Slightly off topic, but I get a lot of frustration from Google Maps. Waze works well for me, while GMaps don't. So seeing those two merge more is bad news for me.
Google Maps is one of the services which actually does some minor damage to me. Delivery drivers usually blame me for not finding my street, while GMaps data is what is the problem. I've had one delivery person stuck in snow and require technical assistance in another street, because Google Maps shows my street there.
I cannot get Google to change my street name to correct legal one.I've tried 'suggesting an edit' it at least 10 times. There is no support to contact to or anything. I've looked. They say I don't have any proof that my suggested street name is correct - but I even add a link to Google Street view which has a literal street sign with correct name and coordinates. I tried official street registry links. Still rejected. It is insane.
I personally can use openstreetmap.org, but delivery drivers and etc. - they don't use it. So I am stuck in this non-sense.
Google also decided at one point that all street names in a Finnish city should be in Swedish.
Yes, Finland is a bilingual country and some southern cities have official names in Swedish, but this town was a full 300km from the southern border and zero of the street names had official Swedish alternatives. Google just decided to autotranslate all the street names with no fallback.
People complained, Google didn't care. At one point after a few weeks it just magically reverted back.
Meanwhile as an American living in Finland, I just wish I could have my directions in English, use Metric system, but have the names of streets and the like use the Finnish pronunciation. Instead it absolutely butchers the pronunciation almost beyond comprehension and gives me the streets in both Finnish and Swedish as further punishment.
Not only is the portuguese pronounciation pretty bad most of the time (in their defense streets can have very annoying names over here), they don't use ___location to expand acronyms, so the state/province-managed highways ("SC-401" etc) get read aloud as "South Carolina 401". Couldn't be more wrong.
I'm not sure how this happens. Most of the time, only the English (even though I use the UK variant) voice does this incorrect substitution, but in some occasions the portuguese voice can try saying the english words "south carolina" with portuguese pronounciation, which is hilarious in a disappointing way.
(Maybe the pt-BR voice model knows to pronounce SC as humans do, just the letters, but the acronym expansion happens in text, before voice is involved, in some code paths? No idea, just guessing)
Yeah, Google absolutely butchering street names in non-English languages is a common theme. I no longer use the audio directions, they're that useless.
When I was first learning German, I set my Google account (and phone) to it, despite being in the U.S.
Google Maps' decision as to which street names to translate to German when using voice directions seemed completely arbitrary. Numbered streets I could kinda understand (e.g. First Street was called out as "Erste Straße"), but others were perplexing: it insisted on calling Rainbow Blvd. "Regenboden Boulevard" despite using (non-translated, but German-accented) English for every other nearby street.
If I was a German-only speaker, looking at street signs, I would have been lost.
(This was also an educational experience re: dark patterns. I eventually had to switch back to English, because I repeatedly almost got tricked into clicking "yes" instead of "not now" on things I didn't ever want to enable. Despite my having repeatedly opted out in English, Google almost got me to "consent" in German because my language skills there weren't as good.)
Another source of constant hilarity is when the voice guidance tries to pronounce the names of ring roads in Helsinki metropolitan area: Kehä I / Ring I. They're numbered using roman numerals (I through III) but Maps has no such knowledge of this so it just ends up rattling off the route number and "Kehä / Ring" with the ring road numerals as if they were just a literal letter I.
Sometimes the lane guidance also likes to pick up on the destinations from the overhead signs, trying to pronounce the Finnish and Swedish names with less than stellar results.
I'd also like that as a Finnish person, since I keep my phone in English, although I imagine I have a slightly easier time parsing them from "English" than you do.
You can change the language of Google Maps to Finnish, and still keep the phone on English. At least in the latest versions of Android. This makes it pronounce the street names properly
I've had this, twice, in different addresses. Map edits seem to do nothing for wrong road names or roads not suitable for traffic. Causes havoc for deliveries.
Other mapping source datas (TomTom, HERE) all fix mapping issues, even if takes time to get it approved. For Google, it's a blackhole, the only way to get it properly fixed was to reach out to a contact at Google to raise it internally.
Google maps loves to confuse my house, "#X Y Ave", with a different house several miles away, "#X Y Ave South". It doesn't matter whether you enter the address correctly; Google will sometimes "correct" you over to the other one. My own sister ended up at the wrong house once, after following her phone's directions!
USPS knows what they are doing, but packages delivered by other services sometimes just don't show up. Delivery drivers are constantly confused; we have made a habit of putting long instructions in the order notes about the actual ___location. Sometimes this even works.
Speaking of USPS knowing what they're doing, their address normalization replaces our city name with the broader "Minneapolis," but multiple delivery services use that normalization without flowing the zip code through to directions lookup (whether a tech issue or driver retyping omission), which results in drivers calling us from another suburb 15 minutes away as the pizza goes cold.
Around the same topic, in two successive apartments I've been living in the app-based "disruptive" logistics services are unusable, apparently due to the way they are using GMaps. The legacy parcel delivery and mail companies have no issues finding our apartments, using the addresses, but at least both Uber and Wolt seem to always attempt pickup and delivery at the neighbouring lots.
My best guess so far is that they request driving directions using GPS coordinates for my address, which leads to GMaps reserve-mapping it to the neighbouring street, which is closer to the building but the drivers will face a fence. Food drivers usually leave the packages to a neighbour, Uber drivers make angry phone calls and claim that I'm not at the pickup point. Customer service keeps blaming me for failing to enter my address and ___location properly, so my improvement suggestions go nowhere past the first tier support.
I have to favour services with a proper localisation, usually the ones not developed around a mobile app.
For me, the most egregious behavior comes from those “disruptive” services trying to be “helpful” by using the address form as search instead of taking the address as is.
All of the possible choices invariably lead drivers to the wrong ___location.
No one at Uber read anyting like “myths programmers believe about addresses” it seems.
Also, my country (Portugal) has a postal code that almost uniquely identifies my house, and both Google Maps and Waze ignore it in favor of hand-wavy parsing of the rest of the address.
> Slightly off topic, but I get a lot of frustration from Google Maps. Waze works well for me, while GMaps don't. So seeing those two merge more is bad news for me.
I have the same, but my friend from the UK has the opposite. Does it depend on the country ? Where I live, when I use Google maps, it sends me into fields on roads that are gone already for ages while Waze works perfectly... Google maps sends me to places I cannot get out of or continue (so narrow that I cannot continue or turn and have to drive backwards to get out) etc.
It might be, but in my opinion, most of these problems can be solved with two minute call with a real person who has elevated access to Google Maps edits. This would save people months of frustration.
I never had any problems with other big tech support. Only Google
I arrived in Valletta taking the high speed ferry from Gozo.
According to Google Maps my hotel was a 20 minute meandering walk through the blistering heat.
Thankfully, I've been in the very hotel already and new this to be garbage information.
Actually you just walk up some steps and three minutes later you arrive at the hotel.
When I told that to the proprietor he just groaned and told me that it took him years of effort to get Google to correct the street route they had marked to his hotel.
Let's just say this made quite a dent in my confidence in all things Google.
> but I even add a link to Google Street view which has a literal street sign with correct name and coordinates
Do the report from the app on a phone while you're at the ___location and take a picture of the sign yourself. I've had more success this way. I think it logs that you're actually looking the place while reporting and finds it more trustworthy.
You need to contact your city management. Their mapping departments that publish the official maps have the contacts to Google and other mapping companies. Possibly, the error actually originates from their dataset!
Yeah, I used to live in the Colorado mountains. There were two ways to my house. A slow 10-mile long dirt road or a faster 12 mile long highway followed by a 2 mile back-track on a very serious off road trail that I would only take my most-built-up Jeep on. Google maps kept telling people to go the off-road way where of course there's also no cell signal. I had to start telling people to explicitly use MapQuest (yes, MapQuest) to get to my house because Google and the others never figured out the way that an actual car could get to my house.
I'm having a similar issue but even deeper. It's not that Google doesn't accept my edits, it's that Google Maps doesn't even seem to support the format that my address is in. My house number is 1/2 and the neighbor is 1/1. No matter how many times and different ways I've tried to teach Google this, the search for 1/2 keeps showing the pin of 1/1 - which Google just shows as 1.
Can't you just add a note about this in your order details? I usually do that when I know the data on one of the services that delivery people use is wrong.
I did that from 3 different accounts. I've tried doing that on a phones with GPS on so the overlord might pick up that I am a local. But nothing works, I think I am 'shadow-banned' from edits now, because it says my edits are accepted but they are never updated on Maps.
Google map is not a mirror of openstreetmap but a lot of changes from openstreetmap are reported to maps.
If streetmaps is already up-to-date with your street number, try to trigger a change (move a street number 1 meter, ..)
I've tried changing shape of the street to match satellite view. But only the shape change was accepted, not street name change.
Regarding OSM data, I think Google does not use any of OSM data, otherwise they would have to credit it and I don't see it credited. I don't think that OSM has any impact here.
> try to trigger a change (move a street number 1 meter, ..)
Please don’t do a small insignificant change in OSM just because it might trigger something somewhere else.
Make changes to improve the map data in OSM!
