But companies, uber, lyft, carmakers, location intelligence firms etc need commercial mapping and location tech. What TomTom offers exists more for these people than the end consumer these days.

(Source: making web maps is my career. I don't touch Google Maps professionally but use it a lot personally.)

Natural monopolies (such as the one acquired by Google) are not bad as long as government retains the monopoly of B2 bombers.

It's not really a monopoly when it can be ended at a moment's notice

If it's a farm road, there's always the option my neighbour used to do: he took his sweet time when he let the cattle cross the road. It's always fun when impatient idiots have to wait a few minutes because 50 cows are walking to their meadows across the road :)

My friends' street is the slightest bit of a shortcut. Like, it might save 30 seconds or a minute but it avoids a really annoying stoplight-controlled intersection. It is also a quiet, purely residential street. For 20+ years, people who live on that street park way out from the curb on both sides so that the street is nearly impassable for most of the day unless you drive quite slowly (like at a crawling pace). People still use it as a shortcut, but at least speeding down that low-speed-limit road where lots of kids play in the neighborhood is not so common anymore.

Needless to say, there is often some sucker going through there, and I have to admit I ended up there once too exactly because of Google Maps. No effort to correct it over the years, in one of the wealthiest and most important power/finance centers globally.

What you and parent describe happened to me too, maps are absolute blessing compared to what was there before but they are sometimes not that great ie in cities with a lot of traffic. Its easy to get used to something just working and start demanding perfection, when we are maybe 96% there.

wishful thinking, I know.

We did have MapQuest though. The shift from requiring a navigator to thumb through printed web pages to being able to navigate oneself via phone was pretty... well, life-changing, really. I say this as someone completely geared to delete their Google account, sans a few deeply-entrenched services I'm having trouble uprooting - Google Maps being one.

Also, I refuse to use Google Maps as I am loath to let Google know my travel history. I am, however, somewhat concerned that TomTom uploads my travel history to their servers, since my device has LTE/3G capability. This was used to fetch congestion information and to offer a smarter / faster route, but since I don't have a subscription the service stopped after a free trial period.

Can someone explain to me why it's a problem? (I make the assumption that even if google doesn't do it, your carrier does, so it doesn't add anything additional to "government's ability to repress/harass".)

Personally, I have two reasons to avoid Google and other tech monopolies: 1. I don't want the government to be able to subpoena my data 2. I don't want to be cut off from my digital life just because some employee clicks a button. That means I'm self hosting as much as possible.

When they track half of humanity, they can see all kinds of patterns that they, and other people can exploit.

Let's turn your question around. If all this information is that useless and harmless why are all corporations and governments spending tens of billions of dollars acquiring and keeping?

This often reflects and amplifies societal biases. For example, users that Google identifies as female are less likely to be shown ads for high paying jobs [0]. This creates a feedback loop: if a certain user demographic is less likely to be shown a given result, they are less likely to view it, which in turn makes them even less likely to be shown it in the first place.

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/women-less-likely-to-be-shown-...

From your comment, it seems like your main concern is that governments can access your data. But what if beyond&above those governments, there is a single entity that's far more powerful? Would you be willingly hand the data to them? Because that is what Google is. Or is becoming. Or, if you're very sceptical: can easily become.

Privacy is vital for a functioning society. If not for you personally, then for others. By adding yourself to the mass of people, who do not care, you are helping in creating an environment, where privacy is not valued. Seen as something "only a few radicals want". Quickly abolished by governments in the name of "but think of the children!" or "but think of the terrorists!" and similar nonsense.

They do, or at least they used to before the GDPR came into action. Not sure what the situation is like now.

But the software side ... oh boy. The "Garmin Explore" service this device is intended to work with looks like something from 2004. I mean not a finished product from 2004. But a proof of concept or minimal viable product from 2004. Usability is terrible. Planing trips/routes on the device is torture. Using the web interface isn't much better. (I'd link a screenshot but the service seems to be down ... again lol).

Sync breaks all the time. It's triggered by "bad" filenames for the .gpx files. Some special chars seem to break syncing so bad that the device won't sync at all until you delete the offending file in the cloud - but there's no error message. One day you just wonder why your recent route you planned in the browser isn't on the device. So you go to the sync tab and there's a message like "Last sync: 3_weeks_ago". Have fun fixing this as a normal person. (This bug also comes up when a route has a wrong count of waypoints ... it's not too many waypoints, it seems to be a number between too few and too many). I only figured this out by accident. Garmin support told me to reset the device and make a new account. (Which meant I lost all my tracks).

