Meanwhile, The Verge reports that Google Maps is cracking down on business pages that violate its policy against fake ratings and reviews.

The maps know that one road is five lanes wide and the other six; both have medians. They understand that right turns between the streets can be accomplished via dedicated merge lanes that skip the red light. They appreciate that two lanes allow left turns between each of these streets, facilitated by a left-turn-arrow traffic signal. Having all this information helps the maps give their step-by-step instructions: Take the first turn lane from northbound 28th Street, then a quick right into the parking lot for Flatiron Coffee. That level of precision may be convenient for some drivers, but it comes at the price of breaking down the built environment into lots of extra segments and transitions that may trigger the display of useless routing information. Perhaps the software should just be telling you to “go past the light and make a left.”

Google Maps announced updates focusing on EVs (EV charger search, nearby chargers in the in-car map, suggested charging stops, forecast energy consumption) and sustainability (lower-carbon travel options rolling out in 15 cities, estimated flight emissions). Also, Street View came to Kazakhstan last month. Meanwhile, Ben Schoon at 9to5Google says that while Google Maps on Android Auto is “a pretty solid experience,” it’s a different matter when you use Google Maps via Apple CarPlay, an experience he calls “a bit of a dumpster fire.”

Google-owned Waze announced updates last month that include roundabout assistance and notifications for the presence of emergency vehicles, speed limit changes, and things like sharp curves, speed bumps and toll booths [TechCrunch].

“All of this is fantastic news for users, and we are cautiously optimistic that this will effectively mean the end of geofence warrants,” says the EFF. “However, we are not yet prepared to declare total victory. Google’s collection of users’ location data isn’t limited to just the ‘Location History’ data searched in response to geofence warrants; Google collects additional location information as well. It remains to be seen whether law enforcement will find a way to access these other stores of location data on a mass basis in the future.”

Via Daring Fireball (where Gruber notes that Apple has never collected location data, i.e. there’s a reason it’s “almost always Google”).

Jalopnik describes this as yet another case of blindly following, but I think this is a more specific failure mode. Rerouting due to road closures or traffic jams opens up routes that the algorithm would normally deprecate, and catches more drivers unprepared. It’s one thing when that means a quiet residential street gets an expressway’s worth of traffic, quite another when the second best choice is a dirt track—or a 500-mile detour. When the best answer the algorithm can give you is a bad one, it will still give you that answer.

Previously: Man Dies After Driving Across Collapsed Bridge, Family Sues Google; Google Rerouted Traffic Up Poorly Maintained Mountain Roads During a Blizzard; Google Maps Called Out for Showing ‘Potentially Fatal’ Mountain Routes.

It seems the goal was to improve usability and make the maps more readable. Admittedly, I do think major roads, traffic, and trails stand out more now. But the colors of water and parks/open spaces blend together. And to me, the palette feels colder and more computer generated. But color choices aside … If the goal was better usability, the team missed a big opportunity: Google Maps should have cleaned up the crud overlaying the map.

[Daring Fireball]

Google Maps’ main purpose is to enable people to get directions and look up businesses. But along the way, it has become a social space too. Sort of. To fill out the world map it created, Google invited people to add snippets to all the digital places. You upload your photos; you leave your reviews; you look at the artifacts others have left behind. The pictures of a restaurant on Google Maps are often a mismatched succession of interior-design shots, flash photos of messy plates, and outdated menus. There’s plenty of detritus too: irrelevant photos, businesses that don’t exist, three-star reviews without an explanation.

The result is random and messy in a way that is different from the rest of the social web. […] But especially as algorithmic content has taken over the web, many of the surprises don’t feel fresh. They are our kind of surprises. Google Maps offers something many other platforms no longer can: a hodgepodge of truly unfamiliar stuff that hasn’t been packaged for your taste or mine. […] Because zooming out and scrolling around are so easy, you can bump into little treasures at every turn that would never land on an Instagram feed.

