Turn Right at the Burger King: Google Maps Begins Using Landmarks To Help With Guidance (techcrunch.com) 135
Most navigation apps give you instructions based on streets or distance. But it's arguably in contrast to how people usually provide directions -- some usually point to landmarks that are easier to spot. Google sees some merit in that. The idea is that Google Maps is highlighting some landmarks and other points of interest (fast food restaurants) to help with guidance. TechCrunch reports that some users are already seeing this on Google Maps. And maybe to Google, this opens door for some business opportunities as well. Only time will tell.
Your mama is so fat, (Score:5, Funny)
Google Maps use her as landmark!
Re:More like landfills (Score:3, Funny)
(*ducks*)
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Perhaps they should have altered the term from 'landmarks' to 'advertising marks'. It just never ends with these asshats
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That's how we do it anyway by word of mouth....
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Google Maps use her as landmark!
Yo mamma so loose, Google marks her twat as a parking lot!
Turn Right where the Andersons used to live (Score:5, Funny)
It's just past the intersection where the old blinking light used to be.
When you get to the bottom of the hill it's the one that's falling apart next door to the hideous purple painted house.
You should see the crack dealer lookouts hanging out on the corner.
You have arrived at your destination.
Maybe? (Score:5, Insightful)
And maybe to Google, this opens door for some business opportunities
Seriously? Of course that's the plan. Google is an advertising platform.
Re:Maybe? (Score:4, Interesting)
And maybe to Google, this opens door for some business opportunities
Seriously? Of course that's the plan. Google is an advertising platform.
This Maps feature actually came out of work to make directions useful in countries and regions where street addresses don't really exist, notably much of India. Apparently someone thought that now that Maps supports navigation by landmarks, maybe it could be applied to make directions easier to follow even in areas that do have street addresses.
I doubt that anyone has given serious thought to how landmark navigation could be used for advertising purposes. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it seems unlikely to me.
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You doubt? Just take a left at Dunkin where you can get 2 for $2 today.
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This is a step towards mapping the physical 'sign skyline' and integrating and overlaying the data in Mixed Reality.
We are on track for this user experience: 'Hyper-Reality' https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] *sound warning*
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"Turn right at the White Castle with the prostitute sitting on the big rock out front." -- Two-Fisted Tales of Robot Cars
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The way I would explain how to get to my house to an out-of-town visitor minimizes the number
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I doubt that anyone has given serious thought to how landmark navigation could be used for advertising purposes.
Seriously?
Re:Maybe? (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that anyone has given serious thought to how landmark navigation could be used for advertising purposes.
Seriously?
Seriously. Most of the teams in Google basically never think about advertising... or even about monetization. It's all about user impact and engagement. Monetization is the Ads team's problem. I was in the industry for 20+ years before joining Google, so it struck me as very odd when I was hired at Google, because drawing a straight line from your work to the bottom line is a big part of life in most software shops. Most of Google seriously never thinks about it; we know that ads fund 90% of our paychecks, but our focus is on the users of whatever product we're building. Further, development of everything is rather bottom-up, not top-down. Features almost never start with some executive directing that something be built, they start with engineers convincing their own managers that something would have strong user impact (which is needed for good performance reviews, promotion, etc.). Direction of one organization to do something to help another is fairly rare; cross-organization cooperation is common, but it's driven by the interested organization reaching out to the other organization and asking for help (which is usually given quite freely).
In a case like this, if there were some initiative to use advertising to monetize landmark navigation, it would come from the Ads team, not the Maps team. And it's likely that the Ads team knows nothing about landmark navigation. Until they read about it on slashdot or similar.
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The only landmark Google mentions in my city is Firestone. Every single time I drive by a Firestone. "Keep going straight past the Firestone I didn't even need to mention because you don't need a landmark to go straight." Don't try to paint Google as some saintly, charitable organization. That "Do no evil" ship sailed years ago.
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Don't try to paint Google as some saintly, charitable organization.
I didn't. I just describe how things work.