Maybe Waze will bring some of the good UX choices over from Maps. Like not increasing my risk of crashing by making me click past warning screens, or silently closing itself in the background, or again making me take my eyes off the road to hit the "are you really really sure you want to close Waze?" popup instead of just damn closing when I hammer the Back button.
The only thing that keeps me from completely using Google Maps over Waze is the speed trap reporting (Google Maps has a similar feature, but it’s not nearly as effective as Waze’s).
I’m a nomad and have spent the last two+ years traveling the us. Google maps routing has degraded significantly in that time. I was really happy with it at first but it’s gotten worse over time. Now I dread using it and know it is going to fail to inform me correctly about which lane to be in, will pick odd routes (especially when not on the highway), and most annoying of all is they have added all sorts of phantom merges which often obscure the real next turn/exit until the last second because there is a nonexistent merge on the map.
> they have added all sorts of phantom merges which often obscure the real next turn/exit until the last second because there is a nonexistent merge on the map
This is the thing that I hate the most. It wouldn't be so bad if they kept a zoom level where I could see what's coming up, but they zoom in super tight until the phantom merge point is passed. If I'm traveling 60 mph and I have to cut across 3 lanes of busy traffic in less than a tenth of a mile, I'd like to have a fucking heads up. When cruising on the interstate, I'd like to know my exit number without having to scroll past all the instances where the number of lanes changes on my way there.
My Garmin GPS from 2007 had a better UX than this.
I'm used to the speedtrap, speed limits and general crowd sourced alerts in Waze.
I remember seing this in google maps, but it disappeared again.
I don't know if my ___location (Denmark) has something to say about that?
That being said, the estimates that waze give me, especially for sudden accidents, are way off. I'm told it's better in the Copenhagen area, due to more users on the road, but where I live, it's almost non-existant.
I recently decided to give Apple Maps driving directions a try and was surprised to find that it notified me of a driving hazard (a trashcan on the road) in my lane a few seconds before I would have hit it. Does anyone know how they detect something like that ?
Someone called in the cops, who have interfaces with radio stations and other warning systems for road dangers. A local radio station here in Munich claims a latency time of mere seconds as soon as the police knows about it [1].
A user probably sent the report further down the road. Hazard reporting should pin the ___location right when you pull up the list of options, I think Waze does this when you click the report button.
I think this is the dumbest feature imaginable - maps is aware there is an obstacle in the road and so it pops a toast up on the screen, attracting my attention to a timed button for me to confirm or cancel ??
About two years ago I had an opportunity to run a "for fun" experiment. My family and another family went on vacation together but I had to come home a couple of days early due to business travel. Because of vehicle sizes, I ended up taking the other car home -- which was a small luxury SUV with a high-end radar detector ... somewhere inside the damn thing[1]. I had Waze up. For whatever reason, between two different states, the roads were teaming with traffic enforcement. When I stopped to fill up, I grabbed a small notebook and a pen and kept score: Radar/Waze with ticks under "Cop Missed", "Cop Found", "False Positive". The radar was worthless. It had lower false-positives than I'd expected (I remember those things going off all the time for nothing) but when it went off, it went off too late. It missed more than half of them.
Waze, on the other hand, had very few false positives. I suspect some that I marked "false positive" were really me failing to see the police officer[2]. This was "8-hours of highway (non-turnpike/toll)" and there was a police officer every 5 miles (I went 2, maybe 3 pages in tick marks on a hand-sized spiral-bound $0.99 gas station notepad). I don't even know that I bothered calculating everything out completely. For one, Waze did not miss a single speed trap that entire drive. Where I live (metro to a major mid-west city), it's rare that I'm the first reporter or that I see a cop that Waze isn't alerting me about already.
Beyond police, the reports for disabled vehicles (by law you must move one lane over where I live) is very helpful for both "ticket avoidance" and safety (if you care enough to follow the rules).
I prefer the Google Maps interface -- and generally everything else about it over Waze, but I use Waze 99.9% of the time and for every drive. I have it setup to not speak the directions because much of the time I'm traveling to places that I am very familiar with the routes (I might follow a suggestion over my own preference, though, because "Waze tends to be more right"). I use it, entirely, for the social reporting features. Though Maps, at one point, added this (is it still there?) it wasn't even close to the quality of that provided by Waze. I'm really hoping they "put the social features into Maps" and I'll switch to maps or "move the UI more toward Maps in Waze" and I'll continue using Waze.
[0] For context, I'm not an aggressive driver ... I don't drive that much any longer as it is so I tend to be a lot more cautious these days. But it's way too easy to not notice a 10-15 MPH speed limit change accidentally and driving laws are among the small set of laws that are more often broken unintentionally, than intentionally.
[1] I would have had no idea what the insane beeping was all about but it was a brand that a friend of mine owned growing up and I recognized the tone ... but he had it installed in a manner that it you'd never know there was one in the car except for the sound (they're illegal in Canada which they traveled to frequently). It was a very expensive model outfitted with the latest Radar Detector Detector Detector Detector Detector (odd or even number, I can't remember). I had no idea how to silence it so I was afraid I'd get pulled over and guarantee myself a ticket for having it.
[2] Where I live, on-ramps make great speed traps. If positioned just so, you can't see them until they're behind you, and you can't see them in your passenger mirror at all if it's a typical mirror/aimed the way most drivers aim them -- requiring you to turn your head to locate them (something you're probably not in the habit of doing while chilling at highway speeds).
> The standard highway speed is 15mph over the speed limit here in CA.
Depends entirely where in California. LA is a good 15-20 mph over, San Diego is more like 10-15 mph over, and the South Bay Area is more like 0-5 mph over (which drove me crazy coming from LA)
I don't want to ban you—obviously, given the number of times we've already had to ask you this—but if you keep ignoring our requests, we're going to have to.
These days, there are more drivers and fewer cops to make the boogeyman of a random speed trap seem like a possibility. Showing that there is a cop ahead would work better, I imagine. One of the reasons why people drive recklessly is because they don't think any cops are around to bust them
Try complying when you live in a corrupt country and the legal speed drops from 60 to 50 just on that specific 10 meters conveniently by a speed camera
One law that does make sense is that drivers should not be playing with their phone while operating a car. Speed and distracted driving are leading factors in fatal crashes. Car crashes are leading cause of non-disease related death in the US (after guns and suicide).
I will be very sad on the day when Google decides to kill Waze. It is the only Google product I use and I will never abandon it because of one personal reason: it allows users to record custom voice for directions.
My wife recorded her voice in Waze and I love hearing from her telling me "turn left, honey", "be careful, there's cops ahead!"...etc.
I have used Waze regularly since 2014, and my perception is that it plans more aggressive routes (trickier turns, using side streets, etc) to shave off a few more minutes than Maps, whereas Maps will stick to the major, less complicated routes. But I haven't used Maps for routing lately, so I wouldn't be surprised if Waze/Maps are more similar than I realize.
I stopped using Waze (I live in Los Angeles) because it would give a slightly faster route with unprotected left turns that was riskier, more stressful, and ultimately not much faster in reality.
I had wondered about that before. My guess is that Google considers Waze and Maps users to be different type of "navigators", with Waze being a self-selecting group of folks who want crazy routes to shave a few seconds here and there, while the Maps users are more mainstream and just want a sensible route with options. So they may have hesitated to give the "crazy" option to them.
Another thing, I suspect there's a significant resource cost in constantly re-evaluating these few-second saving opportunities that may not scale well to the size of Map's user base. Could be wrong here.
I am exactly one of those users which you describe and only use Waze for long trips and Maps for the rest. Waze urban navigation drives me crazy with the route it picks sometimes, hoping of shaving off a few seconds.
Friend of mine lives in South Pasadena. He mentions that since Waze he has a lot more traffic on the road behind his house, just people cutting through to save 30 seconds!
You're right, but I don't think there's any reason for the sarcasm. People are allowed to personally lament actions of others, while fully realizing and even supporting that they are legal. And even hope for circumstances changing, like I'm fully allowed to complain about the rain and wish for sunshine, without someone putting me down with "Oh no! A functioning ecosystem doing its job!".
People would even be allowed to try to effect change. In this case, it would mean weighing saving a likely insignificant amount of time for a subset of people, against residents of the street dealing with constant traffic. What is "fair" depends on the exact circumstances, but taken at face value, I suspect if one were to effect regulation such that speed bumps are added, or through traffic prohibited, or the path being made less convenient, then almost none of the insignificant-time-savers would even notice much. They'd take the new suggested route and be likely just as happy.
There are a lot of roads in LA that are gated or just dead end. [1,2,3] They drive me insane. It effectively makes a gated community and I doubt the property tax revenue covers the tax dollars that go into these neighborhoods. Roads are a public good and they should be usable by the public. I am fine with the alternative where we privatize them and let the cost of ownership and maintenance fall on the residents, once they're footing the entire bill they can choose who drives on the roads.
The sarcasm will continue until the NIMBYs improve.
Many public residential streets are not designed for heavy traffic use. I don't think it's unreasonable for local residents to be upset by the noise and congestion of people taking a shortcut off the highway to cut 30 seconds off their travel time.
