi-tools for
| the purpose they were built.
|
| A phone running google maps is a multi-tool.
| gambiting wrote:
| In my experience - it's just frequently wrong, to a point
| where I don't feel confident using it. Telling you to turn
| where you can't, going wrong way up one-way streets,
| showing you that streets connect on the map where they
| actually don't.......I could keep going. I keep reporting
| errors and they never get fixed. Like I mentioned in
| another comment there's a road near my work which has a no-
| left-turn sign but Google maps still keeps telling me to
| turn left there - I've been reporting that error since at
| least 2018 but no one cares. One of my friends lives on a
| new(5 years old) estate and Google still doesn't recognize
| his address despite many submissions to Google to fix this.
| Another lives in a Victorian house that hasn't moved for
| over a century last time I checked, yet you won't find it
| on Google maps - Google still insists his address is
| several streets over.
|
| Maybe it's just the UK maps and it works fine elsewhere, I
| don't know.
| ThamesJ wrote:
| It's interesting how anecdotal people's perspectives on
| Google maps navigation ends up being. Personally GMaps
| has never failed me (UK based) in the best part of a
| decade, if anything it has been consistently worryingly
| accurate, and everyone I know has had a similar
| experience. As I've seen others say in this thread "it
| just works" without fail. Due to that it's unbelievable
| (to me) that others have had such an experience as yours.
| Do you think a fault in alphabet's mapping processes in
| certain geographic areas may have caused this?
| ddulaney wrote:
| I've experienced both sides. My rough sense of it is:
|
| If you're in a city or suburb with a Google office, it's
| spotless, including transit options that are often
| customized to the city itself.
|
| If you're in a city or suburb without a Google office,
| it's reliable on roads but probably doesn't cover transit
| particularly well. I'm not sure if the Google vs. non-
| Google office is just a bias towards the kind of cities
| Google would put an office in as opposed to the presence
| of an office making a difference, but Pittsburgh is much
| better than Columbus or Jacksonville despite being a
| smaller city.
|
| If you're in a rural area, it's much rougher. Private
| roads marked as public roads are the biggest thing I've
| noticed (presumably because aerial maps can't help much
| there), but also things like ATV tracks and driveways
| marked as roads and missing one-way indicators (i.e.
| routing the wrong way up a one-way street).
| scottLobster wrote:
| It's not just the UK. I'm in the Philadelphia Area US and
| Google Maps has only failed me once out in the suburbs
| where it didn't know a road was blocked (and that was
| probably just timing/lack of reporting).
|
| I use it daily to make sure my commute doesn't have any
| wrecks I'll have to work around, and any time I'm going
| somewhere unfamiliar. It really got stress tested on our
| way back from Tenessee during the eclipse exodus a few
| years ago, routed us (and lots of cars around us lol)
| through all sorts of Appalachia back-roads when the main
| highways were clogged and got us home just fine.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| FWIW I live in a newer house on a country road, told
| google where it was and what number it was, and it was
| there on the maps a few weeks later. This was in NZ.
|
| With the incredibly large sample size of two I have to
| conclude it's region specific.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > It works without fail
|
| So long as you have a data connection or planned ahead with
| a downloaded region.
| yencabulator wrote:
| - And don't trust the routing in the actually remote
| areas, and prep your drive by putting GPS coordinates in
| your driving route -- but that's true of the competition
| too.
|
| - And have a vehicle that's the size of a normal
| passenger car. (I used to own a special "RV GPS" that had
| better data on bridge heights and weight limits.)
| tus666 wrote:
| Does it work without fail when you drive out of range of
| mobile reception?
| NavinF wrote:
| Yes as long as I've downloaded offline maps which I
| always do when I leave the bay area.
| pwagland wrote:
| The auto-nav feature is very nice. However others do this,
| Apple Maps, at least, will suggest a destination based on
| behavioural patterns.
|
| Tesla also have a "simple" version of this, if you are at
| home, it will automatically to go to work in the "morning",
| and in the afternoon it will automatically go "home" if you
| are at the office. But this seems to be location/time based,
| and not behavioural.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > Tesla also have a "simple" version of this, if you are at
| home, it will automatically to go to work in the "morning",
| and in the afternoon it will automatically go "home" if you
| are at the office.
|
| Yes, and this feature drove me crazy until I figured out
| how to turn it off. The two places I know how to get to are
| to work every morning, and home from work every afternoon!
| It's the _other_ places that need navigation.
| djhworld wrote:
| My car has in built (TomTom) sat nav too with a nice wide-
| screen display. The tom tom maps make full use of the screen
| and very legible.
|
| Android auto gets forced into this like 4:3 resolution in the
| middle of the screen which sucks and I can't find a way to
| fix it, even after looking in developer settings.
|
| People have said it's the car manufacturers fault, I really
| don't understand why it has to be this way though
| astrange wrote:
| Apple Maps has the feature you just described, and their maps
| either are TomTom or are better than TomTom.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't know, here in UK they just seem to be barren, with
| major roads still missing, they don't know about "no
| right/left turn" signs in places, they don't know about
| one-way streets......it's not a good system.
|
| I don't know how it can be using TomTom's data if TomTom
| doesn't have any of the same issues.
| neutronicus wrote:
| There's definitely a passable road in my neighborhood of
| Baltimore that Apple Maps doesn't know about, and always
| tries to route us around until we turn onto it.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > with major roads still missing
|
| I really struggle to believe that. Major roads missing
| from Apple Maps? Can you give any examples?
| astrange wrote:
| That one's the "new map data" so it's all original or
| government sources.
|
| Maybe they got tired of mapping the millionth quaint
| village named something like Branstonpickle-upon-
| Trousers.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I may be mistaken, but I think all those features, plus
| traffic data, are built in both Google and Apple Maps as
| well.
|
| Also, phones generally have larger and brighter screens, and
| more accurate GPS. I don't see the advantage of TomTom here.
| reitanqild wrote:
| Problem is, for me at least, Google is useless for
| predictions or recommendations. Search is still better than
| DDG, but way worse than peak Google.
|
| Their recommendations are all over the place despite the
| fact that I have been logged in permanently in some form or
| another since GMail where still invite only.
|
| No one else except my wife and my parents know more about
| me (and to be perfectly clear they know different subsets
| of me) but yet Google still insist on showing me the most
| irrelevant and annoying ads and suggest I call people at
| work in the middle of the night etc etc.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| It sounds like you have issues with the search engine,
| not maps.
| j1elo wrote:
| Very tangentially related, on the front of "stupidly useful
| features that nobody seems to think seriously about": The
| fantastic Citymapper app shows a HUGE "Get Me Home" button if
| you open it past 3am. Just brilliant.
| philjohn wrote:
| I definitely miss TomTomGo on the iPhone - it definitely
| routed me around more traffic jams than google does.
| LightG wrote:
| Care to elaborate on 'since I don't have a smart phone'?
|
| That was probably the most interesting part of the whole
| comment!
| kleiba wrote:
| I wouldn't know what to elaborate?!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Nowadays most people just use their smartphone, but there's
| definitely one market where an "old fashioned" navigation thing
| like this is still relevant: motorcycles. They need to be high
| contrast, low power usage (because most motorcycles don't have
| a power outlet), waterproof, offline, and resistive touch
| screens (because gloves).
|
| I did look into them at one point, but they had a EUR500 price
| tag which is a bit steep.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| Most motorcycle GPSes like Garmin do have wiring harnesses to
| connect to the battery. You can also load OSM maps on them
| for cases where Garmin's are too expensive
|
| Edit: they are also weather resistant which is a huge plus
| over most phones
| prmoustache wrote:
| I don't know I just watch for the main clues before the ride
| and memorize the main highway roads and exit numbers, follow
| the signs and if at some point I have doubt I just stop by
| the side or take the next exit, remove one glove and check on
| the smartphone.
|
| I think my security would be compromized if I had to look at
| a screen regularly while riding my motorbike.
|
| I'd say a better option is to use a headset and follow vocal
| instructions.
| poglet wrote:
| I ended up just purchasing a phone mount that connected to
| the motorcycle. Set the destination before I left, seemed to
| work fine. But if you are willing to go to a bit more effort
| you can purchase USB charger that connects to the battery,
| and also get gloves that work with capacities screens.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| You can get gloves that are touchscreen-compatible.
| brnt wrote:
| > old car that doesn't have a screen (well, it does, but didn't
| come with a GPS built in
|
| I used to pick up and deliver lease cars from/to customers, and
| I'll never forget the Audi which had navigation, but no screen!
| There was a two line text display, which would show textual
| directions. It was an interesting experience!
| mywacaday wrote:
| I bought my 2009 Audi in 2014, it was missing some new roads
| and updates in my area, I approached the dealer about an
| update, they wanted EUR250 for the disc and EUR250 for the
| license key.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yeah, VAG cars totally support having navigation with no
| screen! It seems quite funny by today's standards, but I
| guess the idea is it's like having your passenger navigate
| and read directions to you.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| A two-line text display is still a screen.
|
| My dad's early-2000s Peugeot 407 also had a similar set-up: a
| red/orange monochrome dot-matrix display, with a surprisingly
| hot backlight, capable of displaying only the most rudiminary
| of roundabout diagrams and now-and-next directions. It did
| use TTS to pronounce street names with the wrong inflection
| and an overemphasis on "yAAARds" as units-of-distance for
| some reason. It was controlled by an easy-to-lose infrared
| remote-control D-pad: entering an address meant picking each
| letter one-by-one from an A-Z list until it could
| autocomplete the street name.
|
| I was always envious of kids whose parents had
| contemporaneous Mercedes with their full-color 3-4" LCD
| screens - until they'd told me of how bad UX was across the
| board: stuff like sub-usable frame-rates, overpriced map-data
| updates, etc - and this never got better over time until
| Tesla showed-up with 17" full-screen 60fps Google satellite
| imagery right there. And _still_ the rest of the car industry
| doesn 't "get" good UX. Le sigh.
|
| (Yes, I drive a Model X and I'll decide the next car I buy
| squarely on the car's software UX - because if they can't get
| something as simple as smooth framerates right then what else
| are they getting wrong in the car?)
