This is why I've switched to Apple Maps for like 98% of my navigation needs.

I might be biased, because I live in one of the cities with the updated maps data, sure, but I find that it handles most of my use cases just as well as Google Maps.

I find the Apple Maps navigation to be far more polished and human. Whenever they added "After the stop sign, at the next light turn right" made it my goto nav app.

The search is still not great compared to Google Maps, though.

Apple maps has the following drawbacks for me:

- no public transport routing where I live

- much worse satellite images

For all other uses, especially usability, it's superior to the extremely slow and cumbersome Google Maps. Both have odd UI bugs.

I want to use Apple maps, but I just can't stand that the review boxes shunt me to the app store to download the Yelp app.

Same, and I often use Bing maps on desktop

Probably because those are not really monopolies.

People like to conflate being popular (having large marketshare) with being a monopoly (exclusive control of supply). Being popular in those markets is likely because they do not monetize it directly.

> exclusive control of supply

Is not the only, nor even the most useful, definition of a monopoly. And there's also not a magic moment where one second you're not a monopoly, and the next second you are when user X+1 signs up. It's a gradual process and that's why it is such a huge area of law.

Monopoly is semantically not very complicated. It's a fairly simple economic principle:

- Monopoly = Exclusive control of supply

- Monopsony = Exclusive control of demand

If you want to redefine it to popular things, you should reflect on your motivation to do so.

You might want to reflect on why you want anti-trust law to only apply to the strict definition of a monopoly. That's why it's called "anti-trust" not "anti-monopoly".

What are the four monopolies?

I just want to say that I love how the response to this comment is several lists of 4, with search being the only one present in all of them.

The 4 I was thinking of:

Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube

Chrome is arguably a monopoly if you segment desktop web traffic, but iOS Safari is such a large percentage that Safari can't be ignored.

People will disagree with email - but I challenge you to go look at email threads you're on and see what % of the emails are @gmail.com - not to mention G Suite addresses you don't know are Gmail. Outside of enterprise, there's no alternative.

Not bad either that Android and Chrome are duopolies at this point.

Search, Maps, YouTube, Chrome. (They all have competitors, some more successful than others.)

A bunch of people have listed Gmail on their lists, but Gmail is not even close to a monopoly, even in consumer email. https://email-verify.my-addr.com/list-of-most-popular-email-...

I have 2 remarkes:

- that's from 2016

- that seems to be worldwide (I see for example swiss and french providers in the list), which isn't necessarily relevant. Gmail can be a monopoly in the US for example, while not being one worldwide.

Unfortunately I cannot find better numbers, if someone does that would be interesting to discuss.

I actually don't think Gmail (as other comments here claim) is nearly as much "monopoly" as YouTube. There are many email providers, people use whatever.

If I had to guess what GP is referring to: search, maps, email, and browser.

While I'm sure we could disagree on if Google actually has a monopoly in these domains, I think it's obvious they have a _substantial_ foothold.

Pretty much! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23632044

I would say: Search, Map, Translate, Gmail.

Though technically they also have YouTube and do monetize it.

Search, the browser, email, non-streaming video are the only things that come to mind.

Search, Email, Maps (they own Waze), YouTube

Search, browser, email and maps.

search, maps, mail (gmail), video (youtube).

cloud computing is one of them /s

What do you find awful about the monetizing on Maps? So far I've found it not very intrusive, and it seems much more clear on Maps than on Search when something is an ad.