It’s antisocial for someone driving across town to use a road that’s sized for local traffic only. If you’re doing a journey shared by thousands of others you should use the 10^3 capacity road, not the 10^1 capacity road.
The place where I work has a fridge full of beers. Every so often I see someone stick a couple in their bag, on their way home. Oh no! An employee taking beers intended for employees to consume!, right?
> An employee taking beers intended for employees to consume!, right?
In Germany, that is culturally accepted. It even has, as always in German, its own name: "Wegbier" or the pun version "Fuß-Pils" (a play on "athlete's foot").
"City and traffic planning" is a thing. You see, roads that were planned for the vehicle traffic of a neighborhood (=here in Germany, like one car a minute tops or lower) are usually built to lower standards than a road that is planned as a transit route.
The asphalt layers are thinner, ground support is spec'd for low and moderate traffic... that means that should such a road be subject to unplanned amounts of traffic, the roads will degrade way faster, particularly if heavy goods traffic comes into play.
Did you know that once upon a time there was no such thing as a speed limit?
Do you think we should return to those good old days? Or is there perhaps an argument to be made that new technologies can lead to suboptimal outcomes when operated within the bounds of regulations that didn't (and couldn't reasonably have been expected to) anticipate their development?
They do not seem to. Not for speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving, etc. There’s basically no traffic enforcement here. When was the last time you’ve seen a driver pulled over on a surface street? I think I’ve seen one in the last 10 years.
I use Waze but that part of it actually bugs me, because it's hard to tell if it's telling me to go on some side route for a real reason (avoiding a big accident) or just because it's guessing it will be 90 seconds faster.
Google Maps is surprisingly bad at handling dirt roads around my area. It has happily directed me down many awful roads and a couple times through open land without any visible road at all. The estimated travel times can be pretty funny too, like estimating 5 miles down an abysmal dirt road should only take 7 minutes.
I know these sorts of scenarios aren't a priority for them, but I'm surprised they don't even have a roughly accurate estimate given how much ___location tracking info they collect. If 40 people this year have driven a stretch of road with a range of travel times from 25-40 minutes, an estimate of 7 minutes seems pretty obviously wrong and easy to catch.
I've seen Google Maps try to direct people down "roads" that would cause problems on a horse. And some of these errors have persisted for years, despite many reports to Google.
We have this problem in VT. There is a road here called the notch, which is too narrow for a semi truck to pass, and there is no way to turn around once you get stuck in it. This means that if you drive into it, you have to call someone to help you back down the mountain, and you get a big fine.
This results in 5-10 semis getting stuck every year. There is nothing that google is willing to do to help the state out. The state has put up signage telling drivers their GPS is wrong, and they ignore it.
In Northern Austria you find a lot of "no gps" signs at the start of agricultural roads. Seems that many lorry drivers rely on google maps for navigation and those small roads are ill-suited for their vehicles, e.g. due to weight limits or sharp turns.
While not on the same level of dangerousness Google Maps will also route me through a nature reserve, with no street lights, cattle grids and no snow plowing in winter. All while the normal highway is 5km to the east and a little bit backed up.
This highlights that routing algorithms do not understand the concept of safe driving and cannot evaluate how dangerous it is to just pick any alternative route.
I had this problem often with google maps trying to aggressively optimize routes while i lived on the peninsula. Usually involving taking 7 extra turns and hopping on to 101 for a quarter mile in order to save thirty seconds. It took me a lot of extra time to feel comfortable navigating myself (and gave me the impression that a lot of things were much further way) because of the bad navigation… not to mention rage inducting missed turns because of lag or somewhat ambiguous intersections. Very much in favor of a “no crazy uncle secret shortcut mode”. I don’t need to drive through a residential neighborhood or take the exit immediately after the highway entrance or take the next seven lefts, thank you. I moved back to the Midwest where such shortcuts rarely exists and that problem is just one less.
I've started using Waze again because its UI allows me to control music at the same time as navigation is on. But it does aggressively reroute me during heavy traffic. I've started to ignore those though; going off the highway through small side- and country roads might save a minute but it's a lot of extra effort.
The advertisements are getting more intrusive for Waze. You can’t tap the directions area to see the rest of the set of directions until you tap out of the advertisement.
Waze routes have started to look more like maps routes though with the environmental gas saving trip focus instead of the most direct or fastest route.
I may try Apple Maps or something else. The waze directions don’t account for traffic and the capability to follow the directions.
I have had the exact opposite experience, and maps also generally seems to have trouble accurately determining ___location compared to waze. Last few years, maps tends to suggest routes that might shave a few seconds if you never needed to stop to make turns, but otherwise end up being much slower, not to mention have many more traffic flow changes to manouver through. Maps also frequently places me on adjacent or cross streets to where I'm driving, whereas waze actually seems to realize that no, I did not just jump my car up a 20 foot berm and over a sound barrier to drive down a parallel road.
> maps tends to suggest routes that might shave a few seconds if you never needed to stop to make turns
I've definitely noticed this getting worse; it likes to suggest I do a zig-zag route across rural areas. If I didn't have to decelerate for a 90 degree turn it'd probably be much faster, but I do. Maybe the Maps devs are all in fast-cornering supercars.
Side streets really shouldn't be used as major thoroughfares. That's sort of an anti-feature for me - I don't like ruining a neighbourhood by using it as a shortcut all the time.
I've had that issue with maps TBH driving up and down 35 in Texas(among other things). Taking me off the interstate on a detour through the hood with a dozen turns, stop signs, speed bumps, unprotected street crossings... To save 2 minutes on a 4+ hour trip.
I like it because I drive a lot on unsealed roads, and Google Maps doesn't want to help me find a fast route that involves gravel, whereas Waze has an option to allow that.
Waze doesn't seem to be aware of fords, but then, I wouldn't expect it to be.
I also like that I can tell Waze "I ain't afraid of tricky intersections", and that it's happy to take side-roads if it'll get you there slightly faster, which Google Maps prefers not to do.
My main use case is to "warn me of problems ahead" when I don't need navigation help. For example, it saved my butt when the road ahead iced-over suddenly. I saw numerous accidents ahead and pulled off before I was in trouble or stuck on the road behind a wreck. I passed several scary big truck accident scenes a couple hours later once the road had been sanded.
Can you also just put a destination and it'll show some sort of histogram of when the traffic is the busiest? Basically that + community warnings is the reason I'm 100% using Waze for driving directions.
Basically, I know I want to go to A, but I'm not sure when to leave, I just know I want to avoid as much traffic as possible, so when should I leave? The feature kind of answers that.
It’s on mobile and hidden very well behind the 3 dot menu to the top-right of the start/end ___location fields. Tap the 3 dots and then you can choose “set depart or arrive time” in the menu that opens
With that said, I do prefer waze’s graph showing traffic changing over time to help decide when to leave
I've used Waze since first getting a smart phone and continue using it. It got us from California to North Carolina, and does a great job when driving up north or down to Florida. Hopefully this doesn't get affected by this change. I prefer it over Apple Maps or Google Maps.
I am stumped by that person's comment. Waze is superior in every single way for navigation:
Faster adjusting to real-time traffic, better navigation UI, more importantly tells you where polices are but also other various things that are good to know beforehand.
Google maps is still useful to pre-plan a route, get information about businesses, restaurants, opening hours and just better overall building information with street view and such, but I'd never go back to using maps for navigation unless they do exactly as waze does.
Didnt they say that they would always be separate teams? Im not surprised by this move but surprised because I could swear when they bought it they said they would maintain both teams...
Though I'm not a direct user, I've recently seen Waze has some glaring errors that Google Maps doesn't - especially on "special" days.
I saw the most spectacular failure like this on Good Friday this year, where I had to take a cross-town trip and Waze was telling my Bolt driver that it would take 2h+ (and trying to make them avoid all large roads), when in reality and in Google Maps, the city was essentially empty and the trip took ~30 minutes.
The 2h+ estimate was definitely correct for a normal day, but that day was part of a long weekend and no one was around, and yet Waze had absolutely no idea. Even on normal days, it typically significantly overestimates how long rush hour lasts by at least another hour.
Maybe this is somehow specific to my city, but at least it shows that in some places Google Maps and Waze use significantly different data (or weigh different sources very differently).
"Always" as in mIRC. I jest, but in software it often does make sense to consider a decade to be solid lifecycle. LTS releases of Ubuntu live the order of a decade [0], for example. Consider any existence beyond that to be a reincarnation.
But we should find a better way to describe this than using language like "always" and "forever"...
I started using mIRC as a teenager, I had almost no money so used pirated versions. Many years later, since the program gave me many hours of enjoyment (and through it I had the first conversations the person who is now my wife, no less!), I bought a couple of licenses because I felt I owed it to the devs.
I don't regret doing that, of course... but there's no way I'll be renewing my lifetime licenses. The contract I signed gave me a lifetime right to use the software so my understanding is that if the dev wants to remove that right from me, it's completely legitimate to resort to piracy, and I doubt a court could say otherwise.
You can send him an e-mail and get an extended license. Not saying he's right or wrong, but it's not like anyone lost their access, or future updates of the product here.
