Comment by rob74
2 years ago
This sounds a bit American to me honestly - I would think that in Europe (and especially in Amsterdam) there would be enough cyclists to make the data usable. OTOH, they may not have the necessary privacy settings enabled (I think that's a minority among car users too). Of course it's also a vicious circle: if Google Maps is bad for cyclists, few cyclists will be using it, so you won't get the data you need to make it better. Additionally, I think the proportion of cyclists using any kind of navigation solution is lower than with car drivers...
How many cyclists use Google Maps to navigate? I guess (with no true facts) most cyclists know their primary routes and when going somewhere new have a rough idea and just check for the last part.
Whereas car drivers often use navigation all the time to see traffic and alternatives, which are non-issues for cyclists.
Thus even with many cyclists the information they collect is less.
Exactly.
Add that there’s no Android or Google Auto for bikes, you usually don’t charge while biking, etc. The people who do need to look up their cycling route typically do it beforehand, so in the end even in cycling-heavy regions there are very few using active navigation.
Delivery workers will in regions where that’s common, but they likely use company-provided or other local solutions.
Biking through Keskuspuisto central park, even when born and raised and lived in Helsinki for my whole life, one still needs to consult the satellite map a lot. It's a maze. The signs are roughly indicative at best. So many places look exactly the same you forget the exact crossings during the winter. You often can't see far because it's a forest.
> How many cyclists use Google Maps to navigate?
The Cowboy bike company have started using Google Maps for navigation in their app, which is a bummer: Before the change, the navigation would reliably take direct me to use roads that a bike friendly. Now it does just the opposite: it wants me to take big roads that are only friendly to cars.
Google Maps was a nightmare at the top 100 US News university I went to. It'd constantly be unaware of bike routes and try to take me an absurdly wrong way around. Even as I was taking the bikable shortcut paths it would just keep rerouting telling me to turn around 180° even when I was more than halfway near the other road. You'd think there's be sufficient data on a major university campus...
> and just check for the last part.
hit is not how I use navigation apps when cycling. When I don't know the way, I start my navigation app (not gmaps) when I drive off, because
- I don't want to stop midway to check where I need to go, when I can do that when I get on the bike - I don't know where exactly to stop to check where to go - If I don't know where exactly I want to go, going roughly in the right direction probably means that I cycle longer than I need to
Also mistakes driving a car are more costly. If you miss a turn on a bike, you can stop, walk your bike back, and take it. In a car, if the street is busy, you can’t do that, and who knows where you end up if you take the next exit etc.
You think Google is watching your location only when you're using Google Maps?
The widespread assumption that Google collects all data all the time and uses it for everything is ridiculous.
There’s a labyrinth of explicit user agreements, all of which are strictly enforced, and then there are further layers of voluntary restrictions on top of that.
Yes, Google might collect location data even when you’re not using Maps (there are a lot of passionate, dedicated Timeline users), but you have to have that enabled, and even then the data can only be used in certain ways.
5 replies →
Well, they collect quite some information, but to figure out which exact routs are taken etc need a persistent collection which is relatively expensive. The "passive" cell based location tracking doesn't work for that.
In a car you can charge your phone and battery usage for GPS isn't as much of a problem.
The ex-Googler is most likely talking about the product as a whole, across the globe. It would be hard to justify features dedicated to a small group of users overall (with different goals/expectations), especially while keeping privacy (and data sharing). That being said, Google maps works great for cyclists in the US ...
It's maddening that tens of millions of users is "give up and do something else" territory for Google.
Yes, it’s also maddening for most Googlers who are passionate about the work they want to do that would affect just tens of millions (or less).
But at least it leaves room for other companies in some situations. What’s really sad is when there’s something that could only be done by Apple or Google, but it’s too small for either of them to actually do it.
1 reply →
Supporting sustainability, also a job for someone else. We are so lucky OSM exist, helping to perhaps save the cities and the planet.
> Additionally, I think the proportion of cyclists using any kind of navigation solution is lower than with car drivers...
In large part because cycling is fairly resistant to traffic jams