Previously: Millions of Business Listings on Google Maps Are Fake: WSJ; How Many Fake Business Listings Are There on Google Maps?

Previously: Immersive View and the Death of Consumer Maps.

Apple Maps now provides parking information for 8,000 locations in the U.S. and Canada.

Apple also launched Business Connect, a tool for businesses to upload their information to be used by Apple’s various apps: not just Maps, though that’s obvious (and something Google has been offering for quite some time: see James’s post for context). More at Ars Technica.

Google Maps

The first cars to get Google’s enhanced maps (previously), which include things like traffic lights and stop signs, will be the Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3, via Android Auto.

Meanwhile, turn-by-turn directions on Google’s Wear OS smart watch platform will no longer require a connected smartphone.

Also in Bloomberg, Mark Gurman discusses Apple’s plans to expand its advertising business, which apparently includes adding ads to Apple Maps.

Apple’s cycling maps now include Hawaii, and its detailed 3D cities now include Atlanta, Miami and Seattle. They’re also testing their upgraded maps in Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.

Google Maps updates outlined in a blog post last month include cycling route information, location sharing, and photorealistic aerial views of major landmarks.

Instagram announced a searchable map feature last month, expanding its map feature beyond geolocating posts. This, after a Google VP noted that young users are using apps and TikTok for discovery purposes rather than Google’s Search or Maps. You wouldn’t think that Instagram and TikTok qualify as map apps, but the street finds its uses.

As announced in April, Google Maps now displays estimated toll prices when routing.

Russian search engine Yandex is sidestepping the Russian invasion of Ukraine, frozen conflicts and other contested national borders by simply removing national borders from its map. It’s being spun as a pivot to local navigation. (Sure.)

Also announced: an expansion of eco-friendly routing to Europe and making Live View available to third-party apps. More coverage: Engadget, TechCrunch, The Verge.

AppleInsider looks at how online maps (Apple Maps, Google Maps), especially their traffic layer, inadvertently revealed Russian troop movements at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The sheer volume of mapping data now available at our fingertips means it was possible for civilians half a world away to see when Russian forces began moving. Specifically, that data pinpointed a traffic jam starting on the Russian side of the border, actively moving into Ukraine in the first few minutes of the Russian and Ukraine conflict.

Just as with any cartography, this information required interpreting. Google Maps did not specifically say that it was troop movements, nor was its satellite imagery up to the minute. During the process of researching this story, we’ve confirmed that Apple Maps presented similar inbound troop movement information—but it wasn’t setting out to do that either.

What these services did, though, was register all of the smartphone users whose driving was slowed or halted by unusual traffic conditions. Wherever the majority of the data came from, it was possible to determine what was happening when coupled with known details of Russian troop locations.

Last week, when a snowstorm closed Interstate 80 east of Sacramento, Google Maps started redirecting traffic up poorly maintained mountain roads, which is about as good an idea during a blizzard as it sounds.

.@googlemaps This is an abject failure. You are sending people up a poorly maintained forest road to their death in a severe blizzard. Hire people who can address winter storms in your code (or maybe get some of your engineers who are stuck in Tahoe right now on it). pic.twitter.com/IzagAXzBtA

— Dr. Crystal A. Kolden (@pyrogeog) December 28, 2021

As SFGate reports,

Other dispatches from Twitter allege that the service—particularly its mobile app—directed people to closed-off highways, mountain passes and lakeside roads to get around. This is in direct contrast to Caltrans’ messaging to avoid workarounds. Caltrans District 3 spokesperson Steve Nelson told SFGATE on Monday that they were seeing drivers trying to skirt highway closures with side streets. “They’ll take side roads and try and sneak past the closures, and that never ends well,” he said.

Google engineer Sören Meyer-Eppler responded on Twitter to spell out some of the technical and logistical problems involved in rerouting traffic during bad weather: the difficulty in finding timely data (and in such cases data need to be really timely) and the risk of false positives. More at Jalopnik.