Besides the brand? I don’t drive but I know plenty of people who use Waze as the “car gps” but gMaps as the “search engine for places”.
Even if it’s just a GUI, different apps get you different experiences, and if you succeed it’s a bigger % of phone usage. People who mentally treat ___location searching and navigation as separate tasks (worthy of separate apps) are at risk of leaving for a competitor. So build two tools specific to each use case. It’s the Unix way.
I don’t know if this is the case, but it’s likely there is some left over legal issues to wrt user data.
Yeah Waze is just such a different experience for me. I haven't noticed the "riskier driving" mentioned by others in this thread but in Waze I find the voices friendlier in the languages I speak, giving instructions more often timing them better. Also you have the aspect of seeing other Waze users on the road, giving the app a cozier familiar feeling in a way. The ads suck though but oh well
Use case - Road warrior who spends around 3 months a year traveling in various areas of the US, 50/50 urban areas vs rural or very small towns.
I find the Waze experience on Carplay to be far superior to Gmaps. I prefer how it provides access to the key features like reporting/voice prompt, the size/position/color how things are displayed, etc. The level of detail (surrounding streets and landmarks) is more useful on Waze.
My experience has been that Waze seems to have better traffic prediction and avoidance in the areas I use it. Just last night I was following a cow orker from the plant we were working at to a restaurant about 30 mins away. We were right behind each other when my Waze suggested taking the exit and following a different route than my friend. I arrived at the restaurant a good 5 minutes before him, I asked, and he was using gmaps.
From my experience Waze always optimized for getting to the destination as fast as possible, which I really liked. Other navigations like to keep instructions simple and keep you on the large roads, Waze has no problem routing you through 10 extra instructions to save a minute.
Disclaimer: I haven't used Waze in years so this might have changed.
I'm not sure it is a compelling justification to have two whole separate apps but Waze's pitch seems to be "we'll send you down all the little residential streets to save a minute or two" and Google Maps is more conventional.
> What’s the benefit of Waze being a separate app at this point besides the brand name? Why not just fold it into the main Maps app?
There are differences in my region which make me think that the apps have different mapping and routing engines.
Turn by turn dirrections and road condition information are much more accurate in Waze. There's a larger Waze local community that helps keep maps up to date.
We do use Google Maps, but mostly as a Yellow Pages substitute or for checking business opening time.
Then Google should add those features to its main product. It seems idiotic for Google to maintain two maps products like this--and has been for years.
I'll give you two extremes:
- a grandma who is not that comfortable driving, not that comfortable with technology, etc. and is never in a rush.
- a urban taxi driver whose livelihood depends on hustling to destinations as quickly as possible, even through trickier driving scenarios.
If I told you one uses Maps and one uses Waze, could you guess which one is likely which? That's the two use cases.
On a technical level I agree this can be an option. On a product positioning level that's not how it works in general. You buy/chose a product based on it's overall feel.
There's a reason minivans don't come with an option for supercharged v12 engines. In theory you can say that people can just "not chose that option" but there's something deeper about how the product is positioned in the market there.
Just like you wouldn't expect an option on a minivan for drag racing mode, you don't expect an option for crazy routing on a mainstream app. Grandma can activated it by accident and cause huge traffic trying to make some impossible left turn. It's not worth it.
Or rather, the group of people in Google who are in charge of this product are reaching the conclusion that it's not the same thing. I don't know the details of their thinking,I can just come up with my own thinking for why it could make sense.
Oh I can tell you pretty much exactly their thinking. If Google folds the functions of their products into another product/team, a number of them are going to have to find a new role. I think you'll be hard put to find a product manager or development team that goes "Eh, we should just kill my product. The competing product is better for most people."
Funny enough as an eng manager and later a product manager, I've argued (and won, once) that my product shouldn't exist. I got promoted for that :)
But more to the point, devs and PMs have managers and at some point, some manager is "paying" for both products and must be weighing the pros and cons of consolidation vs separation.
Waze used to route you on the fastest route regardless of how private or rich a neighborhood is. Don't know if that's the still the case, but Google maps definitely doesn't give you the absolute fastest route, but rather the fastest route that takes major roads.
Could be related to Braess's paradox? In this case "adding lanes" would be "increased routing"
> [The] idea was that if each driver is making the optimal self-interested decision as to which route is quickest, a shortcut could be chosen too often for drivers to have the shortest travel times possible.
Personally I'd rather not go through neighborhoods for just a tiny micro-optimization because of how much more "work/attention" is required given the increased pedestrian traffic.
Could this be simply a case of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few"?.
For example I live near a busy road during "rush hour" in the morning and evenings. A few mins up the road from me 2 major roads intersect which causes more hassle during these peak times. Now If you are travelling West to East to wish to turn right at the intersection to continue your journey south its quicker during those times to cut though my neighborhood (and same in the other direction) and cut out the queues leading up to the intersection. However my neighborhood's roads are not designed for that much traffic to flow though them (cars parked in the street narrowing the roads and reducing visablity of pedestrians esp kids playing outside).
The handful of locals that travel though the neighborhood to get home (live one side but enter the other) are fine however if Google Maps routed everyone wishing to make that turn though the neighborhood it would make the neighborhoods roads much less friendly to the pedestrians of the neighborhood esp at times kids are going to school or are back home from school and playing outside.
Keeping the through traffic to the major roads keeps everyone safer, and actually faster overall because the major roads aren't littered with cards parked in the road creating bottlenecks.
Much like how the london underground lies to travellers and routes them around long detours during busy periods to help prevent a crush if they all went the shortest & fastest route possible - https://youtu.be/IrHRQSm6LIs?t=57
Not really my experience. Seems to depend what "mood" Google Maps is in. I've definitely had it take me on circuitous routes even with recent snow which almost always makes the circuitous routes worse. If you somewhat know the area you can of course usually override.
In France, Waze is essentially a speed trap detector, I am sure it is the biggest use case, more than navigation. Maps don't do that.
The thing is: what Waze does is borderline illegal, and it is regularly updated to still do its thing without getting struck down. Google Maps is "cleaner", and therefore much worse at detecting speed traps. I guess the questionable legality is a good reason for keeping these apps separate.
Many people still use Waze for getting live traffic updates on a roadtrip (object on road, police speed trap ahead). I don't think those features were fully incorporated into Maps.
> Many people still use Waze for getting live traffic updates on a roadtrip (object on road, police speed trap ahead).
Once I showed my father-in-law the "police reported ahead" and "hazard reported ahead" features he was sold. He now demands Waze on every road trip and he's not especially tech-savvy. Google doesn't supply this same data.
I can confirm that it is 100% not the case on iOS. There is not a way to report these things on the CarPlay app at all, and only very occasionally will there be a "speed trap" alert on Google Maps.
That's exclusively a "not implemented in CarPlay" thing, the feature is very obviously supported in iOS; it even has its own "bubble" in the main UX while navigating.
It's crowdsourced, so it depends on another Waze user having spotted them and put a report in the app, so the usefulness his highly dependent on how many other Waze users are in the area.
Never understood this either. Even if they need to be separate apps on user devices for brand / user / other reasons, seems like they should be light skins on top of the same core app. Amazing it took 10 years to combine the teams.
gMaps has really bad direction detection imo, Waze is fantastic. Every time I use gMaps it gets very confused about where I’m facing and will randomly assume I’m turning left or right, I’ve seen this happen on both iOS and android, Samsung, LG, and Pixel, since gMaps started having turn by turn directions. Idk what gMaps is doing wrong but it’s really annoying.
Having separate apps is better for users. I personally find Waze way better than maps for driving (it's still crap mind) - whatever your opinion about their relationship merits, consolidation will remove choice.
It doesn't surprise me that Google's doing it, what's the point in having a monopoly if you can't use it to your advantage. It's not good for users though.
Very insightful post. And as much as a reader might think it highlights dysfunction at Google, the continued growth and success of Waze within Google argues otherwise.
> Work life balance. When I was growing up in Tech in the ‘90’s - there was no such thing as work life balance. We loved what we did and wanted to succeed so we worked like crazy to achieve great things.
Because remember, it's only "actual work" when this guy is doing it
> Young people want it all - they want to get promoted quickly, achieve economic independence, feel fulfilled at Work, be home early, not miss the Yoga class at 11:00am etc. Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it's the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy.
Based off of my own personal experiences, the yoga instructor thing is a gross misrepresentation. Not only this, but a highly dismissive, caricatured way of talking about people you work with
> I have always been a pretty passionate guy, especially at Waze. After the acquisition, I was invited to speak on many different Google panels and events and very quickly, I began racking up my HR complaints. I used a four letter word, my analogy was not PC, my language was not PG… I actually stopped speaking at events where the majority appreciated what I was saying but the minority that was offended by something (words and not content) made it a pain.
I wonder if it ever crossed this guy's mind that maybe he is the problem. At least he's broadcasting his own entitlement under his own name for everyone to see
Nah, he is actually right. Tony Fadell agrees with him too (hid book has a full chapter on it).
He is not PC in his language, but he is direct. I feel like more people are responding to his phrasing, not the message.