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| (Gonna be the lightning rod of hate here for a moment)
|
| > And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good
| UX. Le sigh.
|
| Imho, a giant 17" touchscreen that replaces most physical
| controls in a car is also not good UX for a car. Why do you
| need high-res satellite imagery of your route on a screen
| in the center of the car? Just look out the window!
|
| I'll grant that most other manufacturers also do a poor job
| of a lot of the UX elements, but Tesla ain't the great
| saviour either.
| mosburger wrote:
| no hate here - the "replace everything with an iPad"
| movement of car dash design has been generally, IMO, a
| horrible change. When driving, you need tactile feedback
| when adjusting things like the cabin temperature so that
| you can keep your eyes on the road. Replacing knobs with
| GUI sliders on a screen that you have to see to
| manipulate is a step backwards. I would love it if auto
| manufacturers came to their senses and went back to old-
| fashioned knobs and buttons, but I suspect that just
| sticking everything on a screen is cheaper to manufacture
| and maintain, so I won't hold my breath. :(
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I think part of the problem is also the expansion of
| functionality in infotainment systems, especially if
| you're using android auto or similar. You end up needing
| to have a touch screen for some things like text entry
| (or having a much clunkier input method) and once the
| touch screen is there, the temptation to cut costs by
| replacing physical buttons and switches with some
| software is just too great.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I agree entirely. Heterogenous (I.e. distinctly shaped)
| physical controls are essential for safe driving without
| taking one's eyes off the road.
|
| ...but that doesn't mean my last car's abysmal "Ford
| MyTouch" or "Ford Sync" or whatever they rebrand it's as
| was ever fit-for-purpose. How can a UI that can't render
| faster than ~5fps be considered acceptable by the world's
| leading carmaker? Where is the pride in their work?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| You have a very good and valid point. Incidentally,
| despite being not a fan of Tesla's UX, I also see a bit
| of the silver lining in that it at least got people to
| start talking about it, both via the point you're making
| (that all other car UX sucks too) and also starting to
| ask the questions about what makes a good UX rather than
| a pretty one.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Why do you need high-res satellite imagery of your
| route on a screen in the center of the car? Just look out
| the window!
|
| Because it's incredibly useful.
|
| It means you can navigate dirt tracks. See over
| treeelines. Judge the quality of parking lots. Find out
| what side of the building the driveway or entrance is on.
| Etc.
| ShivShankaran wrote:
| >since I don't have a smart phone
|
| holup. what do you mean? like you don't own one or don't use
| one?
| kleiba wrote:
| I've never owned one. As you can tell from the opening
| statement of my original comment above, I'm old.
|
| Surprisingly, I seem to be able to go through life just fine,
| so don't worry.
| smallerfish wrote:
| > I seem to be able to go through life just fine. [AMA]
|
| How do you find your way out of the house in the morning?
| And what do you do when you're stuck somewhere with other
| people who you don't know?
| ShivShankaran wrote:
| >And what do you do when you're stuck somewhere with
| other people who you don't know?
|
| Even worse, what do you do when you are passing by
| someone you barely know and don't want to exchange
| pleasantries?
|
| How do you even poop?
| beardyw wrote:
| TomTom without GPS - what did it do?
| kleiba wrote:
| I think you misread - I was talking about the screen in my
| car which is used mostly for the in-car entertainment system
| (formerly known as "radio") and some other controls. But it
| is not connected to a GPS, so I'm using an external TomTom
| device for the rare cases where I need it.
| thedougd wrote:
| The portable GPS market was a blip on the timeline; popular for
| only about 5 years. Several technologies converged to make them
| possible: public GPS, sensitive GPS chips that didn't require
| large antennas, cheap solid state storage (this was huge), and
| high resolution color displays. As soon as they all existed, we
| could get portable GPS units for $400-800 USD.
|
| Unfortunately for these manufacturers, all these technologies
| also enabled smart phones with GPS which quickly destroyed the
| market.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society
| progressing_
|
| There's still the use case of driving in remote areas with
| less-than-ideal or expensive connectivity (though probably
| those spots don't really require sophisticated nav), and also
| that you might not want to tell ad monopolies your location
| data.
| vetinari wrote:
| You don't need the connectivity all the time; it is enough
| when calculating the initial route. After that, GPS signal is
| enough, and can be intermittent (in tunnels or deep valleys,
| for example).
|
| But I've seen another uses of dedicated GPS appliances:
| bikers. They use rugged ones, they don't break so easily as
| phones.
| aembleton wrote:
| mapy.cz works well for this and even supports android auto.
| bearmode wrote:
| In those situations, just download offline maps to use?
| reaperducer wrote:
| You assume that one knows that the place where you're going
| is beyond the reach of cellular service before one even
| goes there.
| reitanuki wrote:
| With apps like OsmAnd and Organic Maps, I can download
| the map for the entire country and navigate off it.
| Highly recommended -- both on F-Droid.
| bearmode wrote:
| With Google Maps I can literally download maps of the
| entire UK, and they are kept locally for 6 months? A
| year? I can't remember how long.
|
| Any time I'm driving somewhere reasonably far (or where I
| know there's no service), I'll download or update the
| maps. Never had an issue.
| baq wrote:
| google maps work quite well with offline data in airplane
| mode.
| petecooper wrote:
| >TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS
| navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that
| was stuck to the wind screen.
|
| I'm of an era where my first TomTom was an external GPS
| receiver that connected to a PDA (Palm Pilot?) via Bluetooth,
| with all manner of cradles, wires and such. The GPS receiver
| needed to be re-paired each time I made a journey.
| ars wrote:
| I still have one in my car, despite the car having built-in map
| navigation.
|
| The car does not let you change anything with the navigation if
| the car is in motion, apparently they've never heard of
| passengers.
|
| It doesn't help that map upgrades are ferociously expensive,
| around a hundred dollars.
| acomjean wrote:
| I had one. It worked pretty well but sometime took a little
| while to "lock onto" the gps signal.
|
| I think the cloud based gps on phones won for being free and
| having traffic info.
|
| My Tom Tom had the "mr T" celebrity voice yelling directions at
| me. A friend had John Clease. This is before gps directions
| told you street names, but with ai I think they could manage
| this again.
| tepmoc wrote:
| Asssited GPS[1] solved that exactly problem, since not
| network connected GPS devices need download GPS almanac and
| ephemerides via GPS 50bits/s connection, which can take a
| while.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS
| bearmode wrote:
| You can already install celebrity voices with Waze
| lozenge wrote:
| If it doesn't lock on straight away, it also asks you if the
| clock is set correctly.
|
| I think those older GPS chips might only use the US-operated
| GPS system while modern ones can consider other positioning
| satellites as well. And they also can't download AGPS data of
| satellite drift from the internet, so they need to get it
| from the satellites themselves.
| [deleted]
| dncornholio wrote:
| It's not irrelevant. The quality of roads TomTom guides you are
| way more optimized then Google maps for example. The road
| graphics are also way much more clear.
|
| TomTom is what I use on every vacation trip. Wouldn't do that
| with Google Maps.
|
| Google Maps always picks strange roads and often I see me
| driving through a red light district or something, where TomTom
| would pick more conventional roads.
| bambax wrote:
| I have a TomTom GPS device for my motorbike that I purchased 8
| years ago. The build quality is excellent, but the software is
| abysmal. It takes over two minutes to boot (!); changing the
| type of route takes maybe 5 or 6 touches; search results are
| not ordered by proximity, and offers at first suggestions,
| destinations that are thousands of miles away (on a
| motorcyle!); updating the maps means connecting it to a PC and
| downloading a huge, horrible app; etc.
| jamesbfb wrote:
| > since I don't have a smart phone
|
| I'm edging closer to this way of living. Is this by choice, if
| so, why?
| kleiba wrote:
| Never felt comfortable with being tracked everywhere I go. Of
| course, that means that I shouldn't buy a new car either.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Their revenue from 2009-2022 tells the story:
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/tomtom/revenue/
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I do recall they provided the maps when Apple Maps was
| launched, but I can imagine Apple took over and built their
| own after that.
| afknewsagency wrote:
| Check the licenses in the about section on the maps app and
| see... and also, go use Streetside, Bing Maps' version of
| streetview, and see what cars gathered those images!
| smallerfish wrote:
| Interesting, but if ever there was a y-axis that needed to 0,
| that is one of them. 550M revenue is a lot more than zero.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Trends in profit (and profit margin) are a better measure
| than revenue for most established business's health than
| revenue.