Now if Garmin did work on the software and provided updates I wouldn't be so salty. But there has been 0 improvements to the software side of things since the device was released like 3 years ago. ZERO. All you get is map updates which are for the street navigation side of things. The "overlanding" part? Forget it. There has been 0 bug fixes, 0 new features, nothing.

I guess you're supposed to buy the new (more expensive) Garmin device that recently came out. As if I would give Garmin one more Euro.

It's not even incompetence. It's maliciousness. They have a line up of wireless cameras (which you mount to your vehicle's bumper, etc). The cams connect via WiFi to the navigation device. Recently Garmin released a new camera - one which I'de find rather useful as it's small and works completely via battery and you can clip to the license plate. So you don't have to wire anything and can take it easily off when you don't need it.

But guess what - not compatible with my 700 Euro Android Tablet that could be made totally compatible via a software update if Garmin just wanted to. If you want to use the new cam: Buy the new 1200 Euro navi model. Oh, btw. some of the the older cameras won't work with the new device ... so you better buy a new set of new cameras.

I hope Garmin goes bankrupt. Sincerely.

/edit: I switched to the Gaia GPS app running on an iPad mini. Waaaay better experience.

I don't want Google to know all websites I visit. I don't want it to know all websites I visit, which have a map widget on them. I don't want Google to have knowledge about where I am going and when I am going anywhere. Websites for example using Google maps will indirectly enable Google to actually know these things. For example if I want to book a hotel and I want to know, how I get there from the next public transport station (or if I had a car, how I drive there). If it is a Google maps widget, data about what location I am viewing will be available to Google. Google being Google, I have no doubt, that they will try to use that for profiling people.

Relying on a becoming a monopoly does not help with freedom. The fact, that uninformed developers introduce dependencies to Google products without a second thought, makes them uninformed indirect helpers of a spying company, whose profit is based on profiling people and tracking people online, to show them pesky ads. It exposes us to the whims of a capitalistically motivated tech giant, which does not have our best interest at heart. That is, why we need alternatives. That is why at least initially any alternative based on non-Google things, is a good thing. The fewer people make use of Google (dis)services the better for all of us, because they wont have the same power over our lives.

So the whole "before Google it was better" thing, is actually a "before evil tech giant monopoly" thing.

But that’s scary. I want a competitor that offers at least roughly similar quality, but Google is so far ahead that it’s no contest.

Some of problems I've had with Google Maps recently:

- Routing gives me weird bypasses that aren't necessary and often actually add time to the trip. I've started to not trust the routing.

- The UX when searching for places is extremely difficult to navigate, especially when trying to use map view instead of list view

- planning a route _without_ asking for directions is near impossible because many street and landmark names are not displayed

- Landmarks are drowned out by the overwhelming clutter of business names (paid ads)

- Maps are sometimes wrong in my area and I have no idea how to get them fixed.

I've started using OsmAnd for most of my mapping needs lately, and it's better in almost every way _as a map_. The only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware navigation.

I also noticed a quirk where it would send me 2km down a road just to turn back and drive the 2km back to where I came from. First few times I thought I must have added a waypoint but nope - sometimes it just makes you waste time.

Apple Maps might be better but I can't use it as it has a quirk with "Environmental Zones" in Germany. There are 3 kinds of zones: Red, Yellow and Green. Your car has a badge with a color (depends on how environmentaly friendly it is). So a green badge can enter every zone, a yellow badge only yellow and red zones, and a red badge only red zones.

Now whenever Apple Maps encounters such a zone in the route the navigation switches to a waaaay zoomed out view (tends to display the whole route on a map). So you can't really see the next turn, etc.

To get rid of that view Apple Maps expects you to click on OK. Which really sucks while driving.

What's infuriating is that you can't turn off the env zone checking or even just tell Maps that "my car has a green badge so PLEAS FOR F SAKES STOP PESTERING ME EVERY TIME YOU ENCOUNTER A ZONE". (Those zones are very common - every bigger town is a green zone. So Apple Maps becomes _really_ unusable on longer trips).

The result is that almost no one goes there anymore. All the inner city shops are closing down - while the mall style shopping centers on the outskirts are flourishing.

Walkable cities sound great in theory. Until you realize that shopping groceries _really_ sucks when you have to carry full bags for 3 kilometers or have to use over-filled public transport.