Building products requires focus and intencity. Staying human and healthy requires taking time off. Both things need ti be balanced, Google not necessarily does it the right way.
> You need to be able to answer the "what have I done for our users today" question with "not much but I got promoted" and be happy with that answer to be successful in Corp-Tech.
As a long-time Googler with very mixed feelings, I feel this deeply.
This feels a little disingenuous. I get what he’s saying. He wants a “sprint and rest” type of environment rather than “always jogging” type of environment. His statements on employee entitlement generally resonate with me at a similar company, same with the overall privacy/regulatory stuff, which is a bureaucratic nightmare (like you want to ship a small button change that is delayed 3 months because it needs to go through needless reviews).
If he were able to ignore various regulatory compliance issues that Google insisted he follow, Google would have likely faced some pretty serious fines.
If Waze had stayed independent and done so, it would likely be destined for a consent decree with the FTC.
Either way his life would have gotten a lot worse--he just experienced the pain via corporate insistent, rather than direct governmental influence.
A lot of conclusions in your comment based on assumptions that are not supported by anything I’m aware of. I read his statements as “dealing with an extra level of inefficient bureaucracy every day is annoying”, not “these pesky lawyers won’t let me do risky things”
I don't see the "rest" part. At most, usually the business owners get some rest, while employees continue the usual work. "Rest" is not a synonym of "not working on weekends".
> The worst thing is that this was inline with the policies and norms - I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected some level of personal sacrifice when needed. I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.
You're making map app dude, week later or earlier on a feature won't save the world
I'm actually glad to see these responses here, because I have the exact opposite feelings, and I think it highlights a huge generational disconnect.
I agree with the author. It is somewhat shocking to me that so many employees in tech feel, or at least project, that being available during normal working hours is "kinda optional". And to be clear, I'm not talking about someone that has a real emergency. But to have the expectation that one should be available between 9-5ish is somehow considered "toxic" is just baffling to me. I'd also highlight that many professions, e.g. those that have shift work, are nowhere near as lax.
He's not arguing for a regular 9-5 Mon-Fri, he's arguing against weekends and personal days. He expected "personal sacrifice" on the part of employees and was frustrated that Google didn't. That's not a generational mindset, it's a modern startup mindset that was out of place in an established company like Google.
Here's the full quote:
> Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it's the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy. The worst thing is that this was inline with the policies and norms - I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected some level of personal sacrifice when needed. I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.
> I'd also highlight that many professions, e.g. those that have shift work, are nowhere near as lax.
We have two groups of people - tech workers who have a generally great working environment, and shift workers who do not. The idea that in our advanced society we should base our expectations on those who are currently doing worse is frankly absurd. Our aim should be for _everyone_ to have the work-life balance that tech workers have now.
> Our aim should be for _everyone_ to have the work-life balance that tech workers have now.
With what, a magic wand? There is the fundamental difference that, for shift work, every employee who is out needs to be replaced by someone else. And it's not just a low-skilled workers issue, for example the same dynamic exists in say doctor groups or pilots. With tech/project-based work, if someone is out it's not like someone else needs to cover for that timeslot.
But just, at a more fundamental level, basically saying "you are expected to be available for your job at particular times" is an expectation for which there is considerable disagreement between generations.
> But to have the expectation that one should be available between 9-5ish is somehow considered "toxic" is just baffling to me. I'd also highlight that many professions, e.g. those that have shift work, are nowhere near as lax.
Right, because everyone should be stuck in traffic to work at 9AM, marvellous idea.
It baffles me that it appears to be so hard for managers to just schedule meeting at 11 instead of 9
I didn't imply that it had to be in-office, so not sure where you got "everyone should be stuck in traffic".
As to "It baffles me that it appears to be so hard for managers to just schedule meeting at 11 instead of 9", this is the exact point I'm getting at. Why is it somehow hard for people to be available at 9? Having been a manager, it's much more difficult to juggle 15 different individualized schedules when you need to have a meeting with a couple people.
So get out as fast as you can reasonably can after your startup is acquired by a company like Google. Droning on for money sounds pretty good to a lot of people.
People generally need to feel stable in the middle before reaching for self-actualization.
For people who grew up on the lower half of the household income or wealth distribution, it takes many years of FAANG comp to feel stable there.
It’s a big privilege to risk your career in the pursuit of self-actualization. Not in the sense that one should be ashamed of it, but in the sense that it’s prudent not to look down on people for declining to take it.
The marginal $300k/year is worth significantly more impactful for most people than the expected returns of pursing of self-actualization-through-work. I think most people would rather have a secure income and seek self-actualization outside of work — in their family life or hobbies.
So I take it that your current workplace, which is somewhere that you do prefer to work at, resembles pre-acquisition Waze? Or why else would you want to work there?
And according to your bio is Dropbox? Well good thing you let the whole HN know that Dropbox is toxic to work at.
No, my current workplace isn't much like where I'd like to work eventually. But it's fine for now. I'll eventually work somewhere smaller and less corporate. Dropbox is much like Google by the sound of it. Probably better, and would be worse if acquired by an even larger company, but who knows.
But you're the one equating a bunch of stuff with toxicity, just keep in mind that that is not a universal equivalence, it's your opinion.
(Although for the record I don't _completely_ agree with the guy. Obviously work-life balance is a good thing. But much of the other stuff resonates.)
Different people have different priorities when it comes to choosing a place to work. For some, a stable and secure company like Google might be the best option, while others might prefer a more dynamic and fast-growing company like Waze. It really depends on what you're looking for in a job. I know that I had periods in my life when I would prioritise one over the other and vice-versa.
The biggest problem arises when a workplace has a mix of employees who have different motivations and goals. Some may be content with just doing their job and going home, while others may be ambitious and want to do great things. This can lead to resentment and hostility when these different perspectives clash. It's the role of the HR department and recruitment to make sure you don't get too many outliers in any direction, but alas those are often doing really poor job with this. Not to mention that the quality of "being a good fit" has been branded "problematic" so it's often not even taken into account.
As the economy moves from a period of growth to a recession, the balance of motivations and goals among employees is likely to shift. And the amount of entitlement will reduce.
>> (Not in Silicon Valley, but...) I have never regretted sacrificing work for life.
That sounds like you're striking a balance. Obviously, if you "sacrifice" work too much, eventually you won't be able to afford your life, either because you'll be fired or your lax employer will suffer and not be able to pay.
The founder guy who complains about not been able to fire people that easily and at the same time that people don't care too much about the mission of the team is just too much for me. I'm glad he doesn't work at G anymore.
> And as much as a reader might think it highlights dysfunction at Google, the continued growth and success of Waze within Google argues otherwise.
Some of the most dysfunctional work environments I've worked in followed periods of great business success. The marketplace success can obscure a slow descent into workplace dysfunction. When the profits are rolling in, it's easy to have large swaths of dysfunctional managers and teams blend in, and nobody is looking too hard. It's when the profits come back to earth that the teams are forced to excise the dysfunction or face failure.
Yeah; it really is an insightful post (as are the sibling comments here). I kind of want to have people write a response to that essay in lieu of whiteboard coding now.
Anyway, at all jobs (so far) I've deeply cared about the quality of our product and the company bottom line, which explains why I'm invariably miserable at big company jobs.
I can actually think back to explicit feedback when I was passed up for a promotion that boiled down to "improve brown nosing skills, even if it puts the core business at risk".
The core business at that particular former employer is imploding; I'm long gone, as are 90% of the people I'd like to work with again (many left for similar reasons).
Anyway, there were lots of forehead slapping moments for me while I read that post.
Having said that, the main insight was the central thesis of Office Space. Same shit, different horse, I guess.
You see this at hyper growth startups, where founding team / seed stage hires work nights and weekends, while complaining loudly about the people hired at series A/B who are logging off at 5pm (and who stand to make 1/10 or 1/100 the equity exit but might be paid 10-30% more on a cash basis).
Early stage equity is one hell of a drug.
As a founder/manager, it’s irrational to expect anything other than fundamentally different levels of output from each “ring” of growth on the tree, because the inputs are very different. Anybody would work much harder for inter generational wealth than they would for a cool $500k. It’s shocking how common it is for early people to project their personal expectations on others and experience dissonance as a result.
Success of a product is only tangentially related to how much of a pain in the ass a place is to work for. Even less so when you are talking about a multi-billion dollar market leader like Google.
If anyone at Gooogle is wondering why they are going through this pain or might have been fired it is because TCI, which is an activist hedge fund, decided they want to make more money and they have a giant share of ownership of Alphabet stock.
TCI sent Google a letter [1] telling them they need to cut people to get higher margins (>40%) as well as pay the investors more (stock buybacks).
Google is choosing to do what this group of investors says instead of supporting it's employees.
Edit: This data came from me asking myself of the headline "ok who is it that is putting "Pressure to Cut Costs" on Google." Luckily TCI made it really clear
They can send all the letters they want. Larry & Sergey have controlling interest[0] in Alphabet and can very much decide to ignore any of this if they want. In effect, TCI can't compel them to do anything they don't want to do.
I think merging Waze and Google Maps teams is actually smart, whether it cuts cost or not seems like they have similar goals as a product.