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/tomtom/earnings/
| contravariant wrote:
| Oh wow that's an unclear graph, putting the first tick-mark
| at 1B gives the impression that you're starting at 0, but
| there is in fact over 0.5B missing from the bottom of the
| plot.
|
| Good trick to remember I suppose.
| dchuk wrote:
| Any chart that isn't zeroed out is a bad chart
| contravariant wrote:
| It's kind of inevitable for log-plots.
|
| Or non-absolute quantities like temperature in
| Fahrenheit/Celsius. (You can use Kelvin instead, but good
| luck interpreting that plot)
| smallerfish wrote:
| There's very rare cases where it's justified; e.g. if you
| want to show a drop in company profits from $60.0B to
| $57.0B, you might want to cut the y-axis so that you're
| showing more detail of the loss over time (maybe so that
| you can correlate to the CRO's lame new "motions" that
| they started in January). I do think it should always be
| called out visually when doing that though.
| swarnie wrote:
| I'd love to see this overlaid with the price of an additional
| map or an update to your existing map.
|
| The last time i checked in about 2007 the price of a yearly
| UK update was eye watering. I just accepted that if i take
| the new by-pass Tom will scream thinking im in a lake.
| F30 wrote:
| They're still one of the major suppliers of car manufacturers
| for navigation software embedded in infotainment systems.
| exikyut wrote:
| And they've figured out that's dead-but-alive, aka a
| terminal investment.
| jclardy wrote:
| I remember a time when my family called any GPS head unit a
| "TomTom" - not sure if it was that way outside of my family
| though. Almost like they nearly had "Kleenex" levels of brand
| recognition. Unfortunately for them the iPhone moment happened.
| iPhone GPS wasn't nearly as good, and they even had an app on
| the iPhone (That sold for almost as much as a separate unit, at
| a time when developers could actually sell paid-up-front apps
| on the app store...)
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Apparently TomTom is still the generic word in the
| Netherlands.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Not necessarily irrelevant, just a lot more niche. For example
| there's still a market for navigation systems for the trucking
| industry that consider factors like vehicle height in route
| selection.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Apple Maps has used TomTom data for years (in addition to other
| sources).
| izacus wrote:
| I find your post funny, since I'm regularly using TomTom on my
| Android phone because it has a better UI and some nicer car
| navigation features than Google Maps. Based on the number of
| downloads and TomTom's financials, I'm not even close to being
| alone.
|
| I've also seen it as a default navigation provider in many car
| brands so I find your bubble biased post pretty funny - and
| kinda sad, because we see a lot of those here these days. Is it
| really so hard to stop for a second and think whether there
| might be people out there that don't share your preferences?
| grosswait wrote:
| The point of OP was history not preferences. And judging by
| financials a brief history may in fact be enlightening to
| many.
| kleiba wrote:
| Well, obviously TomTom is still in business but only because
| they adapted their original business model drastically. I
| think the original article is also along the same lines.
| izacus wrote:
| And that's good, choice and competition is good. I honestly
| don't get when people of HN got so hateful and dismissive
| towards market competition.
| kleiba wrote:
| Sorry, but I don't see how you could construe my original
| comment as "dismissive", let alone "hateful".
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| My father in law had a TomTom and maps were always years behind
| reality (and he paid for several updates as they promised the
| changes would be in there, but no), so updating or not does not
| matter.
| kleiba wrote:
| Good point. I've certainly run into situation where my TomTom
| got confused with reality, but on the other hand, just a
| couple of weeks ago the built-in GPS in my wife's car was
| totally unaware of some high-way in France and thought we
| were going cross-country through some fields for quite a long
| time :)
| vetinari wrote:
| I had exactly opposite experience: Columbus (VW group
| navigation) was asking me to get on a highway, but the
| highway was still under construction :).
| hansel_der wrote:
| not to disagree, but maps are always behind reality
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Yes, but Google maps is quite good I think.
| olabyne wrote:
| Yeah, it's crazy how smartphones crushed entire markets from
| the 2000s : car GPS, MP3 players, cheap digital cameras ...
| FormFollowsFunc wrote:
| TomTom started with mapping software for PDAs/smartphones. I
| remember using CityMaps on a PocketPC phone edition (with a
| separate GPS device) in the early 2000s. They only got into
| standalone devices in 2004 probably because they were more
| profitable than software alone. It's only when smartphones
| (with built-in GPS) went mainstream in ~2010 that standalone
| devices didn't make sense anymore.
| rob74 wrote:
| I can trace the history of TomTom GPS devices: my first one was
| bought in 2008 at BestBuy in Seattle during a US trip (we
| called it "Dave" after the voice's name, grew kinda fond of it
| and even used it in Germany despite or maybe because of it
| reading German place names with a funny US "accent"). Of course
| it was limited by the technology available at the time: the
| touchscreen was low-res and reacted sluggishly, and the memory
| was limited, so you had to constantly swap between maps that
| you could store on the device and those backed up on your PC. I
| kept around a Windows installation just for updating this
| TomTom, because I wanted to avoid the hassle and was afraid of
| losing the maps when trying to transfer them. Then I finally
| bought a new TomTom in 2019, and it was much better: bigger,
| better screen, could fit a map for the whole world in memory,
| free lifetime updates, could connect to Wi-Fi to update itself,
| so no more fiddly PC software needed etc. But unfortunately
| TomTom's maps were extremely lacking in the very first country
| we wanted to use it in (Ecuador).
| 363849473754 wrote:
| Despite using Google maps I like having a separate GPS
| navigation system like this running in the background as a
| backup. That's in case if something happens to my phone and it
| no longer works, then I have a secondary GPS device.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the original Apple Maps was based on
| TomTom (or maybe the second iteration, after they fell out with
| Google).
| maxerickson wrote:
| They still credit TomTom as a data provider.
|
| https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html
| club_tropical wrote:
| Curious, does anybody navigate without GPS? Why do you do it?
|
| I occasionally challenge myself, and I am always surprised how
| much more active my mind is, compared to GPS where my mind is
| passively glancing at the screen every few seconds to see if I'm
| on course and next turn.
| fy20 wrote:
| I have a pretty good navigational memory, so if I've driven the
| journey once I can usually remember the way again. The
| advantage of apps like Google Maps and Waze is they provide
| real time traffic data, so can reroute you if there is
| congestion. It's not perfect, but I use it for driving to and
| from work now and it has helped me avoid a lot of congestion.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've found that the re-routing is good if you happen to be
| lucky enough to be one of the first cars to get rerouted. But
| pretty quickly the alternate route gets congested too because
| everyone is getting rerouted.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I do it, because I lived in a time when you had to and I want
| to keep that part of my mind sharp. I'll use GPS to go
| somewhere novel, but after once, maybe twice, i make a point to
| just go there without assistance.
|
| If you don't navigate you lose spatial awareness over time, I
| know some people who can't tell you how to get to their job
| from their house.
| club_tropical wrote:
| Amazing. I have noticed the loss in myself and should take
| steps to improve.
| sanguy wrote:
| TomTom like Here and Garmin are fighting to try to stay relevant
| in a market that has been seized by Android Auto and CarPlay.
|
| The issue is the car vendors do not want to surrender their
| navigation and entertainment to Google and Apple as navigation
| system options at >$1500 and ongoing updates are precious margin
| and recurring revenue that they all desire.
|
| With Android Auto or CarPlay they give that all up.
|
| They are both dead men walking but like to do a full court press
| like this every few years to remind us all they still have the
| lights on.
| theiz wrote:
| I don't think you have read the article. TomTom is changing
| from navigation device maker, to map maker. They already did
| that, Apple Maps uses TomTom data for example. There is however
| a new market that will grow: autonomous driving vehicles. These
| need more data, and more or less real time if available.
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| > There is however a new market that will grow: autonomous
| driving vehicles
|
| This market is shrinking and will continue to shrink.
| burmanm wrote:
| Shrinking before it has even began?
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Google maps has a free open api, haha JK pay us now that you've
| built on top of google!
| illwrks wrote:
| It reminds me of the ViziCities work that was done 7/8 years ago
| by a guy called Rob Hawkes - https://twitter.com/robhawkes
|
| That to me was groundbreaking.
|
| https://github.com/UDST/vizicities
| pedalpete wrote:
| I can't believe I never came across vizicities. I'm the founder
| of Ayvri, and we've been using a Cesium for the past 8 years.
| runjake wrote:
| I don't see any mention of how TomTom will provide any money,
| support or logistics to OSM. Am I missing it?
| lukeqsee wrote:
| Welcome to the party, TomTom! A little more healthy competition
| never hurts. :)
|
| Seriously though, the prestige of OSM and the companies building
| on it is only growing--a success story of epic proportions to the
| open source and open data communities!
