Google Maps Removes Uber Integration (arstechnica.com) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in January 2017, Google and Uber teamed up to put a cool feature in Google Maps: You could search for, book, and pay for an Uber all directly from Google Maps. You didn't even need the Uber app installed. Now, 18 months later, the feature is dead. Google posted a new support page (first spotted by Android Police) that flatly states, "You can no longer book Uber rides directly in Google Maps."
The feature would have you search for a location in Google Maps and ask for directions like normal, but instead of choosing walking, driving, biking, or mass transit directions, a tab for ride-sharing would allow you to book a ride directly. The ride-sharing tab still exists, but instead of booking an Uber, it just gives you an estimate and offers to kick you out to the Uber app.
The feature would have you search for a location in Google Maps and ask for directions like normal, but instead of choosing walking, driving, biking, or mass transit directions, a tab for ride-sharing would allow you to book a ride directly. The ride-sharing tab still exists, but instead of booking an Uber, it just gives you an estimate and offers to kick you out to the Uber app.
Quit using Uber months ago (Score:2)
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Homer Simpsons says that public transportation is for "suckers", as well as "jerks and lesbians".
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"Ride sharing" (Score:2)
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Let us stop calling Uber "ride charing". Let us call it what it is: "an illegal taxi service app powered by Neural Network Deep Learning AI".
Um.. It's really "an illegal taxi service" the rest of that is as much hype as my stereo enhanced "motor sounds" in my F-150....
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I don't think the word "illegal" means what you think it means.
Seriously, I'm kind of surprised by all the hate here in Slashdot for Uber. With the site populated heavily by neo-libertarians, you'd think the people defending taxis and their artificially inflated prices would be at a minimum. Can someone explain this to me?
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I'm fairly certain at least one of these taxi shills is a current or former employee of a cab company.
Intellectual honesty? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect people call Uber a taxi service because - it's a taxi service. "Ride sharing" is BS, and that's quite obvious.
I too slightly surprised at how many people acknowledge that plain and simple fact rather than pretending to believe some BS, happily surprised.
Even if a political agenda were ALL that mattered, of one had no care for the truth, you don't get intelligent people to support you and your agenda by telling them ridiculous lies.
If you want to end "big taxi", you can more effectively do so with an honest argument:
Some say unregulated taxis would cause big problems.
Uber is unregulated taxis.
Uber doesn't cause those problems.
Therefore, they are mistaken - unregulated taxis, like Uber, don't cause major problems.
Taxis should therefore be deregulated.
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I wouldn't go that far.
I've lived in more problematic parts of the world and there is a big distinction between 'government/metered taxis' and unofficial 'taxis'.
Generally if you want to be 'safe' you take the government taxi. Otherwise you use the non-regulated ones.
Sure, it's not a problem in Canada or the US yet, but it's still good to keep 'official' taxis.
Also, part of the issue is that Uber had to operate in a questionable manner. Like many established entities, they're not going to allow you to try.
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Does she charge them money to do so? Beyond other parents chipping in for gas, I mean?
No Uber hate here .... but .... (Score:2)
I'm not surprised Google pulled it from Maps either. IMO, it just crosses a line allowing a free map service to allow purchasing a commercial service on it. I mean, if they're going to let you hail an Uber without even installing Uber's app for it, why don't they support every other service that needs your location?
I have a buddy with a mobile mechanic business. Can he expect Google Maps to allow easy requests for mobile car repair to be built in? Why does Uber get special treatment?
I think it makes much m
Re:"Ride sharing" (Score:5, Interesting)
I really suspect that the bulk of the anti-user slashdotters (And anti-Uber people win general) live in places where they drive to work, don'r go out drinking or clubbing (Assuming the latter are even available out in the suburbs.), and never had to rely on taxies; except maybe a couple of times a year to go to and from the airport. That, or they're too young to remember the days before Uber & Lyft, when it was taxis or MUNI's "Owl" service, or nothing. So they just don't know just how terrible traditional taxies are. I, OTOH, have lived in a city where taxis are the occasional necessity since well before Uber existed; and had to suffer the awfulness of cabbies for many years. Then things changed. I started using Uber when they still called themselves Ubercab, were available only in San Francisco, and the only option was the black car service the ran about 50% more expensive then the taxis they replaced. And I never looked back.
And traditional taxis are really just bloody awful. If traditional taxis were not so spectacularly craptacular, Uber, Lyft, and the like would never have gotten a foothold in the first place. And the taxi corporations are just bad as Uber ever has been. And they've been at their shenanigans for a good half-century, or linger, before Uber was even a thing. It's just that Uber's problems came to light in the social media era; where the taxis have buried the worst of their misdeeds (Bribing politicians into erecting barriers to entry like the medallions, for example.) in the annals of history.
For my part, if my choice is between a scummy company where the car actually shows up when I summon it, the drivers never (and don't have the option to) try to run the "my credit card machine is broken, cash only" scam, who don't bitch (or refuse to take me at all) if I need to go out to the avenues, who will actually pick me up in those same avenues, and whose cars have never smelt of smoke, pee, or vomit; versus an equally scummy company where none of that is true, and which has been scummily abusing the public since before I was born; I'll take the former every time.
Re:"Ride sharing" (Score:4, Funny)
Uh, what neo-libertarians hate is taxes, not taxis.
hmm (Score:2)
why would google give business to goober when they have stake in lyft?
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: Good. (Score:2)
Great! (Score:2)
So now Google Maps will stop suggesting a 4000 yen Uber ride as a great alternative to a 200 yen train fare?