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Google Maps Takes on Facebook With Launch of Its Own News Feed (techcrunch.com) 33

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
People are getting frustrated that Stories are everywhere now, but Google Maps is keeping it old school. From a report: Instead of adding tiny circles to the top of the app's screen, Google Maps is introducing its own news feed. Technically, Google calls its new feature the "Community Feed," as it includes posts from a local area. However, it's organized as any other news feed would be -- a vertically scrollable feed with posts you can "Like" by tapping on a little thumbs up icon. The feed, which is found with the Explore tab of the Google Maps app, is designed to make it easier to find the most recent news, updates, and recommendations from trusted local sources. This includes posts business owners create using Google My Business to alert customers to new deals, menu updates, and other offers. At launch, Google says the focus will be on highlighting posts from food and drink businesses.

For years, businesses have been able to make these sorts of posts using Google's tools. But previously, users would have to specifically tap to follow the business's profile in order to receive their updates. Now, these same sort of posts will be surfaced to even those Google Maps users who didn't take the additional step of following a particular business. This increased exposure has impacted the posts' views, Google says. In early tests of Community Feed ahead of its public launch, Google found that businesses' posts saw more than double the number of views than before the feed existed. Further reading: Google Maps Has Introduced So Many New Features and Design Changes in Recent Months That Getting Directions On It is Becoming an Increasingly Challenging Task (2018).
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Google Maps Takes on Facebook With Launch of Its Own News Feed More

Google Maps Takes on Facebook With Launch of Its Own News Feed

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  • What the fuck is happening? (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @05:21PM (#60783690)

    All companies now have news, videos, radio, chat, file sharing, etc - everywhere in all their services. Sometimes those services are not even compatible between each platform even from the same company.

    Remember the "I don't even own a TV anymore" memes? At this rate it's soon going to be "I don't even own a computer anymore".

    Fugg the fugging fuggers.

    • The article tells me "people are getting frustrated" about Stories. For my part, I'm not even completely sure what a Story is. I completed Bioshock: Infinite last night, I actually quite enjoyed that story. If stories are frustrating you, maybe you're focusing on the wrong ones.

      And no, I don't own a TV, or a Twitbook.

    • Remember the "I don't even own a TV anymore" memes? At this rate it's soon going to be "I don't even own a computer anymore".

      What do you mean soon? Just because people still buy and own computers doesn't mean they actually know how to use them. Users couldn't find a DOS prompt with both typing thumbs, Microsoft Bob, Clippy, and a Ctrl-R-cmd head-start.

      Fugg the fugging fuggers.

      Odd. You almost sound like you're from a tiny little Austrian village that caved to Fugging wokeness after hundreds of Fucking years on the map...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        They caved to annoying tourists, not wokeness.

        I once lived near a Blow street. The city got tired of replacing the sign, even after they made it really tall and greased the pole, so they eventually renamed it.

        • I once lived near a Blow street. The city got tired of replacing the sign, even after they made it really tall and greased the pole, so they eventually renamed it.

          Did they rename it Hand street or Anal street?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The computers are fine. It's the web that's got to go.

  • It's too much. It's constant and spinning ever faster. I can't take it anymore. I want to get off. Please help.
  • They also need them Stories, or they Maps won't be relevant anymore...

  • Disappointed. (Score:3)

    by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @05:45PM (#60783766)

    The headline suggested they were bringing back Google Reader.

    It's just Yelp/Instagram for Maps.

  • This increased exposure has impacted the posts' views...

    Interesting and appropriate choice of words.

    And how many extra impacts of the auto variety? Perhaps better "views" of the interior of the car in front or that "post" by the side of the road.

  • Google worked hard to make Javascript indispensable. They used their search ranking to coerce web authors into using techniques which require Javascript to work and leave users with dysfunctional web sites if Javascript is disabled or blocked. The web has become a user-hostile place. Javascript needs to be shunned like Flash.

  • they'll just kill it (Score:3)

    by Nick ( 109 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @10:09PM (#60784474) Journal

    After about two years of getting it adjusted just right, and people warming up to it, Google will just kill it. Because that's what they do.

    Waiting any day now for Google to kill off Maps, just because.

    • That honestly wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Google Maps doesn't even actually have a good map. They used to use OKish NAVTEQ (it wasn't great but it also wasn't particularly current) while letting it atrophy and an attempted merge with the Waze map (and that community's editing style tends to reward low quality edits in an effort to game its routing algorithm) but it's never been a good map. It's like using the Yellow Pages as a map, especially if you're not driving to get there.

      Sure, they co

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • It's a very exurban location and there are about 30 households in my neighborhood. Three of the roads are mis-named. My (paved) street is on the sat map but not on the Google Map as a road. On top of that, my driveway (about 500 ft long) is marked as a public road, with a name that does exist in town but is about 5 miles away. I've made the appropriate change requests and even asked people to verify them for me, but no dice.

          They don't care. You're not paying them to be on the map, so you don't matter.

          Other map purveyors do not have this problem.

          Most other map purveyors are just extracting data from OpenStreetMap at this point. Fix it on OpenStreetMap and you fix it on Facebook, Craigslist, Bing, Pokemon Go, Rand McNally, every car that uses Telenav as they update their snapshots from the OSM live database. Is your neighborhood correct on OSM? If not, go fix it there.

          Seriously considering a small claims case against them to get their attention. The having my driveway listed as a public road has to be actionable.

          It's not. Best you can do is prosecute people for trespassing when they blindly follow Google onto you

  • If I don't actually use Google maps and your API detects me at a location should you
    A) Ask me to review it
    B) Not tell me you know where I am 24/7
    C) Be Apple and pretend you are a force for good while pursuing option B
    D) I am not sure, do Garmin or TomTom still exist?

    • Garmin definitely does. Not sure about TomTom. If you're looking for a FOSS solution, try OsmAnd [osmand.net]. You pretty much have to in the midwest just because of the lack of cellphone reception and flat out inaccurate map data on Google and HERE, and Osmand can cache entire states from OpenStreetMap at a time fairly compactly.

      • Thank you but I don't think that really solves the problem. The GPS location data it uses goes through a Google or Apple API does it not?
        I never thought of myself as a tinfoil hat guy but it is starting to grow on me

        • Thank you but I don't think that really solves the problem. The GPS location data it uses goes through a Google or Apple API does it not?

          In Osmand? Depends on your location settings on your device. Even the routing is calculated locally on the phone itself by default and you have to really go out of your way to make it not do that. The downside is if you have a long trip for the mode you're calculating for, you might as well make your own best guess on which way to go to start if you're familiar with the area you're starting, because it can take a while for it to finish calculating. The upside is you can use this on any device with a GPS

          • So your phone is directly contacting satellites? My wife used to work at a company that did such a thing but it was horrifically expensive and only "pocketable" with cargo pants. I think that went down around 1999
            • You might want to go check out a primer on how GPS and GLONASS (the Russian version that works on the same principal and most phones also have a receiver for these days) works. The TLDR is it's just a bunch of satellites with known, predictable orbits continuously saying what the time is in unison. Your GPS receiver, be it a phone or a dedicated device, is just triangulating you relative to a sphere that averages out to Earth at sea level based on the differences in the time signals its receiving from var
              • Okay, thank you for the heads up. I am just questioning whether the API being called is doing a 'phone home' since once again, being asked for reviews at locations I didn't Google maps navigate to. Whether maps is installed or not there is no guarantee they will not
                • I'm fairly sure that analytics are off by default (if not, it's obvious and easy to turn off) and otherwise the only thing it'll reach out to the network for is to check for offline map updates and to download requested offline maps.

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