Comment by carlosjobim
3 days ago
Google has two products without competition: YouTube and Google Maps.
Don't waste your time trying different map services.
Everything else is super easy to switch to better alternatives, especially search, e-mail and browser.
Organic Maps is great for offline. It even did better directions in Europe recently, because Google Maps does not have an "avoid unpaved roads" option.
Apple Maps does driving directions way better in general - better visuals, speech etc. It does foreign pronunciations better too IIRC. It's even not bad as a PWA on Android ( https://maps.apple.com ).
Google Maps loves to say take eg "exit Via Emilio Enrico" on some random roundabout in some random Italian town, seemingly with no idea that there are big signs to eg "VERONA". The street name is often totally useless.
I also find Google Maps does a great job at directing me into traffic. Like, not unexpected traffic at all.
Google Maps is great at giving you terrible recommendations because of the heavily, heavily filtered/gamed reviews however. Nothing more untrustworthy than a 4.7 star review on Google.
And of course there is also Mapy, HERE, TomTom etc...
Organic Maps is great for offline navigation, agreed. Also better than the rest for hiking trails. But it doesn't have anywhere near the features of Google Maps.
I wanted to like Apple Maps, but when you are traveling and actually need maps to find your way around, it's unusable. For example visiting some of the top cities in the world, and Apple Maps doesn't have public transport info. Or outdated business information.
HERE maps are unusable on mobile because of whacky two-finger zoom and pan algorithms which seem to be taken from a different decade.
Maybe you could enumerate with more detail exactly how Google Maps is unmatched and what features you need? You haven't said much so far. You also won't really acknowledge negatives of it so I think you are not being very objective. Yes public transport is a good one but only perhaps unmatched by breadth
Citymapper is excellent for public transport.
Google Maps relies on business owners updating details too, often outdated and incorrect. They also doesn't publish a lot of helpful negative reviews
Yes basically you need more than one app for the different things but I prefer that to one single and frankly mediocre app
2 replies →
> Google has two products without competition: YouTube and Google Maps.
I've actually found great success in migrating to nothing from YouTube. Specifically I've found nothing to have a much less insidious algorithm, no shorts, no comment section, no upvotes or downvotes, no creepy Mr beast thumbnails, it's quite refreshing. If you still want cideos that are exclusively on YT, you can simply skip the website and access them via other means.
Do you mean like in not watching any video or film at all? I'm not sure that this is the best option, since there is a lot of information which is better expressed by moving pictures than by text.
As for the algorithm, it is actually great if you take care to nudge it with subscriptions, likes and dislikes.
For the last few months I've simply stopped accessing YouTube directly. No website, no app. I still watch some videos that are embedded on articles or whatever, and occasionally download specific ones, but I don't see anything that's core to the YT experience, like subs or shorts or anything like that.
It's almost unavoidable to encounter videos that are only hosted on YT, but if I can't watch them without accessing any YT interface, I just don't watch them, I've just decided it's not worth it. I also haven't done anything specific to restrict the website, I've just mentally banned it as a simple rule to follow. It's an insidious service imo that uses casino tactics to steal my time and attention. What I occasionally want is videos, but their entire service beyond that provides only negative value to me.
I don't feel like I've missed much.
For insta, I've always just used their website, which is so terrible, and the content so inconsequential, that it's not a big deal anymore in terms of stealing my attention.