That said, doesn't mean Alphabet won't head some investors letters or something, so its always possible
I can’t comment on Google specifically but it is possible to have de jure controlling interest, while another party has de facto control because they can threaten to unload a huge position and tank the price.
Even in that scenario, the people making that threat are not actually in control. The ones with control are choosing to do this, rather than lose money.
These people are not forced to make more money at the expense of others. It's their choice.
If the threat is that unloading a position will cause a dip in shareholder value of $X, but those actually in control believe their own thesis and operating model is worth more than $X, then they can choose to weather the storm, believing their way will negate the loss of $X.
If they really don't have an answer to the activist investor's thesis, then yea, they'll roll over.
But it completely ignores the commercial reality: 10% of your holdings making a move is sometimes enough to swing a board decision. Look at AGL in Australia and the recent play by Grok ventures. Nothing like 50% + 1. They moved the mountain.
You are conflating control with influence. Control is the ability to make a unilateral decision, consequences be damned. Influence is the ability to impose costs and benefits on a decision maker so that they do what you want
No disagree but also.. this is nitpicking. Everyone reading the flow knows what was meant here: change was effected by a significant minority of shareholders exerting influence. You would not be wrong saying colloquially "they were made to" or "had to" even though legally no force exists. Well clearly to a nitpicker you would be wrong, but half the room is now rolling their eyes.
Yes 10% of your company being sold at once would be alarming. Thing is TCI does not have anything like that much. They have ~0.5% of the equity and less than 0.5% of the votes.
They're still one relatively teeny investor in a company with a gargantuan market cap. Nobody really cares that much whether they hold or sell.
More likely, though I haven't read their letter in depth, is that their beliefs actually aren't that far out there - I mean, you probably aren't going to get pushback from anyone if you say "Google is bloated and needs to trim and focus". So they write a letter and make some noise, and then when Google makes some rather unsurprising changes they can say something like "look how influential and prescient we are", and that has value in the investment world.
I recently created an account on Waze and it was quite a challenge. Kept giving me errors, and giving me impossible instructions. It was one of the jankiest/most broken experience I've had in an Android app.
Then in my last trip I tried using it to find gas stations on my drive and it was a huge pain in the ass. It was once again impressive in how bad it was.
Waze has some nice features, but it's janky af. Google Maps is considerably better in almost every way. Waze is useful to see speed traps and has more information about gas prices. (Much less helpful in getting you TO those gas stations, though.)
I do not think it is much better. I like Waze when I want to aggressively avoid traffic when driving. But Waze doesn't let me save offline maps. Also, I think Google Maps might have better voice navigation when it comes to specific lanes. It depends on the roads and map updates, but Waze might tell you to turn left, but Google Maps might tell you to "use the second from the right lane to turn left".
I'll usually load up waze in the car and have it sitting where I can see it, but I never ask for directions because I know where I'm going. It'll warn me about bad shit on the road ahead of me, saved my ass a couple times by telling me to decelerate from ramming speed to normal speed.
I would never use anything other than driving directions
I only walk to and from my car, and i do not own a bike, and if a business does not have parking less than 300ft from the door I am going to a different business
Google generally is poor for hiking trails etc. Use Open Street Maps in that case. (Which isn't perfect but is at least better given there's no money for Google in better hiking trail maps.)
Not dissing on you by any means, it’s just crazy to me how different this is than London. My train station in Surrey is a good 1.3km walk from my home, but all of my neighbors do the exact same thing.
Waze: 4 out of 5 scary Uber drivers who drive aggressively, abruptly turn on to obscure side streets at the first sight of another vehicle, and blare the navigation voice as loud as possible on their smartphone speakers choose Waze.
Seriously, Google Maps being a all-caps TERRIBLE app? Come on. It's basically the gold standard.
In my experience, Waze is more about the perception of progress - it optimizes for reducing the amount of time you are _waiting_, sometimes at the expense of _progress_.
In NYC, it often makes absurd suggestions - I once got in an uber on 33rd and 2nd trying to get to penn station on 31st and 7th avenue. Far and away the most straightforward path is to head west on 31st street all the way to 7th avenue, but there's always a backup between 5th ave and 7th avenue - but that's still the fastest route. Waze directed the uber to head north on 3rd avenue to 39th street, head west, make a left on 5th avenue, then make a right on 35th, then make a left on 7th. It took twice as long, but we were always moving - it just wasn't taking into account how long it can take to make a turn on nyc streets.
I'm guessing it's a preference setting at this point, Waze was acquired long ago and they should have the same information to pick a route.
Waze seems more willing to save time even if the path gets more complicated. Maps on the other hand even exposes a "greener" path that minimizes fuel when it won't cost too much time.
Related question here, do you know if they have done anything public with that data besides showing you a speed trap in real time? Like are there any summary maps of where speed traps typically occur?
Yeah but different teams, different goals. With this news, I give it a year or two before Waze is shut down and only a few Waze features are added to Maps. Nothing good will come from this.
Yes, I know. And when that happened, there was a sharp drop in quality in Google Maps as they tried to add Waze features into Google Maps. I can imagine the same drop in quality in Waze if Google starts doing Google things to it.
Their fiduciary responsibility is not to defraud the shareholders. Milton Friedman’s idea that management’s only constituency is the shareholders is not actually a matter of law.
Management can just say “in our judgement X is the right thing to do, not Y”. Google is too big for TCI to try to gain control over.
The wikipedia page pretty accurately summarizes why Dodge v. Ford isn't really a useful citation.
Firstly, if an executive says "we believe this is in the interest of long-term shareholder value", the courts basically just defer to their judgement. You can't get the courts to run a company for you.
And second, the precedent has been softened since 1916 (or wasn't even true at the time), and for example some corporations like B-corps explicitly reject it, without any legal consequences.
No, you are very incorrect here. I am sorry to say that you fell for some spicy headlines, and there is no evidence to suggest TCI's letter had anything to do with this restructing.
TCI has a trivial stake in Google — at most, less than half of one percent of the company[0]. By voting shares, Larry and Sergey alone control >50% voting power[1]. TCI has nowhere near enough influence to move the needle in any appreciable way here.
[0] $6B / $1200B market cap (edit: to clarify, this is an upper limit, in practice it's even less because of super-voting shares owned by the founders)
No, I don't believe I am. Can you clarify what you think I've mixed up?
Class A shares (such as TCI have) have regular voting rights. Class B shares (such as Larry and Sergey have) have 10x voting rights. Thus, as I understand it, TCI's voting voting power is at most roughly ~0.5. In practice, it's way less than that due to all the class B shares[0], reinforcing my point.
>GuruFocus data, as of 29 November 2022, revealed that 59.13% of Alphabet’s stock was owned by insiders, including the two founders, while 22.21% of common shares were owned by institutions including brokerage firms, hedge funds, pension funds and asset management companies.
Wow, I seriously never thought Google would be vulnerable to activist investor actions because it's market cap is too big and its shareholders too idealistic. I'm still not sure that's not the case? Activist investors are sending letters all the time, and it's not a given that they are taken seriously, only if a shareholder vote would approve of their company policy goals. How do you know that TCI has a serious chance of that happening? If not then it's likely that Google's leadership just ignores it.
What is the angle then for them sending such a letter then? I’m just curious who TCI is and what their deal is? Are they just myopic or is this a publicity stunt?
Investor desires congeal into a messy influence on the company. An investor pushing on the company helps direct that blob of influence a little bit.
It’s like when you’re annoyed about something local government is doing and you show up with 50 other people also annoyed. Now you’re part of a news story and a stakeholder faction. But you all got there because of your individual desires.
Also, the letter is a public artifact. The investor is also meeting formally and/or informally with Google or individual directors.
They do actually want people to act on their letter. This is the same as an analyst in an earnings calls saying "hey can you slow HC growth even faster?" They've got an opinion and put it out there.
But there is no evidence that this change is related to their letter (especially since none of the changes made in this case match any of the specific requests in the letter).
"Google Combines Maps and Waze Teams Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"
"...as the search giant faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs."
"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high."
Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?
>Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?
What a masterclass in logical fallacies.
The implication of the article is that generally investors think Google is too liberal on spending (anecdotally, I will tell you this sentiment is very real).
The WSJ used a specific and public example of someone putting that into writing, but if you think a non-Top 20 shareholder can convince Google to do something (that Google doesn't believe most of its shareholders want), then you really don't understand how corporate governance works.
Even the more aggressive well-known activists rely on the idea that they can convince more than 51% of shareholders to agree with them
Google is doing this because it thinks the majority of shareholders agree with it, otherwise they'd tell TCI to kick rocks (as often happens with activists, Google knows that no-one can actually buy enough shares to influence their management decisions, unlike some SMID caps.)
>Google is doing this because it thinks the majority of shareholders agree with it, otherwise they'd tell TCI to kick rocks (as often happens with activists, Google knows that no-one can actually buy enough shares to influence their management decisions, unlike some SMID caps.)
I'm glad we agree. That's almost precisely the argument I made throughout this entire thread.
>Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?
That's a misrepresentation of what the WSJ piece says. All the article is doing there is highlighting that there has been external pressure on Google to cut costs.