That "Do no evil" ship sailed years ago.
Its "Don't be evil", and it's still considered a key principle.
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Key marketing principle, maybe. Are you saying you honestly think Google is a good and moral corporation? Not for over a decade, if it ever was. Okay, maybe you work there, and you aren't a bad guy, and nobody you work with is a bad guy. But Google exists for one purpose, to make its shareholders money. If it comes down to losing money or doing a bad thing, Google does the bad thing, like every corporation. Don't be brainwashed just because they pay the bills for you.
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really? Know them all personally, do you?
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really? Know them all personally, do you?
I know a decent cross section, yes. I interact with lots of different teams across the company.
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You should have simply stopped at "...never think." Like how the maps group never thinks about how people actually use it for navigation while driving, so feel free to make major UI changes on a whim. Or, forcing you to interact more than necessary to actually begin navigating (press "directions," then press "start.").
"development of everything is rather bottom-up, not top-down. "
That explains it - no adult supervision.
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Most of the teams in Google basically never think about advertising... or even about monetization. It's all about user impact and engagement.
If Google is really doing the best it can for user impact and engagement, then you'd think there would be at least some noticeable effort toward ... well engaging the user. However, as anyone who has frustratingly tried to send in bug reports, suggestions, and complaints has known for many years, user engagement is not only not easy, I'm not sure it's possible.
I think what you meant to say was that Google is all about **customer** impact and engagement. Non-paying user (NPU) impact is only important as a
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Another data point [mercurynews.com] for how well Google engages users:
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This Maps feature actually came out of work to make directions useful in countries and regions where street addresses don't really exist, notably much of India.
Yeah here in India this feature has been on for long time and is quite useful, Indian streets are not visibly named at all and many have no discernible numbering system. Its hardly a new feature just new to US probably
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Sat navs have been doing this for at least 15 years. Maybe they didn't speak the name of the landmark, but they would display it on the screen.
I distinctly remember seeing Japanese models with 3D maps that had brand names on the textures around 2004/2005. Japan doesn't really have street names...
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I saw a good writeup on Japan vs European addressing which boiled down to this:
US/Europe: Streets and roads have numbers or names. Blocks are those unnamed pieces of land between the streets.
Japan: Blocks are numbered. Streets are those unnamed pieces of land between the blocks.
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Yeah, that's basically it. You get a block and building number, but it can be tricky to find the right building. They seemed to be one of the first to get detailed mapping and 3D building models though.
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Seriously? Of course that's the plan. Google is an advertising platform.
I'm sure you are right, but this still seems like a great idea from a driver's point of view. If I'm in an unfamiliar area, it's going to be a lot easier to identify a Burger King at a distance than it is to read street signs. I just hope this change also makes it to Waze.
A few months ago, I made my first trip to a new, unfamiliar location in a town I don't know very well. I've since had to go there multiple times - and pretty quickly I found my self remembering to "turn left at the Les Schwab" rather than
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It's about building brand recognition and keeping it fresh in your mind all the time. That way when you do want a burger you think "oh yeah, there is a McDollars up the street. I'll go there!"
Never understood why they don't use time reference (Score:2)
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Distance is fixed. Time to travel is not. It might take driver A 5 minutes to cover a distance, driver B might make it in 3. The distance is the same for both. Also, changes in traffic pattern may also alter the time. But distance will remain the same. I can totally see why Google Maps prefers to give you the distance to your turn.
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Hence the "at your current speed" proviso included the verbal time reference. And it could use a rate of progress calculated via a running average of speed per unit of distanc
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Why do you assume that the current speed will be maintained?
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Why do you assume that the current speed will be maintained?
Newton's first law?
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Not if you have a TARDIS
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Because people don't navigate like this. No one estimates when they need to turn by time passed. People look for streets or landmarks from their current spot. It's easy to overengineer this though.
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The above reasons, and because your suggestion takes so long to say that the time changes drastically (is it 45 seconds from starting to speak, from saying "forty ... five ...", or from finishing the sentence?), and if you're navigating particularly narrow streets you might overshoot because the GPS wasn't done yakking.