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, we were in Ecuador in 2019 with a TomTom device, and the
| newest maps were years behind "ground truth" - at one point we
| ended up on a bypass road and the GPS kept telling us to "turn
| right" when there was no intersection anywhere to be seen. We
| then turned to OpenStreetMap (OSMAnd app) and it was a
| lifesaver...
| nojvek wrote:
| > These super sources include open-source data (such as
| OpenStreetMap), probe data, sensor derived observations (SDO) and
| data from a pool of important partners, which include some of the
| biggest names in the tech industry.
|
| Great, so they'll suck open street map data, but won't contribute
| back.
|
| IMO if someone wants to compete against Google Maps, then the
| Chromium open source strategy ought to work well against them.
| Many players building on an open source map. Not just roads, but
| full 3D meshes, building annotations, internal maps of public
| buildings e.g airports e.t.c
|
| Cruise has started rolling our driverless cars in SF at night.
| Their strategy is mapping all of SF at centimeter accuracy and
| having every car have a fresh map as it drives around.
|
| For me, that feels like the future of mapping. A fresh map of the
| world at centimeter accuracy, then hierarchical layers of
| abstraction with lesser details.
| [deleted]
| mvexel wrote:
| > Great, so they'll suck open street map data, but won't
| contribute back.
|
| They already are.
|
| > Same as apple, they'll build their own map in a private
| walled garden and suck bits off OSM but won't contribute back.
|
| They already are and have for years.
| teambob wrote:
| Now if only updates wouldn't brick the device
| _sonya_memane wrote:
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'd like to see open-source topo maps with accurate elevation
| data, and accurate GPS position data. Doesn't seem to exist and
| 'topographical' and 'GPS data points' are not mentioned in this
| article. For now, individual maps can be obtained via USGS, but
| they're not stiched together:
|
| https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| OpenStreetMap is the second most-important resource on the
| Internet, after the Wikipedia.
| Semaphor wrote:
| And if you are on android, there's a super simple and easy,
| lightly gamified, app to help improve their data:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this! I've installed it and it looks
| like an interesting app.
| jbaber wrote:
| My kids loved using this on long walks in the neighborhood.
| Until we'd heavily trodden some paths and the only questions
| were about road surfaces and streetlamps :)
| Aachen wrote:
| Street lighting is useful though! My partner wanted to go
| running but when it gets dark early it would be after dark,
| and there wasn't a good map of which roads are lit. I since
| filled in the data and OsmAnd can display it (map settings
| -> details -> street lighting), but it took a while to get
| stuff filled in and my partner has since stopped running
| x). It may help other people plan such trips, or tell
| people where they can feel more safe while walking after
| nightfall.
|
| The data is virtually nonexistent in most places, at least
| until StreetComplete started asking for it, but I imagine
| that many will find it a useful addition if it starts being
| rendered or used in route calculations now that it's
| available here and there. (Which then leads to more people
| seeing the use and contributing that data, which again
| makes it more useful.) Finding your way in an unfamiliar
| place in pitch blackness is a lot harder regardless of
| safety.
| tim_hutton wrote:
| This is an excellent app, it works very well. Thanks for
| linking.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I've been using it to update the > 4 years out-of-date
| streets around my apartment, it really makes it super easy
| just when walking somewhere.
| smusamashah wrote:
| There is also Every Door which i find less annoying. Street
| complete puts lots of noise on the map. I don't know the
| answer to my selected questions all the time. Every door lets
| you fill in whatever you can.
|
| https://every-door.app/
| Semaphor wrote:
| While that is nice, it's a lot more cluttered. That may be
| useful when you specifically go out to do mapping, but
| Street Complete is far easier to do on the side while going
| somewhere for different reasons.
|
| edit: I will keep both though ;)
| blargpls wrote:
| If you have a problem with specific quest types, you can
| disable them in the settings.
|
| If you feel like the question / answer should be improved,
| check the StreetComplete issue tracker for existing issues
| / discussions and if there isn't any matching, create a new
| one.
| 0xFF0123 wrote:
| Thanks for a great recommendation!
| [deleted]
| molly_radstowe wrote:
| I'd argue it's #1
| einpoklum wrote:
| I'd say it's even more important than Wikipedia. Static
| articles on various subjects may require a bit of effort, but
| dynamic zoomable maps are not something you can get another way
| (except for commercial offerings).
| aembleton wrote:
| That's the Web interface, the real value is in its database.
| Many applications can make use of that data for maps or for
| geolocation information or to get all of the railway stations
| in a city.
| leethargo wrote:
| Not sure of the rank position, but the Internet Archive is
| quite valuable as well.
| Ptchd wrote:
| Libgen and scihub are pretty important too.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I gave up trying to edit mistakes on OSM.
|
| I edited something, one month later someone reverted it back
| without any explanation.
|
| And the UX for discussion is even worse than on Wikipedia,
| which is saying something. So I have no idea why it was
| reverted, no idea how to contact the guy and no mood to
| investigate.
|
| So my street has a wrong name and I am too lazy to change it
| habi wrote:
| Every item on OSM (node, way, relation) is versioned and has
| a history.
|
| If you can link us to your changes I'm happy to try to help
| find out why your change was reverted. Usually that's only
| the case for blatant errors, copying from proprietary maps
| (ehm, Google Maps) or vandalism.
|
| We're trying to be a friendly bunch, and I'd like to get you
| back as an editor.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I don't want to ask here (don't want to mix up my
| identities), where should I actually ask? In what forum
| n4r9 wrote:
| One option you have is to find the changeset that undid
| your edit and start a discussion with the user in
| question.
|
| To find the changeset, navigate to the location on
| openstreetmap.org, right-click, query features, and
| select the feature in question. The web page should then
| look like this:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/93668654/
|
| In the left pane click "View history" to see all the
| changesets affecting that feature. Find the one you want,
| then click the link next to "Changeset #". The web page
| should then look like this:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/104465654
|
| The comment on the changeset might already contain enough
| information to answer why it undid your edit. If not, the
| left pane now has a text box for you to add a comment to
| the discussion. The user in question should receive a
| notification/email when you comment, and will hopefully
| engage in the discussion.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| If they don't, or are otherwise uncivil, you can contact
| the local mapper community. Often you can find them on
| this Discourse forum:
| https://community.openstreetmap.org/
|
| The local (mostly national) community can often explain
| why an edit was reverted (if the mapper who did it
| won't), or mediate with that mapper if they are in the
| wrong. Just keep in mind that we are all volunteers.
| Aachen wrote:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels any
| of these (some may be more or less active). If you're
| looking for a forum specifically, the answer is
| https://community.openstreetmap.org
| habi wrote:
| Do as the others said here.
|
| Sometimes one can find specific local communities here,
| too: https://openstreetmap.community/
| ryandrake wrote:
| I remember quite a few years ago when I once went into OSM
| and fixed some streets in Las Vegas by "unbraiding" the
| intersections, in other words converting intersections with
| ways that joined at one point to ways that joined in a tic-
| tac-toe pattern. I believe this was considered best
| practice at the time in OSM. Well, a few days later, I got
| a very angry private message from some guy complaining that
| I edited "his" nicely braided roads and demanding that I
| revert the edit. I was kind of a newbie at the time so I
| did what he said and stopped editing for a while.
|
| I've since gotten back into editing here and there, but the
| initial experience likely prevented me from really getting
| into OSM and becoming some kind of editing master.
| habi wrote:
| Mapping can be very opinionated, but sending angry
| private messages to people genuinely trying to make the
| map better is definitely not necessary.
| nicbou wrote:
| I contribute to OSM, especially when I travel in less populated
| areas. A reliable map of petrol stations is invaluable in
| remote areas.
|
| People are sometimes curious about it, and comparing it to
| Wikipedia is the best way to explain the importance of it.
|
| Good maps are incredibly important. Separating that from
| financial incentives is necessary.
| avar wrote:
| A meta-comment: The entire tone of this press release is so
| weird, e.g.:
|
| "There's also significant talk about how the company will use OSM
| data. It's clear TomTom is treading cautiously and respectfully
| here.".
|
| That's something you might expect to read in an article written
| by an independent journalist, not a corporate press release
| written by in-house staff.
| [deleted]
| arrrg wrote:
| Press releases are always written in a way that makes it as
| easy as possible for journalists to just, well, basically copy
| the text and just use it without modifications.
|
| That's a press release writing best practice. Your goal is to
| match the journalistic writing style as closely as possible,
| all the while still transporting all the messages you want to
| transport. Make it easy for the journalist to be lazy. It has
| been this way since basically forever because PR writers know
| that journalists are under a lot of time pressure and often
| don't even have the resources to write everything from scratch.
| So you offer them something that's hard to resist ...
|
| I guess the web has sort of muddied the waters there (with
| companies being able to publish press releases on their own
| websites) but the intended target audience of press releases
| are actually journalists. In the past companies usually had no
| way of publishing and distributing news about themselves on
| their own. (And, to be honest, press releases on their own
| website still aren't the best publishing platform.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is true.
|
| A lot of "stories" that are released under reporter bylines,
| are actually verbatim from the corporation or government
| agency. I wouldn't be surprised if the original text is
| copyrighted, so people can't play with it too much.