[1] https://www.germanemissionssticker.com

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards

This drives me absolutely batty. No matter how much I zoom in, I cannot see exit number labels. Sometimes they show up, at random places along the exit ramp, but I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason how.

Real maps clearly label exit numbers of every exit. I don't understand why this is so hard for Google Maps.

I have switched to OsmAnd, and the only thing I miss now and then is a good geocoder.

This. I use mostly OsmAnd, I especially like it when on bike or pedestrian mode. But yes sometime traffic info is a must so I use GM few times per year for this.

According to the GitHub Issues/Dicussions, this isn't an issue with the iOS implementation. Just the Android one. Hopefully something they can fix.

This is NOT what I want ever.

Another thing that bothers me, when using the my phone as the map display I can search for places along my route and go back to normal navigation mode. Then as I drive whatever I am searching for will pop up along the route when we get close to it (say restaurants or gas stations). You can't do this in Android Auto, you have to always select the location or clear the results entirely.

At least for walking and cycling, OSM has data leagues better than Gmaps. Also for driving actually, but navigation is indeed not as good. Lack of traffic info...

Probably due to all the OSM data they include, in fairness.

I always check both Apple and Google Maps, but use Apple maps on my iphone because its way more battery efficient.

https://venturebeat.com/business/duckduckgo-ducks-google-to-...

With so many iPhones and Apple Maps being an smoother experience (Siri/OS integration), it definitely competes heavily with Google (at least in US).

Last night I tried thr single button “Share ETA” from CarPlay, too.

How will that happen realistically? The truth is it's impossible to compete with ad-funded tech giants in the current state of affairs.

For that to change two things are needed:

1 . government intervention to break up Google ads from their maps and other businesses, leveling the playing field for their competitors who aren't making money via ads (not really gonna happen in the US, but maybe ... wink wink EU)

2. consumers now being OK with having to pay market prices for subscriptions to essential services like maps, email, etc. that they got used to getting for free through their personal data monetization (also not really gonna happen because people don't like paying for stuff they used to get for free and also many people can't afford to pay)

Google search is also in a similar position - the vast amount of users means its competitors just cannot improve their product because users become disappointed with the quality and stop using it, thus denying them a chance to improve their product.

The old solution to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and foster healthy capitalism was to break them up. But for more modern problems like this, I think a different approach is also needed - we need to force such monopolies to also share their data with the competitors, till the competitors become large enough to compete with them on their own.

(For those seeking a decent alternatives to Google Maps, I recommend Here - https://wego.here.com/ - it was owned by Nokia before they sold it to a consortium of European automobile manufacturers and is quite good).

For a maps company the map is the service they offer, for Google is just a data gathering service

Want an open source facebook / twitter? Here you go: https://qbix.com/platform

I now use the TomTom Android app and it's better than any other app or device I have used. Good maps, with clear instructions and great traffic information.

How do you compete against "free" from companies that are able to build monopolies with the help of institutions?

It's easy to say "it was shit before google", when innovations weren't available

> When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc..

I agree with that one, they didn't adapt

Both of these are false.

I live in San Francisco, same as a noticeable fraction of Google engineers. Maps incorrectly listed the direction for a one-way street next to where I live for years. I used to keep track of how much that cost me in taxi fare, but honestly can't remember.

I still see errors SF maps a lot.

And as for functional, I have to admit I don't use them anymore, so maybe it has gotten better. But they used to give me all sorts of insane routes - "drive 5 miles up this street, U turn, drive 4.8 miles back..."

And it works. It works always (even more than GMaps because it's offline first). It's also accurate. And up to date.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734665

DonHopkins on Aug 19, 2019 | parent | next [–]

When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS Personal Navigation Devices.

Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard!

That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal department.

The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members along the same stretch of road.

They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for placements.

Google Maps on my phone works fine, and on my current Pixel 5A, I can navigate off battery for a three or four hours. Plenty of walking time to hit multiple points in a day of walking.

Maybe some day the TomTom app will be competitive with Google maps, but for now, Google maps is the reference by which all other mapping will be judged.

The incumbents don't have the crutch of the other business unit and can't price match, and go out of business.

Then the monopolist raises prices and there's no competition and no alternative.

It's fine, though google maps has gotten pretty bad; I'll just switch back to Waze.

I use google maps sdk on mobile because generally the data is much better quality for POI than Apple Maps, but doing geocoding is a lot more expensive so that’s where I use TomTom. Seems to work fine for me so far.