The excerpt you highlighted points out TCI's request for reduced headcount, while a few paragraphs earlier, the article says that there is no plan to reduce headcount.
> Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?
Yes. In fact its off base enough that I don't think they actually make that claim in the article.
TCI holds something like .5% of alphabet market cap, that's less than is held by multiple individual human investors in Google, and likely less than rank-and-file employees hold collectively. It'd be weird to pay any attention to such a group.
General economic conditions--many companies thought that the pandemic bump would last forever and planned spending that way. It hasn't, so they adjust spending. It doesn't take an activist investor or outside consultants or anything to look at your numbers and the trendline, and then decide to adjust your business according to what you see.
Yes, I have read so many news articles about Google that are trying to tenuously piece together a narrative where there isn’t one. An investor with 0.5% of outstanding shares and effectively 0 voting power can’t make Google do anything. They can post pdfs and work the PR machine (which hates Google because news media sees Google and Facebook as their main competitors for revenue ie ads), and WSJ can try to link the two, but that doesn’t imply any causality
I suspect you mean, "at that point", talking about after "the coming months". If you do indeed mean today (at this point), then I'm actually curious why you think forming the opinion now isn't hasty.
That is very understandable, even many native speakers get the same sorts of things confused. Your comment just didn't seem so controversial as the lighter text suggested so I was hoping to clear that up. Thanks for confirming!
They don't need to do a layoff to do a layoff. If you just set the (new) HC to 0 or significantly below replacement rate, you get reduction in staff just due to churn. When teams are sizeable, even with very low churn they lose employees over time. And then if you are more insidious, you can start introducing unpopular measures "in the name of business" that increase churn.
I am saying that this move is largely unrelated to the TCI memo. The WSJ article goes further:
>In September, Mr. Pichai said he wanted Google to become 20% more productive and indicated the company could merge teams working on overlapping products.
TCI's memo highlights five areas they think need to be adjusted, none of which Alphabet acquiesced to with this restructuring.
To be frank: don't know, don't care, and I don't need to have an answer to that question in order to be able to disagree with your original point. You came to this thread telling Googlers that the blame for this lies with TCI. I was curious, so I read TCI's memo and the WSJ piece. Now that I've done so, I simply find your assertion far-fetched, for these differences:
TCI
- Sent letter to Alphabet in mid-November
- Holds a mere .5% of Alphabet's market cap
- Asked for headcount reduction
- Asked Alphabet to pay employees less
Alphabet
- Publicly commented in September that they intended to combine overlapping groups
- Combined overlapping groups
- Didn't lay anyone off
That's it. At this point, given your slightly elevated tone in your most recent responses, it's starting to feel as though you began commenting with an axe to grind, and are now left holding an axe but are unsure what you should do with it. Maybe just put it down?
The genesis here was me keying off of related phrases within the WSJ piece:
"...Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"
"...faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs"
Ok, great. So, my question is where is this pressure coming from?
"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high"
This is the WSJ suggesting that there is a link (granted they do not give confidence intervals) between these things. You could argue that perhaps WSJ is just poorly suggesting that there is a general "background radiation" of "pressure" related to Google.
So it's not like I'm just fabricating this link :)
But since you asked, the larger point and the particular axe I have to grind (that is permanently attached to my hand) is that investors have more power than the collective google employees do, do not have employee interests in mind at all, and Google management and the board will always align with investors NOT employees.
If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave? Knowing Google, I find it hard to believe that Waze under the Google maps lead will get resources and continue.
> If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave?
You don't have much experience with corporate acquisitions, do you?
The Acquiree CEO always leaves after a year or three, unless Acquirer is a company like Cisco that's really good at it. Why?
Because Acquirer has middle manager drones, who continually complain about the how Acquiree is not "aligning with our strategy." Eventually, Acquiree's CEO gets sick of it and quits.
But you're right - they won't maintain it as a separate app. Because those drones can wear anyone out.
They won't. I was in Google Maps. They bought Zagat -- remember them? They had the best restaurant reviews in the U.S. pre-Internet. How much have you heard of them lately
Zagat was a loss. But it was also basically a creature of a different era when foodies filled out paper surveys and the results were a pretty decent guide for other foodies. Once it was opened up to the plebes, the results got increasingly bad for that audience as everything got more and more algorithmic. (And, yes, it sort of hung on for a while but it deteriorated more and more.)
Not sure what Google ultimately got out of Zagat rather than maybe a bit of kickstart for restaurant ratings.
My dad, who was an executive at a large non-tech company, used to get restaurant recommendations by calling the restaurant critic at the city's newspaper. Different times in a much less scalable world.
Its a big problem these funds that are essentially custodians are taking their customers voting power to break corporations to their will. Needs to be legislation that curbs this as many others have been saying.
I'm tempted to say "they're the owners, that means they have the votes."
Which is true. And "many others" is a vapid, meaningless phrase.
However, proxies are voted in accordance with the "recommendations" of a very few advisory firms. That means that if you buy 10 million dollars worth of ETFs, all of those many, many shares are voted without your input. I'd certainly support legislation to give the "final" owners of those shares the right to vote the proxies themselves.
'highest paid employee' usually means 'has arranged ones personal financial affairs badly'.
In the UK, being a salaried employee means you pay a rather high rate of tax, compared to other schemes used by rich people - like for example having some of the work done as charitable work, having mostly stock, getting paid via a company, etc.
Another explanation might be that tech companies are doing poorly in general at the moment, and Google is one of the few companies that hasn't done mass layoffs yet.
That's not "another explanation" that's the exact dynamic:
TCI, who do not actually run the business, are threatening the CEO (addressed to Sundar) that they will move their money if Google doesn't do what they say - namely cut costs etc...
Is it more likely that TCI investors know how better to run Google than Google does or that they don't care and are blindly seeking alpha with no care for the people that run it?
You can generalize that to say the average HN reader knows how to run anything better.
90% of management is equal to or worse than calling random() to make decisions. If the margins are large enough, and the competition is asleep, anyone can be a successful CEO.
> TCI, who do not actually run the business, are threatening the CEO (addressed to Sundar) that they will move their money if Google doesn't do what they say - namely cut costs etc...
What does "move their money" technically mean in this situation? Google is not a bank, they don't keep TCI's money. Is this a threat of tanking the stock price by selling all $6B at once? TCI would hurt themselves too if they do that.
>What does "move their money" technically mean in this situation?
Sell GOOG and buy META (or whatever)
>Is this a threat of tanking the stock price by selling all $6B at once? TCI would hurt themselves too if they do that.
The act of liquidating their position is what reduces the price. So they drop their ask to the lowest bid price that liquidates their position net positive and in theory that action would cause a price cascade. It's a threat, not a guarantee.
Yeah, the tech stock games around ownership vs control are real, and it's unlikely that GOOG owners can assert direct control. Still, if the company fails to listen to GOOG owners, the price will drop, almost as a matter of course.
Probably a bit of both but yes the rate hikes have been especially hard on tech. I think it is also a reasonable question why Google needs to have two competing products that do the exact same thing.
They're two products that ostensibly do the same thing. And, if your answer is WELL, having a separate product like Waze lets us do slightly (arguably) sketchy things like route people through residential neighborhood streets with pedestrians to save 30 seconds or flag police speed traps, I'm not sympathetic. Do or not do but own it in either case. It's the same company.
Is it true that tech companies are doing poorly or is it something else, like the free money is nowhere around and tech companies are now expected to actually make money like a traditional company?
The story seems about the same everywhere: When money was pouring and people were spending more time on their devices than usual, the projection was that people will just resign from the physical world and live in VR so hire as many people as possible but that projection looks silly now.
Google’s profitability came down as well. This affects the stock price, this in turn affects employees (not just hedge funds are invested in the stock, employees get a lot of their salary that way)
This creates a pressure on Google to try and raise their profitability, and one way to do that is cut on areas where it seems wasteful.
The letter mentioned above is just a trailing sign of this in my opinion.
TCI owns much less Google stock than employees do. Larry, Sergey, and Eric still have most of the voting rights.
TCI is making the news for being an activist investor calling for layoffs because 1) the media is frothing at the opportunity to announce Google layoffs, even though none have been announced 2) the goal of an activist investor is to drum up support to make their activist wish happen.
That's pretty normal communication from investors. Everyone cuts costs, so some of yours will see a chance to make you do the same. I would be very surprised if Sundar loses sleep over this pdf.
Source: been on receiving end of such messages (bit smaller endeavor than Google though :-)).
Nobody is arguing that Google is not legally allowed to do this. People here merely argue that it's not a smart business move to make employees unhappy when the company has spent (and wants to spend in the future) lots of money to make and keep employees happy. Google is not a shoe producer or Cobalt mine in case you haven't noticed.
The usual short-term thinking. Get more money quickly at the cost of the first major layoffs that demoralizes the company leading to nasty internal politics, gradually destroying the company from within.
Google has no expectation to “support its employees” by employing them unnecessarily. It’s not a jobs program. Frankly the fact that Waze is a separate org NINE YEARS after acquisition is astonishing and would only be justified if there were strategic reasons for doing so.