|
| Many years ago, an Australian magazine, called Crikey, did a
| series on Spin in the Media:
| https://www.crikey.com.au/topic/spinning-the-media/
| arrrg wrote:
| Nothing to do with copyright at all. Reporters can do with
| the text however they please. There are no practical legal
| issues involved.
|
| It's about making things as convenient as possible for
| journalists, not legal enforcement of anything.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> It's about making things as convenient as possible for
| journalists_
|
| I'm not so sure about that being the principal motive. I
| think it's actually a way to exert control. I remember
| discussions with our marketing folks. Pretty eye-opening.
|
| "Communication," in corporations, is really about
| controlling and shaping the message, and building the
| brand.
|
| You see these coordinated campaigns, all the time.
| Usually, they are efforts to control the vocabulary (for
| example, instead of calling camera flashes "flashes," we
| try to always refer to them as "speedlights," and get
| everyone else to use the same language).
|
| Also, you have things like entertainers starting to
| behave badly, just as their albums and movies are coming
| out, etc. I'll bet that publicists ask entertainers to
| time things like divorce announcements, with significant
| market events.
|
| It's really Machiavellian.
| arrrg wrote:
| I mean, sure, controlling the message is how you can call
| it, but that doesn't mean the legal threats (or threats
| of any kind) are doing the actual controlling.
|
| When I say "it's about making things as convenient as
| possible for journalists" what I mean by that (and what I
| thought I had made pretty clear) is not that convenience
| for the journalist is the ultimate goal.
|
| The ultimate goal is to get the messages about your
| announcement you want to have published published. The
| convenience is a stepping stone towards that destination.
| That way you exert control without force or threats. It's
| the carrot.
|
| Which is not to say that threats are absent from
| corporate communication. Just not as part of press
| release writing and publishing.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| But I wonder if, let's say, a media organization were to
| publish a "hit piece," based on the text, if you could
| send a DMCA notice to their hosting provider.
| arrrg wrote:
| If you want a PR nightmare for yourself, then that's how
| you create one.
|
| There is probably more than a century of tradition and
| expectations around how journalists can work with press
| releases. Whether companies could sue them for releasing
| press releases (it's in the name!) is in that light
| mostly theoretical. Because no one would sue.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| What was it that someone once said (not sure who)?
|
| _"Never pick a fight with someone that buys ink by the
| barrel."_
| [deleted]
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| >Continuously updated and detailed maps, location data, POI
| information, routing algorithms, estimated times of arrival
| (ETAs) and positioning systems are being combined to create
| powerful apps that are changing the way we (and our stuff) move
| and how we make sense of the world around us.
|
| I suppose it is good that they finally noticed.
| b3nji wrote:
| Excellent, this is great news. Ideally, they will bring something
| amazing to compete with the _others_.
| kioleanu wrote:
| I used to work with TomTom when I worked on navigation solutions
| at a former employer. The maps are top notch quality and very up
| to date, but shit expensive. I think we had a minimum amount of
| licenses we had to commit to pay (something like a couple of
| hundred thousand euros per year) and we were a small shop.
|
| We had split the map data sources to not drive customers away and
| we split our licensing between our app and the map subscription.
| It was an interesting problem, we had one employee that only did
| OpenStreetMap - keeping maps up to date, manually solving
| problems etc - this was actually much cheaper than buying TomTom,
| but still we couldn't match the quality of TomTom. So, we would
| recommend: do you need high accuracy maps, buy TomTom, otherwise
| use the cheaper variant.
|
| We were also implementing Here Maps (the old Nokia Maps), when I
| left, and it looked really promising, but I think the same
| licensing scheme, only "cheaper", we could make do with only
| about 100k in pre-bought licenses
| Dinux wrote:
| I don't understand the 'everything was better when it wasn't
| google' mentality that is so often found in these threads. My dad
| used to work at TomTom right here in the Netherlands. They used
| to be a fun and innovative company to work for. When it became
| apparent they entered a multibillion dollar business it was all
| about the money.
|
| As someone who used TomTom before other options became available
| I can honestly say that it was an absolute nightmare. The small
| handheld devices took ages before loading up, had bad GPS
| reception and could only live on battery for 1.5 hours or so.
| Maps needed to be updated quarterly and would often not fit on
| the SD CARD. TomTom charged something in the order of 75 euro per
| map update.
|
| When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued
| with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty
| bloatware necessary for map updates etc.. I don't understand the
| HN sentiment. Things were no better 15 years ago. Google Maps
| works. It works always. It accurate and uptodate. Dont like
| Google? There are plenty of OSM apps in store.
| scrapcode wrote:
| I must agree. I do not remember a very pleasant experience
| using the GPS dash units. I would move often with the Navy and
| would use the GPS unit for a couple weeks but challenge myself
| as soon as possible to learn to get around without it. Now when
| I am going somewhere over 30 minutes away I throw it into GMaps
| even if I know how to get there, as there could be a number of
| events that could've caused a reroute since the last time I
| took that route.
| greyhair wrote:
| My commute to work is very predictable, but the commute home
| is not. I always use Google maps driving home, even though it
| is only 27 miles, because Gmaps will direct me to alternate
| routes if there is a traffic tie up on my usual route home.
| This has saved me literally days of time over my years of
| commuting.
| guestbest wrote:
| I've done this with waze as well as Apple Maps since
| construction or accidents can cause undesirable but necessary
| rerouting
| [deleted]
| izacus wrote:
| You seem to be completely ignoring that TomTom has been
| available as a mobile app (like Google Maps) for years now
| which excludes most of your bad experiences? It supports
| CarPlay / Android Auto integration so it's a seamless
| replacement for G/Apple Maps in cars if that's what people want
| to use.
|
| And it works. It works always (even more than GMaps because
| it's offline first). It's also accurate. And up to date.
| afknewsagency wrote:
| This works for the consumer who wants to get from a to b. And
| doesn't mind being advertised to or tracked via Google.
|
| But companies, uber, lyft, carmakers, location intelligence
| firms etc need commercial mapping and location tech. What
| TomTom offers exists more for these people than the end
| consumer these days.
| Dinux wrote:
| We use maps extensively in our products and Mapbox has been a
| belessing eversince we started using it. I would argue Mapbox
| is far better suited for development and product integration
| than Google Maps is. It is developer and user friendly,
| offers a wide range of mapping and layering products. It easy
| to use and affordable small and medium sized businesses.
| usrusr wrote:
| Given how very little the TomTom announcement actually
| says, I've read it as a (desperate?) attempt to pivot into
| the mapbox market. In any case, nice to see OSM eating the
| mapping world.
| mradek wrote:
| I use TomTom's API services in conjunction with google maps API
| because it is way more cost effective.
|
| I use google maps sdk on mobile because generally the data is
| much better quality for POI than Apple Maps, but doing
| geocoding is a lot more expensive so that's where I use TomTom.
| Seems to work fine for me so far.
| cduzz wrote:
| A classic monopolist move is to use monopoly power from one
| business unit (such as rented computers) and offer an unrelated
| service at well below market rates in another market (perhaps
| online retail).
|
| The incumbents don't have the crutch of the other business unit
| and can't price match, and go out of business.
|
| Then the monopolist raises prices and there's no competition
| and no alternative.
|
| It's fine, though google maps has gotten pretty bad; I'll just
| switch back to Waze.
| rakejake wrote:
| Google owns Waze
| stevage wrote:
| Google Maps works for certain, pretty common, use cases. That
| doesn't mean it works for everyone or for every business.
| Monopolies are bad, near monopolies slightly less bad. And
| especially when it comes to a platform that significantly
| influences how millions of people perceive the world around
| them.
|
| (Source: making web maps is my career. I don't touch Google
| Maps professionally but use it a lot personally.)
