OK, I go on Google maps, and I used to get useful things. I just looked at it, for something specific, and it says businesses that I fucking know are to the east of me, it now reports are to the west of me. It was utterly wrong in direction. I was looking solely for distance, and it even got that demonstrably wrong. Satellite pix still work, barely. I can input my lat/long, and get an accurate picture, sometimes. If I do that on “map view”, I get total useless crap. I get businesses that are east of me showing up west of my location, and vice verse. Same for north-south, etc., ad nauseum. All I fucking wanted is a point I put in, and how far, and in which direction the point was from my location. Google “screwed the pooch” on that. And have been sucking on that point for several months, now. Google maps has decided to suck. Shit. I have a map program that goes back to somewhere in the vicinity of 1990. It works, it’s accurate as of the date it was issued. It’s more accurate than Google Maps. Google has decided that “sucking inaccurately, but everyone looks at us” is preferable to actually being accurate.
No, quite sure. I punch in the lat/lon my gps gives me, and Google maps shows those businesses to the east, when I know they are west, and can fucking show you that is true. I can even walk to them, but if I go by Google, it’s demonstrably wrong. If I walk the way Google says, I get to an entirely different business, which I have also been to, regularly. They are getting it stupidly wrong. It’s Google that’s fucking up, especially since I can punch the same lat/lon into a 20 year old map program and get good results. Google is fucking up, period. They are pissing me off with that stupidity. Use 'em if you like, but don’t complain to me when you drive in front of a train. I’ve decided that they are useless, because they are grossly unreliable. Fuck Google.
Here’s my gripe: I am in, say, London. It is a mapping program, and when I search for, say “New Delhi” I am clearly looking for the capital of India. I do not want every curry house with the name “Delhi” in it within a five-mile radius of my current position. I acknowledge that they want to make money of business listings, but consistently returning the wrong results is as bad as keyword spamming and will surely generate no extra new business for Google.
Google, give me a “business listing” radio button for me to specify when I’m searching for that kind of thing please. Otherwise please default to geography.
Also, there are many many errors in the maps, particularly the self-reported positions of businesses, so I am not as skeptical of the OP as the prior respondents.
Well, with all due respect, I’ve been using google maps as my primary locator for a good year now and I haven’t had any real issues so I’ll need more than one person’s complaint on the internet. If there is a demonstrable problem with google maps, I would like to know about it because perhaps it is correctable. But if I can’t replicate the problem I can’t do anything about it.
