this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Headline fix: Google kills the one good thing it has going for it with AI
Search sucks for some time now. I'd say the best thing google offers today is Gmail - but there are plenty of arguments against that too.
Google Maps, their traffic data has no rivals, unlike gmail which has plenty of good competition. It's the one thing I couldn't easily replace yet.
True. I wanted to replace it with OSM or similar, but my main use of Maps after navigation is exploring places, reading reviews, and browsing pictures. They have a database that is tough to replace.
I prefer OSM since I can use the maps offline. Google maps is useless out in the middle of nowhere without any cell service.
Not to discourage usage of OSM at all, but you can absolutely download offline maps on mobile with Google Maps, they've just hidden it a bit. If you tap your account icon in the upper right, a menu pops up that includes offline maps, and it'll let you select boundaries to download.
Its only car routes though, useless for footpaths and public transport
Edit: I may be stupid
It's not only car routes
It has all the path data
Source: I just tested it
Far from any desire to give kudos to Google: Maps does allow offline maps.I had greater London available on my iphone recently, and that worked.
But what if you're not in london
This is a great question.
The obvious answer is to then go to London.
But if you are unable to do so AND have no mobile network, you can download the maps via avian carrier.
Sorry, only London available
If you want to experience offline maps, you gotta go to London
I do the same when I go on vacation. Take an old phone, no cell plan, just use the wireless at the hotel and take the phone as a map and camera. No cell plan means work can't call me, map still works bc of GPS and bc the data is manually downloaded (under profile menu.)
Which makes it good for hiking, and I've found it's better for bike routes too. However, I can't easily search for places to go, there's no recommendations, and generally you need to know the address of the place you're going to (not just a restaurant/bar etc.).
I tried OSM and it completely failed. Downloaded the offline region, loaded it up at home fine. Went to the location and the offline map wouldn't load. Had a connection and tried to load an online map, nothing. Ended up right back using Google maps. I support the concept of OSM, it just doesn't work.
Strange, it's been very very reliable for many years, for me. Did you use OsmAnd?
No, I used solely on my phone. It worked fine at home and looked promising. When I went out 2 days later it wouldn't load anything, was on cell only with excellent 5g data. Tried for about an hour and it just wouldn't load a map.
Uh, but...OsmAnd is a phone app. So you're saying you used the website on your phone's browser, then? I'm not sure if that has an offline function, though I never used it myself. Does it say it has that function? Otherwise I think you will have to install an app, first.
Maybe you downloaded the offline map files, but had nothing to open them with. Apps use their own versions of the map files, by the way, those files you download from the website are for other use-cases.
Osmand+ paid for it and it didn't work when I left my house. Useless product that doesn't do it basic functions. And no I'm not going to QA it for them.
Shame, it's worked perfectly for me for many years. No idea what went wrong with you, of course, and it doesn't sound like you're up for troubleshooting. Oh well, hope you have a better time with Google or Apple stuff!
As a paying customer I will not troubleshoot for them. If I didn't pay and had the issues with the free version, I would.
But what app did you use to access OSM and download the maps for offline use... was it a web browser? OsmAnd? Vespucci?
Osmand+ paid for and it doesn't do it main purpose of loading a map. I will not be providing QA to them since I paid for the product, the product doesn't work I'm not helping them fix a product they sold me.
OSM is great for everything non-commercial. Hiking path, finding a playground, public toilets or even the closest with few benches to eat a sandwich.
But for everything commercial and car navigation google maps is unfortunately much better.
Yes, I also use and highly recommend OsmAnd, great for offline maps, outdoor activities and lots of stuff... but no traffic data.
I switched away from google maps to Apple Maps a few years ago and I honestly can’t tell any difference. If google maps traffic data is better, it’s not in any noticeable kind of way for regular day to day usage.
Honestly Apple Maps is better in my area by a decent margin. It’s up to date sooner and that matters in a rapidly growing city. Google still beats it in search but even then AM finds things it doesn’t at times. i just wish they’d move on from shitty Yelp. I vastly prefer AMs navigation over GM as well.
That would require me to buy an iPhone which I won't do for many many reasons... but ok, maybe Apple Maps is a decent competitor nowadays, good to know.
do you mean the waze traffic data, or does google actually have some of its own?
every phone running Google's version of Android with location enabled.
Waze is owned by Google.
And just like their ridiculous chat apps, they have no beneficial feature integration or consolidation between the two.
Google Maps has the ability to report speed traps and hazards, but none of that data comes from Waze or vice-versa.
How good can it be? I’ve been driving 35-40 miles to work and the same back for a year now and Apple Maps tells me what minute I’ll arrive and I usually arrive within 3-5 mins either side.
I only use google maps to find bussinesses. It’s pretty awful for navigating, which is kind of what maps are made for.
I’ll plug Mapy.cz here. I’ve been using it for about 7 years now. It has even the most obscure paths that you wouldn’t believe would be on a map (at least in Europe) and the bussiness search is alright.
No idea if it’s based on OSM or is its own thing, but if I were to guess, it is.
No, gmail's Inbox is the best mail client out there!
........................wait
ProtonMail is like the best if you can get if you're a small user that regularly cleans their inbox and keeps things that matter.
I never use more than a handful of MBs, so I find 15GB of storage that GMail offers me a bit much. It's been this way for me for years so ProtonMail does it.
I like most of their basic tool apps for being so basic. Notes, clock, calendar, Gmail, etc. I will lament the day they fuck all these up.
They don't really have a choice. Classic website search will be useless in the near future because of the rapid rise of LLM-generated pages. Already for some searches 1 out of 3 results is generated crap.
Their only hope it's that somehow they'll be able to weed out LLM pages with LLM. Which is something that scientists say it's impossible because LLMs cannot learn from LLM results so they won't be able to reliably tell which content is good.
The fact they're even trying this shows they're desperate, so they will try.
If they can't direct me to the right web site because they can't tell what's LLM junk, then how will they summarize an answer for me based on those same web sites they know about? It doesn't seem like LLM summaries are a way to avoid that issue at all.
Do you have a source for those scientists you're referring to?
I know that LLMs can be trained on data output by other LLMs, but you're basically diluting your results unless you do a lot of work to clean up the data.
I wouldn't say it's "impossible" to determine if content was generated by an LLM, but I agree that it will not be reliable.
Well, it's not exactly impossible because of that, it's just unlikely they'll use a discriminator for the task because great part of generated content is effectively indistinguishable from human-written content - either because the model was prompted to avoid "LLM speak", or because the text was heavily edited. Thus they'd risk a high false positive rate.
So far I'm mostly unaffected by this. That's probably because I usually internet mostly for niche hobbies and occasionally practical things and shopping. Like apartment hunting, since the industry is too spread out for anybody to get in bed with Google enough to get a big boost up the AI idiocy. Except maybe apartments.com, but that's where I've always ended up anyway even back before Google's enshitification.
Google search is still a very shitty product right now. In a blind test I would never conclude they are the market leader. It used to work a few years ago though.
Indeed. They started pushing things that make them profit before the things that you're searching for. They love the revenue stream but are realizing now that it's also killing their main product: googling.
But if they're moving to AI it will probably be the same, trying to guide you into selling something instead of giving what you want. Microsoft too is trying to paper over their os with ads so you know what direction they're going.
It's so exhausting. Google "how to do thing" and it's just dozens of links to webshops that sell barely related products to your search.