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| The power of an app to route people down an old farm road
| rather than taking the pike to me, is enough. I feel bad for
| those who live there because its about 30 seconds faster to
| on the highway
| Dinux wrote:
| But thats not whats happening. Google Maps, Waze, Apple
| Maps etc all prefer certain paths over others. I can take a
| shortcut home which saved me about 5 minutes and potential
| traffic jams, and Google Maps will never suggest it, unless
| I deliberately drive down that road.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| In my place (Geneva, Switzerland), Google Maps stubbornly
| keeps suggesting for years the fastest route form my side
| of the town to the other through one of few bridges that
| is actually absolute no-go for public traffic, with tons
| of warning signs (sometimes some of them are obscured by
| buses but still hard to miss).
|
| Needless to say, there is often some sucker going through
| there, and I have to admit I ended up there once too
| exactly because of Google Maps. No effort to correct it
| over the years, in one of the wealthiest and most
| important power/finance centers globally.
|
| What you and parent describe happened to me too, maps are
| absolute blessing compared to what was there before but
| they are sometimes not that great ie in cities with a lot
| of traffic. Its easy to get used to something just
| working and start demanding perfection, when we are maybe
| 96% there.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Yes, there really should be some regulation around this.
| Apps sending traffic down quiet residential roads because
| the main road is overcrowded is a terrible practice.
|
| If it's a farm road, there's always the option my neighbour
| used to do: he took his sweet time when he let the cattle
| cross the road. It's always fun when impatient idiots have
| to wait a few minutes because 50 cows are walking to their
| meadows across the road :)
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| This kind of thing happened in the days before app
| maps/directions, but it is arguably worse now.
|
| My friends' street is the slightest bit of a shortcut.
| Like, it might save 30 seconds or a minute but it avoids
| a really annoying stoplight-controlled intersection. It
| is also a quiet, purely residential street. For 20+
| years, people who live on that street park way out from
| the curb on both sides so that the street is nearly
| impassable for most of the day unless you drive quite
| slowly (like at a crawling pace). People still use it as
| a shortcut, but at least speeding down that low-speed-
| limit road where lots of kids play in the neighborhood is
| not so common anymore.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| The best solution to a situation like that would be to
| block the road on one side (or in the middle) so you
| can't drive through it. Minor inconvenience for people
| who live there, but also a major quality of live
| improvement if you have no through traffic at all.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| > Monopolies are bad, near monopolies slightly less bad
|
| Natural monopolies (such as the one acquired by Google) are
| not bad as long as government retains the monopoly of B2
| bombers.
|
| It's not really a monopoly when it can be ended at a moment's
| notice
| Avicebron wrote:
| Balance of probability, maybe rephrase as "anti-consumer
| behavior is bad" or "noticing how monopolies are inherently
| self serving is a lot like a frog noticing the water around
| it is getting a bit hot"
| Reubachi wrote:
| Can you describe a monopoly that isn't "natural"? I see
| what you mean but struggle to think of a traditional
| monopolistic company that doesn't have a "we started with
| the industry" defense.
| iamwpj wrote:
| The ISP in your area could be an unnatural monopoly. In
| my experience these companies have lobbied out local
| providers and bought all the competition to make them the
| only offerers in some areas. It happens more in rural US.
| The issue also crops up with gas stations in towns and
| then again with dollar stores as well, in this case they
| are replacing grocery stores. Traditionally the federal
| government would crack down on unnatural monopolies so
| that's why you don't typically see them, but look at the
| regional level and you can spot them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >In other cases, the world is changing in ways that place
| growing demands on maps and location data. Nowadays, all social
| media has a location component so we can geotag our digital
| lives, and fitness and exercise apps, like Strava, augment how
| we interact with the world with virtual leaderboards based on
| GPS trace data.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734665
|
| DonHopkins on Aug 19, 2019 | parent | next [-]
|
| When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come
| up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS
| Personal Navigation Devices.
|
| Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a
| real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road
| on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local
| roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could
| instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who
| drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the
| metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard!
|
| That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal
| department.
|
| The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while
| driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members
| along the same stretch of road.
|
| They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a
| simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to
| drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants
| to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind
| of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model
| having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for
| placements.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Last year I shelled out 700 Euros for a Garmin Overlander off
| road navigation unit. I wish I didn't. The hardware is very
| nice - essentially a rugged Android tablet with a well thought
| out mounting mechanism.
|
| But the software side ... oh boy. The "Garmin Explore" service
| this device is intended to work with looks like something from
| 2004. I mean not a finished product from 2004. But a proof of
| concept or minimal viable product from 2004. Usability is
| terrible. Planing trips/routes on the device is torture. Using
| the web interface isn't much better. (I'd link a screenshot but
| the service seems to be down ... again lol).
|
| Sync breaks all the time. It's triggered by "bad" filenames for
| the .gpx files. Some special chars seem to break syncing so bad
| that the device won't sync at all until you delete the
| offending file in the cloud - but there's no error message. One
| day you just wonder why your recent route you planned in the
| browser isn't on the device. So you go to the sync tab and
| there's a message like "Last sync: 3_weeks_ago". Have fun
| fixing this as a normal person. (This bug also comes up when a
| route has a wrong count of waypoints ... it's not too many
| waypoints, it seems to be a number between too few and too
| many). I only figured this out by accident. Garmin support told
| me to reset the device and make a new account. (Which meant I
| lost all my tracks).
|
| Now if Garmin did work on the software and provided updates I
| wouldn't be so salty. But there has been 0 improvements to the
| software side of things since the device was released like 3
| years ago. ZERO. All you get is map updates which are for the
| street navigation side of things. The "overlanding" part?
| Forget it. There has been 0 bug fixes, 0 new features, nothing.
|
| I guess you're supposed to buy the new (more expensive) Garmin
| device that recently came out. As if I would give Garmin one
| more Euro.
|
| It's not even incompetence. It's maliciousness. They have a
| line up of wireless cameras (which you mount to your vehicle's
| bumper, etc). The cams connect via WiFi to the navigation
| device. Recently Garmin released a new camera - one which I'de
| find rather useful as it's small and works completely via
| battery and you can clip to the license plate. So you don't
| have to wire anything and can take it easily off when you don't
| need it.
|
| But guess what - not compatible with my 700 Euro Android Tablet
| that could be made totally compatible via a software update if
| Garmin just wanted to. If you want to use the new cam: Buy the
| new 1200 Euro navi model. Oh, btw. some of the the older
| cameras won't work with the new device ... so you better buy a
| new set of new cameras.
|
| I hope Garmin goes bankrupt. Sincerely.
|
| /edit: I switched to the Gaia GPS app running on an iPad mini.
| Waaaay better experience.
| joking wrote:
| maybe for the consumer google maps could be better, but for a
| business, using google maps is shooting yourself on the feet.
| Just take a look to the mapsplatform pricing and start
| searching for an alternative.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| I have a TomTom PND and I swear by it. It's much better than
| the navigation systems built into cars (unless they're TomTom,
| several brands have them built-in).
|
| Also, I refuse to use Google Maps as I am loath to let Google
| know my travel history. I am, however, somewhat concerned that
| TomTom uploads my travel history to their servers, since my
| device has LTE/3G capability. This was used to fetch congestion
| information and to offer a smarter / faster route, but since I
| don't have a subscription the service stopped after a free
| trial period.
| nvgeele wrote:
| > I am, however, somewhat concerned that TomTom uploads my
| travel history to their servers, since my device has LTE/3G
| capability.
|
| They do, or at least they used to before the GDPR came into
| action. Not sure what the situation is like now.
| Dinux wrote:
| I wasn't suggesting we'd all be using Google Maps. The point
| I was making is that TomTom had a large role to play in their
| own demise. They went for the quick buck, employing dark
| patterns, necessary device upgrades etc. And yes car
| manufacturers are guilty of much the same.
| dmd wrote:
| If I google "why is it bad for google to track you", I can
| find a hundred articles breathlessly telling you all the ways
| google is tracking you, and a hundred more on how to stop it
| - but none answering the question.
|
| Can someone explain to me why it's a problem? (I make the
| assumption that even if google doesn't do it, your carrier
| does, so it doesn't add anything additional to "government's
| ability to repress/harass".)
| amachefe wrote:
| If you don't have any problem with your daily itenary beinf
| tracked, then no explanation will be good enough for you.
| Just respect the fact that people don't want their daily
| activities available to 3rd parties
| dmd wrote:
| But that's exactly what I'm trying to understand. What
| _is_ the problem people have with it? Maybe if you tell
| me, I 'll feel the same way!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| It is not only you. The more people are OK with this, the
| higher the danger for other people, who are not OK with
| this, because data adds up and usually becomes more
| information than the sum of its parts. Tracking and
| spying are a danger to people, whose work requires them
| to not be tracked and found. People like journalists in
| oppressive regimes. While people run around merily
| sacrificing their privacy for the reason, that they are
| uninformed about these issues, they indirectly play into
| the hands of those, who want to make journalists shut up
| and disappear.
|
| Privacy is vital for a functioning society. If not for
| you personally, then for others. By adding yourself to
| the mass of people, who do not care, you are helping in
| creating an environment, where privacy is not valued.
| Seen as something "only a few radicals want". Quickly
| abolished by governments in the name of "but think of the
| children!" or "but think of the terrorists!" and similar
| nonsense.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Fantastic way to put things, well done.
| dmd wrote:
| OK, that's a great argument. Thank you.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The solution to this complete transparency for all, but
| that is also a pipe dream.
| milicat wrote:
| I have lots of things to hide.
| berkes wrote:
| For me, it's simple. Google is using this data to cement
| it's monopoly, to extort businesses and to pressure
| governments.
|
| From your comment, it seems like your main concern is that
| governments can access your data. But what if beyond&above
| those governments, there is a single entity that's far more
| powerful? Would you be willingly hand the data to them?
| Because that is what Google is. Or is becoming. Or, if
| you're very sceptical: can easily become.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Tracking isn't bad _per se_. The bad part is that all the
| information acquired from tracking is used to build an
| oversimplified profile of each user, that in turn distorts
| the information that Google searches return for that user.
|
| This often reflects and amplifies societal biases. For
| example, users that Google identifies as female are less
| likely to be shown ads for high paying jobs [0]. This
| creates a feedback loop: if a certain user demographic is
| less likely to be shown a given result, they are less
| likely to view it, which in turn makes them even less
| likely to be shown it in the first place.
|
| [0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/women-less-likely-to-be-
| shown-...
| unionpivo wrote:
| It's never problem if it's just about small number of
| people.
|
| When they track half of humanity, they can see all kinds of
| patterns that they, and other people can exploit.
|
| Let's turn your question around. If all this information is
| that useless and harmless why are all corporations and
| governments spending tens of billions of dollars acquiring
| and keeping?