KISS applies to what the GPS should be saying.
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It's harder still since my car seems to add about a second of buffering delay when i'm using bluetooth audio, and even that second is quite hard to get used to when you are driving in a city environment.
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I absolutely agree. I'd also like to see something like "turn right in 1/2 mile / 45 seconds, and then turn left in 3 miles". I like to think two or three steps ahead to cover things like being in the correct lane for turns, and Google Maps does that part really badly. If you miss a turn because there were five lanes of traffic to cross and you only got 10 seconds of notice, the directions have failed.
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I can barely do those calculations when I'm sober. How am I supposed to do them when I'm driving?
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I think you may be fairly unique, I've never heard anyone else say they do this or heard any human give humans directions in terms of estimated time..
As others mentioned, while you could extrapolate a guess, particularly at 1/2 mile away the likelihood of an unpredictable momentary traffic condition completely ruining that guess is very high.
I personally glance at the map to get a sense for whether or not it's the very next available road in that direction, or if it's the second or third intersection. This
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I have a friend that does. The problem is that when he says, "ten minutes away" it tends to be somewhere between 15 and 45 minutes away.
Don't ask how accurate his 'about an hour away' is..
Yes, people are that stupid (Score:2)
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That's a good observation. Wife tends to give directions based on landmarks, ambiguous direction like "go over to" and vague distances like "go down a bit" where I use street signs and compass points and distance in miles or blocks. (But that, I'm told is because I'm a Mansplainin' a$$h0le.) We often can't understand each other's directions. ("WEST. You know where WEST is! It's where THE SUN GOES DOWN. See, it's right there. Behind us, now.")
Landmarks are fine if there is enough detail to make it wo
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"After you leave the pavement, you go down the road a bit 'till you see three big rocks. You can ignore them, they just let you know you're on the right road. If you get to the base of a mountain without seeing the three big rocks, you're on the wrong road... So, a ways after the three big rock you'll get to the place where Billy Bob's trailer used to be parked, make a left there. If you hit a pothole so big you think you may have damaged something, that's the roa
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Oh sure, but where's the adventure in that?
"After you leave the pavement, you go down the road a bit 'till you see three big rocks. You can ignore them, they just let you know you're on the right road. If you get to the base of a mountain without seeing the three big rocks, you're on the wrong road... So, a ways after the three big rock you'll get to the place where Billy Bob's trailer used to be parked, make a left there. If you hit a pothole so big you think you may have damaged something, that's the road you want. In awhile you'll get to a motor home that looks and smells like a meth lab, don't slow down, it's a meth lab. A bit after that you will see a fence with some cows behind it, we are on the other side of that field but you have to drive around it 'cause there's a bull in there and he's not friendly. Just follow the fence 'till the road dead ends and follow the ruts going down the side of the fence, Look back and make sure no one from the meth lab is following you, those folks are a bit twitchy... When you get to the end of the ruts you'll be in our back yard. Park anywhere but stay away from all the old cars 'cause of snakes. Just knock on the back door or holler, the dogs don't bite but they might knock you down..."
Yeah. Directions where I grew up always seem to reference at least one landmark that hasn't existed for decades. For example, "take the road up the hill behind the old Zellers building". Never mind that Zellers closed over 20 years ago and it's had several other department stores in it since....
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Yeah. Directions where I grew up always seem to reference at least one landmark that hasn't existed for decades. For example, "take the road up the hill behind the old Zellers building". Never mind that Zellers closed over 20 years ago and it's had several other department stores in it since....
Yup, we get those. Turn where the double-wide used to be...
I like the subjective ones even better, "After a couple of miles you'll see a rock that looks kind like a bear..." if you get to Phoenix you missed it...
