Behind the "My Location" Errors In Google Maps 78
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.
from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.
waderoush writes "Ever since Google added the 'My Location' feature this week to the desktop and laptop versions of Google Maps, allowing Firefox and Chrome users to see their current location on a map, people have been reporting bizarre location errors — Manhattanites, for example, are being told by Google that they're in Austin, TX. Ted Morgan, the CEO of Boston-based location software provider Skyhook Wireless, talked about the problems in an interview Friday. Skyhook's Wi-Fi-based location-finding technology was passed over when Mozilla adopted Google's own location services toolkit for Firefox 3.5 in April; Morgan says that was unfortunate for Web app developers, because Google's 'crowdsourced' database of Wi-Fi access point locations is far less reliable than Skyhook's."
Brief summary of article (Score:5, Insightful)
CEO of competing firm: "This totally wouldn't happen with ours, ours is awesome!" No meat there, just an assertion passed as fact in a 'news' article.
Re:Can't find My Location (Score:1, Insightful)
It's in Google Maps for mobile devices, not in a web browser.
I hate this 'location-based' crap (Score:5, Insightful)
A while ago I was working in Italy: Google would then redirect me to Google in the Netherlands, and Facebook rather kindly switched automatically to displaying its pages in Dutch. Steam usually gets the location right, but won't then let me use my perfectly valid British credit card to buy games when I'm not in Britain.
This is one of the most user-unfriendly ideas to infest the web over the last few years.
Re:Can't find My Location (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brief summary of article (Score:1, Insightful)
Google did this to me a few years ago with a front page redirect (it thought I was in somewhere in South America). Their ip to location DB is 'ok' but has flaws.
Tell them
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?contact_type=ip [google.com]
It takes about a week to a month and they will correct the mapping.
I want to help make it better (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the link to the "Your guess at my location was wrong: I am actually at" page?