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Your carrier can not track you nearly as detailed as google
| can. Your carrier doesn't know which sites you visit (only
| the IPs) and they especially don't know how long you look
| at what, what you're buying, etc. Their location tracking
| is only exact to a few hundred meters whereas google can
| locate you with very high accuracy.
|
| Personally, I have two reasons to avoid Google and other
| tech monopolies: 1. I don't want the government to be able
| to subpoena my data 2. I don't want to be cut off from my
| digital life just because some employee clicks a button.
| That means I'm self hosting as much as possible.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| You'll find out when it's too late.
| mhb wrote:
| If Google's tracking data became available to the right
| people, you can imagine why that would be bad for you if
| the married FAA official in charge of approving the 737 MAX
| was tracked to his mistress' apartment.
| greyhair wrote:
| This mirrors my experience directly. Before smart phones, I
| found TomTom to be more user friendly than competitors, but
| they were slow to boot up, the battery was only useful for
| providing clean power vs the car electrical system. I tried
| using my TomTom for walking Navigation. The battery lasted long
| enough to reach my destination, but luckily I remembered my way
| back to the parking lot after, because the battery did not make
| it.
|
| Google Maps on my phone works fine, and on my current Pixel 5A,
| I can navigate off battery for a three or four hours. Plenty of
| walking time to hit multiple points in a day of walking.
|
| Maybe some day the TomTom app will be competitive with Google
| maps, but for now, Google maps is the reference by which all
| other mapping will be judged.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| The problem is not only, that things are Google. The problem
| is, that more and more stuff being Google means fewer
| alternatives, which in turn means more and more websites and
| other things start relying on Google, which in turn causes the
| users to be at Google's mercy.
|
| I don't want Google to know all websites I visit. I don't want
| it to know all websites I visit, which have a map widget on
| them. I don't want Google to have knowledge about where I am
| going and when I am going anywhere. Websites for example using
| Google maps will indirectly enable Google to actually know
| these things. For example if I want to book a hotel and I want
| to know, how I get there from the next public transport station
| (or if I had a car, how I drive there). If it is a Google maps
| widget, data about what location I am viewing will be available
| to Google. Google being Google, I have no doubt, that they will
| try to use that for profiling people.
|
| Relying on a becoming a monopoly does not help with freedom.
| The fact, that uninformed developers introduce dependencies to
| Google products without a second thought, makes them uninformed
| indirect helpers of a spying company, whose profit is based on
| profiling people and tracking people online, to show them pesky
| ads. It exposes us to the whims of a capitalistically motivated
| tech giant, which does not have our best interest at heart.
| That is, why we need alternatives. That is why at least
| initially any alternative based on non-Google things, is a good
| thing. The fewer people make use of Google (dis)services the
| better for all of us, because they wont have the same power
| over our lives.
|
| So the whole "before Google it was better" thing, is actually a
| "before evil tech giant monopoly" thing.
| nelox wrote:
| The nostalgia fantasy rears its head yet again
| Kukumber wrote:
| How do you compete against someone who has a diversified
| portfolio of products and can let you use one for "free"
|
| How do you compete against "free" from companies that are able
| to build monopolies with the help of institutions?
|
| It's easy to say "it was shit before google", when innovations
| weren't available
|
| > When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued
| with the same business model, same paid map updates, same
| shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc..
|
| I agree with that one, they didn't adapt
| themitigating wrote:
| Because they don't like Google therefore they hate the products
| ausaus wrote:
| My last TomTom device was from a few years ago and it wasn't
| that great. Slow, low resolution display and updates took hours
| to apply.
|
| I now use the TomTom Android app and it's better than any other
| app or device I have used. Good maps, with clear instructions
| and great traffic information.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Google maps is fantastic. It beats literally everything else I
| can think of.
|
| But that's scary. I want a competitor that offers at least
| roughly similar quality, but Google is so far ahead that it's
| no contest.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| I agree that GMaps still reigns supreme, but Apple Maps is
| now definitely better in some regards, including the actual
| maps and transit directions for my city.
|
| Probably due to all the OSM data they include, in fairness.
| nicce wrote:
| Apples Maps just is not very available globally. It is
| heavily U.S. oriented, while Google seems to offer similar
| features everywhere. Maybe some day Apple catches a bit.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Also, not everyone has and Apple device, so it's not
| really a competitor to Google which is available on
| almost any device apart from sanctioned Chinese ones and
| any web browser.
| slayerjain wrote:
| Apple Maps is also working well for me in Delhi NCR,
| India. Apple seems to have partnered with local mapping
| company called MapMyIndia. The traffic information and
| navigations are also quite useable and the ETAs also seem
| accurate.
|
| I always check both Apple and Google Maps, but use Apple
| maps on my iphone because its way more battery efficient.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Is Apple Maps cross platform or only exclusive to Apple
| devices?
| [deleted]
| mminer237 wrote:
| Only Apple devices
| lostlogin wrote:
| Per the other comment here, Duckduckgo uses Apple data.
|
| https://venturebeat.com/business/duckduckgo-ducks-google-
| to-...
| mminer237 wrote:
| Oh, that's neat. It doesn't seem to have turn-by-turn
| navigation though. The most it can do is list the steps
| on the website.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It has a well hidden web version. The easiest way to
| access the web version is via duckduckgo - just do a
| search for anything and click the map tab. the actual map
| tiles and data all come from apples servers.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> I want a competitor that offers at least roughly similar
| quality_
|
| How will that happen realistically? The truth is it's
| impossible to compete with ad-funded tech giants in the
| current state of affairs.
|
| For that to change two things are needed:
|
| 1 . government intervention to break up Google ads from their
| maps and other businesses, leveling the playing field for
| their competitors who aren't making money via ads (not really
| gonna happen in the US, but maybe ... _wink wink EU_ )
|
| 2. consumers now being OK with having to pay market prices
| for subscriptions to essential services like maps, email,
| etc. that they got used to getting for free through their
| personal data monetization (also not really gonna happen
| because people don't like paying for stuff they used to get
| for free and also many people can't afford to pay)
| KyeRussell wrote:
| What warrants this adversarial tone? This is one person's
| justification of the "everything was better when everything
| wasn't google" sentiment. Are you trying to talk somebody
| out of how they feel because you feel that an alternative
| is not realistic, for the very reason that they find it
| scary in the first place? We all know why Google is
| unstoppable until the ad money runs dry.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| In my experience, Apple Maps is on par with Google Maps (at
| least in the U.S.), esp with latest improvements in non-car
| routes (i.e., cycling, though I use Komoot for that anyway).
| However Google tends to have more POI (they're further ahead
| in the ad biz).
|
| With so many iPhones and Apple Maps being an smoother
| experience (Siri/OS integration), it definitely competes
| heavily with Google (at least in US).
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Agree Apple Maps is great now. Except the multi-stop
| support only works for driving... but other than that it
| works very well. It'd been awhile since I'd actually driven
| until a couple of weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised
| how good the turn-by-turn directions were, announcing
| things like "go past the next light then turn left".
| iamwpj wrote:
| Second this. I would guess the number of iPhones with
| Google Maps installed is less than 20% just thinking
| through people I know. Of course some of those older
| relatives also don't use online maps so this number might
| be misleading.
| karmelapple wrote:
| I've been using it in the new electric car I got with
| CarPlay this year, and it's fantastic. It's integration
| with the battery charging is pretty much everything I want:
| it automatically chooses a charging point for a trip that
| will need a charge, based on my battery's current charge
| level. It even tells me the number of minutes the charging
| will likely take, since it knows the speed of the chargers
| it recommends.
|
| Last night I tried thr single button "Share ETA" from
| CarPlay, too.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Apple Maps has been noticeably better than Google Maps for
| directions in the last year or so when I've been testing
| them both.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I always thought this, but recently I used Mapbox for the
| first time. I specifically was looking to build a geo-data
| analysis application, and was running into performance issues
| with gmaps. Mapbox absolutely knocks it out of the park when
| it comes to that kind of thing, I was very impressed.
| andrepd wrote:
| Is it? I've used openstreetmap exclusively for the past 5
| years and it's almost never let me down, for both day to day
| and trips abroad.
| kiicia wrote:
| check mapy.cz for even more precise and better looking maps
| brnt wrote:
| > Google maps is fantastic. It beats literally everything
| else I can think of.
|
| At least for walking and cycling, OSM has data leagues better
| than Gmaps. Also for driving actually, but navigation is
| indeed not as good. Lack of traffic info...
| burkaman wrote:
| Yeah I use other apps for everything but driving, but until
| I move to a country where I can get rid of my car I just
| can't quit Google Maps.
| EGreg wrote:
| Why doesn't the open source community organize around
| projects that are just as far? Chrome and Safari were based
| on open source projects like Konqueror, Webkit, Chromium and
| Blink. They do 90% of the heavy lifting.