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One of the things I was told was that if you asked for directions in a rural area, you should just follow the instructions they gave you by what you thought they felt meant than trying to logically deduce what they meant. So if someone told you, "go along the road, go over the hill, turn right after passing the two lanes, take the road that leads to the valley, then continue on until you cross the railway lines and can see the trees." it was better just to follow instinct that try and figure out what they m
Turn right at the Burger King (Score:5, Insightful)
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It'll probably make the offer first, and won't tell you which way to turn until you buy something or touch a nearly invisible "no thanks" link.
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So let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
For a fee, your business can be a landmark used to help give directions on Google Maps.
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For a slightly higher fee, it'll insist you really want to go through the drive-thru before it gives you the next direction.
Want to bet that it's paid for? (Score:2)
"Turn right at the Dunkin' Donuts"
Misses turn because Dunkin' Donuts shop is hidden behind the Eiffel Tower.
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I actually just had this happen in San Diego.
Head west on Mission Bay Drive ...
in 1/4 mile turn right at the Starbucks
Never mind that giant fucking wooden roller coaster across the street. [google.com]
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Jokes lose all impact if they turn out to be real. It's kinda bizarre...
About time (Score:1)
Only 5 years behind my Garmin. I definitely prefer the convenience of my cell phone, so I'm glad they are finally bringing this
Is this a good idea? (Score:2)
I wonder if we'll eventually see "go down the road a piece, and turn left where the market used to be. Then go summat further and turn right where old man Smith's barn was before it burned down. Caint miss it."
Um, can you give me directions using landmarks that actually exist now?
They should have landmarks for when you miss too. (Score:3)
In general for driving it is handy, because often road signs are hard to see (Upscale neighborhoods love to make them earth tones, often with flower pots having them hang over them.) , And sometimes are placed rather confusingly Sure the sign for the street is at a right Angle of the street, but your street is approaching it at a 45 degree angle. Or it forks into 2 other streets.
Also things like a major fast food chain, has nice big signs, that you can see a quarter mile away (further if you live in a flat land area) So you know to keep at speed limit until you get close enough to look for the street.
However if you miss a crazy street it would be nice to say if you see this, you probably had missed your turn.
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If you see fish swimming by your window, then you've gone too far.
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There was an Amish guesthouse / hotel with turret bedrooms that each had different themes. One was "Swimming with the fishes" and had trunks, fishing nets, boat lamps and other items.
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Conspiracy theorists used to think the maintenance barcodes on the back of street signs were some secret code for FEMA trucks to find their way around.
But when you think about it, why not have those 2D barcodes on street signs so that they could be scanned by a smartphone.
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I was in the suburbs once, in an area I know well (I was using Maps to get home), deliberately missed a turn so I could stop for gas, and Google Maps told me to take a U-turn at the next light, despite there actually being a fast backup path by going further up the road.
Landmark for a fee... (Score:1)
Give me a break. This is all about the ad money for Google. It might be easier to give directions if you're writing it down, but you have a map with the roads on it and it's speaking to you. How more dummy down do you need?
Next it will be:
Turn right at the Burger King, Home of the Wopper, 2 for 6$!!
Money.
I see problems with this approach... (Score:2)
Turn Right at the Burger King...
What if the Burger King can't be located because it's been moved or simply demolished?
I can see a fella looking for the Burger King, failing to see one ( because it doesn't exist), then igniting mayhem for those following behind.
Advertising makes these directions useless (Score:2)
I can see this being useful (Score:2)
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I can see this being useful in specific circumstances like places without street signs. Around here there are numerous streets that seem to be without street signs for some reason (either stolen, fallen down and not replaced, or so faded they're illegible) so when the directions say "Turn left on West St." but the sign for West St. hasn't existed in 5 years, that's a problem. Of course the odds that something like a Burger King is going to be there forever are pretty slim, so maybe they'll have to update it to "Turn left at the thing that used to be a Burger King but is now a Coney Island" or something like that.
On my in-car GPS it shows the streets and the turns on the dash. I hardly ever look at road signs, just the cross streets when I come to an intersection to make sure that I am following the highlighter route. In other words, as long as the GPS is accurate, you can navigate using it without road signs.