Counterpoint - Google employees get a large portion of their compensation in stock, particularly in upper management, and consequently have incentive enough to keep the share price high on their own.
They're careerist, not bored. The promotion process at Google is how you advance your career, and shipping new applications and features is how you get promoted.
Larry and Sergei do not have to listen to owners. They can do whatever they want as long as they can credibly claim they believed it was good for the company in some sense.
Also, are letters like this normal? I have never seen a letter like this, but you always hear that all shareholders care about is money. And yet, here we are with a letter that brazenly says something just below “fuck all employees, we want more money just because we have you some money”. I mean, part of their argument is some random person’s quote that companies could be smaller. For one, that’s a weak and amateur argument for an investor to make. And sure, that’s probably true, but the tone of this email is extremely flippant towards anyone that isn’t themselves.
If TCI had a legit gripe it would be that too much revenue comes from one source (advertising, which at over 80% is indeed dangerously high). Google is lazily doing things to address that, but not trying that hard.
Google actually has three classes of shares. Class A common stock with normal voting rights, listed as GOOGL, Class B common stock which has 10x voting rights and over 90% of which is owned by Larry Page Sergey Brin or Eric Schmidt, and Class C capital stock with no voting rights traded under GOOG.
Yes dual class shares means most modern tech companies are de facto dictatorships but that doesnt change the point. Sergey's boss is the shareholders.
This is not theoretical. The most infamous example of one sided dual class shares is Meta. Zuckerberg decided to throw the middle finger to the board and share holders, highest employee growth in FAANG..
He ignored activist shareholder letters like the one from Brad Gerstner and now the stock is collapsing, way beyond the corrections the rest of big tech faced.
He has already began course correction but lets say he instead Zuck decided to double down. You can easily see more rounds of shareholder rout.
What is wrong with that exactly? Investors risk their own money to expect a return. Large investors have a say in the management. Google’s leadership has no obligation to support it’s employees at the expense of its shareholders.
Strange interpretation of ethics you have. So if you invest your money into an enterprise, then it should be OK for management to piss your hard earned cash away to enrich employees? Never mind that in this case, Google’s workers are some of the highest paid, privileged and employable in the world.
No I reject your assertion and assert the opposite. It would be unethical not to fire them.
"Shareholder Primacy" is the biggest most unethical scam that continues to go unchecked as though it were law, which it is most certainly not. It is an unethical and outdated relic of rapacious greed
"On August 19, 2019, 181 CEOs of America’s largest corporations overturned a 22-year-old policy statement that defined a corporation’s principal purpose as maximizing shareholder return" [1]
> continues to go unchecked as though it were law, which it is most certainly not.
On the contrary, Andrew, corporations are chartered through a particular state's corporate code. In every case I'm aware of, the shareholders are the ones who own the company. The "stakeholders" (employees, customers, neighbors) have legally defined rights, which do not include ownership. So it most certainly IS law.
The US Constitution was interpreted by the US Supreme Court to allow corporations to incorporate in the state of their choice, regardless of where their headquarters are. Over the 20th century, most major corporations incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law, which offered lower corporate taxes,
These 181 CEOs: did they have any rule-making authority? Or was that result just the opinion of 181 people?
What about all the corporations and single-proprietor businesses that were not part of that? Or the state of Delaware, whose laws govern most of them? Not to mention the Congress and the courts.
A corporations primary goal is enacting shareholders wishes. You can talk about stakeholders all you want. It’s bullshit. Companies exist to do what shareholders want, and 9 times out of ten that is make as much money as possible.
There is nothing to say that additional stakeholders cannot be added in by law, though. Companies would dump mercury into the rivers to make a buck if the law didn't prohibit it.
Sure, companies follow the law because it's in their long term best interests and doing otherwise would interfere with their ability to make money down the line.
The stock is down over 30% YTD. One of the biggest investor is asking for cutting costs. I understand how this is hard for an employee, but I do not see what's wrong here. If it was your company or you were one of the biggest investor in the company, would be asking to cut costs and focus on efficiency, specially with the last 12 months of hiring and a likely recession to look forward to next year?
Google is still growing revenue YoY despite 2021 being a huge year for online services due to pandemic shifts.
They’re making hundreds of thousands in net profit per full-time employee.
A dumb CEO would do layoffs at this moment. They don’t need to financially, and the morale hit (and lost productivity) could be disastrous for the company.
But yeah, since other companies are doing layoffs, Google should too.
Soon... Waze to be renamed as Google Maps. Old Google Maps will continue to be available for Google Enterprise customers and will continue to be called Google Maps. /s
I still use waze almost exclusively and it's consistently the best way to "plan" a future drive and have a reasonable expectation of traffic and when to leave.
I found this section interesting (of the TCI letter referenced in posts above) and I wonder how much this is factoring into Google exec thinking?
> Reduce losses in Other Bets
> Over the last five years, Other Bets has generated only $3 billion of cumulative revenues but incurred a massive $20 billion of cumulative operating losses.
Alphabet's investments in Other Bets have been unsuccessful. Alphabet should reduce annual operating losses in Other Bets (which we expect to amount to $6 billion this year) by at least 50%.
> The biggest component of Other Bets is Waymo. Unfortunately, enthusiasm for self-driving cars has collapsed and competitors have exited the market. Ford and Volkswagen recently decided to shut down their self-driving car venture, saying: "We have looked at this every way you can and we just see the profitability a long way out." Waymo has not justified its excessive investment and its losses should be reduced dramatically.
And is this kind of thinking just bandwagon, and not potentially accounting for some distinctive performance that Waymo may be on the verge of? (of course, seems like every AV company promises they're on the verge of something breakthrough)
Some day we'll have the technology to report speed traps via CarPlay. I'm guessing that they got a lot of pressure to nerf this feature from law enforcement, as crowdsourcing realtime info on speed traps kinda ruins it for the cops by giving everyone using Google Maps a very powerful long-distance detector.
Well on the technology side, if you use Waze, "some day" is today. There's a big fat "report" button in the lower right hand corner of the CarPlay display, and then you hit the little police dude icon, and off goes your report.
Surprised they didn't merge Waze features into G Maps and discontinue Waze as a separate app long ago (could still have Waze app that's a wrapper around Google Maps)
Eh, I can see why features like 'speed trap reporting' and 'encourage drivers to file congestion reports while driving' might be released under a different brand.
At least here in Spain Google Maps warns of speed cameras and has options for reporting police/congestion, etc. It’s just little icons on the map, though, and it doesn’t actually audible warn you of upcoming cameras.
I like Waze on many things, but it can be a bit sluggish and dated looking. Police reporting, and traffic routes are sometimes just better. You can also chat with a fellow Wazer ahead of you to see what's going on. Google Maps though is generally superior on app performance and any need for walking, mass transit, etc.
In some countries (Romania) they are -- you have to slow to a crawl since they are usually very bumpy. But I agree Waze is too aggressive, since train crossings are always well signaled.
I have been stuck on one way roads at a train crossing for 30 minutes at a time, making me way late for work. So I would actually love that in google maps.
This is an acquisition that should've been blocked. They only bought Waze to kill the competition and making sure no one else buys them. I know Waze did things differently, being much more crowd sourced, but it's not why they bought them.
To be honest, Google Maps has degraded in quality and popularity ever since it came out. Other options have become more popular, so I guess Google is going to combine this with Waze and try and make one final effort to become the best navigation app.
I think this is for the best of Google's interest.
This is great news! It's about time! I was so excited to see the instant, crowdsourced traffic news in the Maps app. I was shocked when they didn't integrate right away. I use Waze for most drives but then have to switch to Maps for better business info
I'm sorry but this UI definitely gives me the vibes and engineer designed it and not somebody well versed in product design. There's so much going on here with clashing typography and elements that I don't even know where to look.
Website is pretty broken on mobile ironically, but will give this a try. Neat how it aggregates ads-b aircraft transponder data. I do wonder what is business model is. Author claims donationware.
I believe highwayradar its mostly for integration with other apps but mostly to connect with radar detectors for seamless integration. There is a fantastic app on rdforum.com that integrates the v1 gen 2 radar detector with the crowd sourced alerts from waze. Ive used it for years and its flawless. The app im referring to is also donation ware.
I'd wager Maps is going to become more real-time, like showing a blob where a current festival is, mapping the trajectory of a scheduled protest, local activities. Like they did with forest fires.
Not sure if this is good or bad, but I hope they've removed the current Google Maps product owner - their maps have sent me down very dangerous roads (especially in France and Poland) - once it tried to send me up the side of a mountain to get to the back of an Obsevatory - rather than via the front door.
They keep doing UX changes which mess with muscle memory, that already make their product more unsafe - rather than improve the product itself.
Please keep in mind, he didn't send you there personally. The algorithm did. I've experienced this several times my self, very frustrating and sometimes even dangerous. I think it's unavoidable if you take into account that they operate on planet-scale. Not saying that they can't do better, but probably it's not "someone's" fault.
The most frustrating thing about Waze is that it doesn't have offline maps. I get that the main selling point is live traffic data, but that's not necessarily an either/or with offline maps.