|
| Want an open source facebook / twitter? Here you go:
| https://qbix.com/platform
| drtz wrote:
| Google Maps has been a really garbage experience for me
| lately, so much so that I've been actively looking for
| alternatives. Sadly, there aren't many.
|
| Some of problems I've had with Google Maps recently:
|
| - Routing gives me weird bypasses that aren't necessary and
| often actually add time to the trip. I've started to not
| trust the routing.
|
| - The UX when searching for places is extremely difficult to
| navigate, especially when trying to use map view instead of
| list view
|
| - planning a route _without_ asking for directions is near
| impossible because many street and landmark names are not
| displayed
|
| - Landmarks are drowned out by the overwhelming clutter of
| business names (paid ads)
|
| - Maps are sometimes wrong in my area and I have no idea how
| to get them fixed.
|
| I've started using OsmAnd for most of my mapping needs
| lately, and it's better in almost every way _as a map_. The
| only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware
| navigation.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| It drives me INSANE that I carefully align the map UI with
| the area I want to search, enter my search term, and then
| bam Google Maps automatically expands to the entire region.
|
| This is NOT what I want ever.
|
| Another thing that bothers me, when using the my phone as
| the map display I can search for places along my route and
| go back to normal navigation mode. Then as I drive whatever
| I am searching for will pop up along the route when we get
| close to it (say restaurants or gas stations). You can't do
| this in Android Auto, you have to always select the
| location or clear the results entirely.
| seanw444 wrote:
| OsmAnd+ is my go-to maps app as well lately. It's
| fantastic. The only problem I have with it is the rendering
| for the actual map is super unoptimized, and leads to it
| having a very low refresh rate. Which, for someone who got
| a phone with 120 Hz as soon as I possibly could because the
| smoothness matters so much to me, it's a tad frustrating.
| Especially when I'm trying to scroll around the map
| manually. When I leave it in navigation mode while driving,
| the refresh rate doesn't really matter.
|
| According to the GitHub Issues/Dicussions, this isn't an
| issue with the iOS implementation. Just the Android one.
| Hopefully something they can fix.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Google Maps has a few quirks. Here in Germany it always
| prefers to send you through 30km/h residential zones. Which
| might be somewhat faster than taking congested main roads
| but those 30km/h zones are terrible to drive through.
| There's always cars parked at one side of the street so you
| have to wait for oncoming traffic. The streets usually are
| very narrow. So the stress level to the driver is way
| higher.
|
| I also noticed a quirk where it would send me 2km down a
| road just to turn back and drive the 2km back to where I
| came from. First few times I thought I must have added a
| waypoint but nope - sometimes it just makes you waste time.
|
| Apple Maps might be better but I can't use it as it has a
| quirk with "Environmental Zones" in Germany. There are 3
| kinds of zones: Red, Yellow and Green. Your car has a badge
| with a color (depends on how environmentaly friendly it
| is). So a green badge can enter every zone, a yellow badge
| only yellow and red zones, and a red badge only red zones.
|
| Now whenever Apple Maps encounters such a zone in the route
| the navigation switches to a waaaay zoomed out view (tends
| to display the whole route on a map). So you can't really
| see the next turn, etc.
|
| To get rid of that view Apple Maps expects you to click on
| OK. Which really sucks while driving.
|
| What's infuriating is that you can't turn off the env zone
| checking or even just tell Maps that "my car has a green
| badge so PLEAS FOR F SAKES STOP PESTERING ME EVERY TIME YOU
| ENCOUNTER A ZONE". (Those zones are very common - every
| bigger town is a green zone. So Apple Maps becomes _really_
| unusable on longer trips).
| izacus wrote:
| I'm just annoyed that Google Maps still has no support
| for displaying speed limits in Germany or most of Europe.
| TomTom does show them.
| b4je7d7wb wrote:
| That sounds horrible for yellow and red cars. I hope all
| new cars are green.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| yeah, yellow is like very old diesels and red is for cars
| without a catalytic converter. so most cars (even my RAM
| 1500) have a green badge
| cyclever wrote:
| I hope cars are mostly forbidden in cities soon.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| They are in most European cities anyway. I'm in a - for
| the US small, for Europe mid sized city with a pop of
| roughly 400k. City center is banned to cars. You're
| supposed to park on the outskirts or take public
| transport into the center. (Or bicycle).
|
| The result is that almost no one goes there anymore. All
| the inner city shops are closing down - while the mall
| style shopping centers on the outskirts are flourishing.
|
| Walkable cities sound great in theory. Until you realize
| that shopping groceries _really_ sucks when you have to
| carry full bags for 3 kilometers or have to use over-
| filled public transport.
| jefftk wrote:
| Electric cars are all green, gas cars are green if they
| meet EURO 1, and diesel cars are green if they meet EURO
| 4 (or EURO 3 + retrofitted particulate filter)[1]. This
| is pretty loose for passenger cars: any made in the last
| fifteen years should all qualify [2].
|
| [1] https://www.germanemissionssticker.com
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards
| colanderman wrote:
| > - planning a route _without_ asking for directions is
| near impossible because many street and landmark names are
| not displayed
|
| This drives me absolutely _batty_. No matter how much I
| zoom in, I cannot see exit number labels. _Sometimes_ they
| show up, at random places along the exit ramp, but I haven
| 't figured out the rhyme or reason how.
|
| Real maps clearly label exit numbers of every exit. I don't
| understand why this is so hard for Google Maps.
| danuker wrote:
| Navigating through Romania using Google Maps, I can't see
| the names of towns.
|
| I have switched to OsmAnd, and the only thing I miss now
| and then is a good geocoder.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Or I'll see a street name I'm looking for, zoom in
| directly on that name, and it disappears.
| FpUser wrote:
| >The only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware
| navigation."
|
| This. I use mostly OsmAnd, I especially like it when on
| bike or pedestrian mode. But yes sometime traffic info is a
| must so I use GM few times per year for this.
| webmobdev wrote:
| The quality of Google Map is better than others because it
| has more users, and thus better _input data_. And that 's the
| real problem - competitors cannot improve improve their
| product without better data, and so users find it inferior
| and avoid their product / service and turn back to Google
| Maps (which allows Google to improve their product further
| and take a lead). Note though that Google has another edge
| over its competitors - (1) Android OS has been collecting
| geo-location data even if you don't use Google Maps and (2)
| Google also gets their competitors data if a user uses a
| competing map app on Android OS.
|
| Google search is also in a similar position - the vast amount
| of users means its competitors just cannot improve their
| product because users become disappointed with the quality
| and stop using it, thus denying them a chance to improve
| their product.
|
| The old solution to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and
| foster healthy capitalism was to break them up. But for more
| modern problems like this, I think a different approach is
| also needed - we need to force such monopolies to also share
| their data with the competitors, till the competitors become
| large enough to compete with them on their own.
|
| (For those seeking a decent alternatives to Google Maps, I
| recommend Here - https://wego.here.com/ - it was owned by
| Nokia before they sold it to a consortium of European
| automobile manufacturers and is quite good).
| badwolf wrote:
| +1 Here maps are pretty outstanding. Offline maps in the
| apps are great!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I use Apple Maps because Google Maps is littered with ads.
| And I assume Google apps use more battery than Apple apps.
| is_true wrote:
| Google's business model makes it really hard for competition.
|
| For a maps company the map is the service they offer, for
| Google is just a data gathering service
| stewx wrote:
| The "bad GPS reception" part doesn't reflect my experience. I
| have had a lot more "GPS signal lost" messages in Google Maps
| on various Android phones than I ever remember having with
| dedicated GPS units. I suspect the GPS antennas are bigger in
| dedicated units as well.
| tomrod wrote:
| Google maps used to work much better, IMHO, in speed and
| directions. Their insertion of POI and advertisements into the
| applications and the website slowed down the chrome a lot.
| bloak wrote:
| In my experience, here in the UK, openstreetmap.org is more
| accurate and more up-to-date than Google Maps, though I still
| use Google Maps as a way to access Google Earth or Google
| Street View, which tend to at least be accurate. (I wonder if
| they've thought about using an AI to guess what the countryside
| and streets might look like. Could be cheaper than using real
| photos? :-)
| joking wrote:
| there is a better option, public data from guvernamental
| entities, data available to open street map, google maps or
| tom tom, that could be able to enrich it as they wish, but
| the base should be open.
|
| wishful thinking, I know.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Here in the Czech Republic, plenty of government geodata is
| open (not all for now), but merging datasets is hard, so
| OSM contributors only do occasional manual imports. It
| serves as a valuable base and could be used as an OSM
| alternative on its own, but when you've already got OSM,
| which is generally more detailed and sometimes even more
| up-to-date, why bother?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Better for some. That means we all have to foot the bill
| for the infrastructure/maintenance. Paying a private
| company voluntarily would be preferable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The government is already tasked with managing roads and
| traffic.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Sure maybe it sucked, but could anyone else have James Earl
| Jones giving you turn by turn directions?
| https://youtu.be/o9Oso7199WE
| [deleted]
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