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Of course the odds that something like a Burger King is going to be there forever are pretty slim, so maybe they'll have to update it to "Turn left at the thing that used to be a Burger King but is now a Coney Island" or something like that.
YMMV, but around where I am Google Maps is kept way more up to date than our street signage.
Burger King signs are larger than street signs (Score:5, Insightful)
I was using Google Maps yesterday to navigate and when it said I should go past Taco Bell, I was surprised. I hadn't heard that before. But overall I was pleased. Signs for Taco Bell and Burger King are much larger than road signs. It is a good move.
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I was using Google Maps yesterday to navigate and when it said I should go past Taco Bell, I was surprised. I hadn't heard that before. But overall I was pleased. Signs for Taco Bell and Burger King are much larger than road signs. It is a good move.
And sometimes road signs aren't there at all. I don't know why, but I encounter even major intersections where at least one of the roads has no signage.
Yet another reason I use Google Maps (or Garmin) all the time, not just when I don't know where I'm going. I like to learn all the street names, or at least be exposed to them.
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it said I should go past Taco Bell
That's the beginning. Then it'll say "Stop first at Taco Bell, that's almost lunch time!".
Next step (Score:2)
Turn right where the Burger King used to be before it burned down in 2015.
Please Google, make it happen.
Brands competition (Score:2)
Pizza Hut (Score:2)
Turn left at the place that used to be a pizza hut
http://usedtobeapizzahut.blogs... [blogspot.com]
State dependent (Score:1)
streetview (Score:2)
I already do that. I look at streetview, and then I tell myself to make a right turn as soon as I see the white cat sitting on the garbage can.
Like a woman (Score:2)
I find it interesting that women seem to give directions based on landmarks where's men seem to give distance and Street names.
Yes landmarks are easier to see but far wise when you're trying to figure out where and how you took a wrong turn.
Starbucks. (Score:2)
Take a Right at Starbucks. No not that one. No Farther down.
Like the fifth one from the next one on the right.
Wait till they go New England style (Score:2)
two points (Score:2)
1. This has been in Google Maps for awhile now, and
2. Garmin was doing it before
Will it say ...? (Score:2)
Reminds me of Bangkok (Score:2)
Got instructions to turn left at the (live) elephant. Apparently there all day every day.
Can't wait for the *advanced version (Score:2)
"If you see the Burger King, you are getting close. The cat lady standing on the corner only starts hanging around after sunset. The naked lady, on the other hand, with the tattoo on her left forearm has the number for the precinct. When you hear the call to prayer, and it's late at night, that prayer is for you, and that's a polite way of saying that you really shouldn't be in these parts so late at night. The google mapper vehicle had all four wheels taken, and it was up on cinderblocks next to a chalk o
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You could have just linked the oblig [xkcd.com]
The technical term for this is 'chick navigation' (Score:2)
As in "Turn left at the big green building with the Circle K next to it, the one that burned down in '93..."
DO NOT..... (Score:3)
Coming Soon (Score:2)
"In 1.3 miles, turn right up where the Piggly Wiggly used to be."
"Continue (on down the road apiece) for about 10 minutes,
-- THEN -- turn right at the big tree."
"In .4 miles, slight right.
-- THEN -- turn left at Old Man Gaskin's road.
Warning: Old Man Gaskin has a gun."
"At the intersection, take the dirt road on the left."
(already implemented)
"You can't get there from here."
OK Google, Navigate to CVS.
"In one mile, Start thinking about your destination.
This Right Turn is Brought To You By McDonald's (Score:2)
You deserve a Right Turn Today(tm)
Not new in maps.google.co.in (Score:2)
Am I The Only One That Read That As "Landmine"? (Score:2)
n/t
lol (Score:1)
navigation by pubs (Score:2)
There exist in the UK an entire cohort of men that can give you directions to any destination within 40 miles (and sometimes beyond) without referencing anything other than the pubs you'll pass on the way.
My former manager is one, it was a marvel to listen to him give directions. Never tried following them mind..