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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

Maps monetization: I find it hilarious (in a sad way) that they're finally embracing that, if they are. Former Googler here.

I was the Ads emissary to the Owned and Operated Properties (like Maps and YouTube) in 2010. I managed to increase the RPM by a small but noticeable amount. They used to have ads on the bottom of the screen, which was the revenue source I was optimizing. Then later I was actually IN Maps when Marissa Mayer was nominally in charge. We were trying to develop "maps for business." That all came to naught when they decided it wasn't worth the bother.

Maps is fabulous PR for Google. I can't count the times someone outside of Google said to me, "Oh, I love Google Maps!" But it's a gigantic money loser and always will be.

"What about imputed revenue?" you ask? They don't want to measure that, because then every patent litigant would use it against them, and Maps attracts a LOT of patent lawsuits.

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Is it really a money loser? They get detailed information on your social relations, your daily routines, your shopping habits, where you enjoy your vices, etc. That's all useful in generating income in other contexts. It's short sighted to view it as a money loser.

It's also good PR. I would think someone that thinks google maps is good is more likely to use other google products that are more profitable.

Granted, that's a pretty difficult metric to track (if you even can).

Seems like location based Ads would be $$$. E.g., if Google knows that I'm not usually in Los Angeles; it knows what I like and could serve ads that'd be great for me when I google "places to eat in LA"

Just Street View alone will easily blow through the profits they make from those data unless they use the data for something like commodity trading.

The value of Maps is in user information. They know what you look for, they know where you've been. They can extrapolate what you are doing and what you will do. This all helps in fine-tuning your marketing target profile, and serving you better ads.

I am learning this as I am reading the book Stolen Focus. The author goes in-depth on how tech companies are turning us into Pavlov's proverbial Dogs. We are lab hamsters who, when taught to respond correctly to stimuli, give them money.

I dislike Google Maps ever since some redesigns in the past, that made whole countries look like rainforests, and de-emphasized everything that's not a road, etc. Honestly I barely rember the last time when Google maps were useful as maps and not just for GPS navigation. Must be > 8 years already. Looking at some historical screenshots, they still had a reasonably usable design at around the time they introduced Street View.

Kinda wonder if this is in part because of: "this way we've found we can make users use GPS more often and be more precisely tracked/monetized" by degrading uses where you can easily orient and navigate yourself without turning on GPS.

Google Maps started to devolve into a mess post-Marissa Mayer. [1] I wonder why this isn't talked about more widely. Early 2010s Google Maps were unparalleled with regards to UX - not a cluttered mess we have right now.

Google was technologically a few years ahead of everybody - they had vector map tiles in late 2010 while Mapbox released their version only in 2014. HERE also used vector tiles at best from 2013 (app release date, so a lower bound, not sure what tech they started with)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20238332

I had an office right around the corner from her two offices (one for her assistant) in GWC-1.

She had a pretty short tenure, and was mainly focused on "Google Local" (remember that? didn't think so) and not Maps. Giving her serious credit for the Maps UX is seriously wrong.

She also acquired Zagat, and in fact that was the only time I actually spoke to her.

I could imagine a scheme where companies can pay to promote themselves and end up higher or more prominent in business searches. Maps is how I usually search for e.g. plumbers.

I'd be flabbergasted if this isn't already how this works.

Entire businesses (e.g. Yext) exist to milk this model, if indirectly

> "Maps is how I usually search for e.g. plumbers."

I used to search for tradespeople in this way, but then I realised there's a big industry of while-labelled SEO-friendly companies which register 100s or 1000s of names like "<location> plumber" or "<location> roofer" each with a pin on the map at <location>. When you contact them you go to a call centre 100s or 1000s of miles away who know nothing about your area, they outsource the actual work to gig workers, and when they start getting negative reviews that instance just disappears.

That's already how it works.

Advertised businesses in Maps appear at a higher zoom level with a square icon, and up higher in results. An example in Paris: https://i.postimg.cc/26dGZCkX/09169-E16-6-CFB-44-BA-9189-693...

Are you sure that's from advertising?

Can’t they just sell maps data eg restaurant listings, traffic data, to third parties? Then the user wins with the app and the network effects ensure valuable data.

They do sell API access to Google Maps which includes all that.

> gigantic money loser

That's not the right metric to use. Google has a long history of using software and services as a weapon to prevent competitors from entering a market, or to control a market even if it's not immediately/directly profitable.

Once it's no more useful it's suddenly dropped, e.g. Google Reader.

Oh, hello golang!

If it looses money, I wonder if they will shut it down one day, like they like to do.

It would make TomTom and Garmin very happy, I guess.

It's better than anything out there. So if they're not interested in making money out of it, I'm sure someone else would buy it promptly.

It's probably neck-deep in Google proprietary tech that Google couldn't even sell it if they wanted to.

Probably not, same as Gmail.

Gmail is _the_ thing that most Gsuite customers are really paying for. Many people also but extra storage for Gmail. Plus, of course, it's a really good data source.

For everyone pointing out all the indirect revenue benefits of Maps:

You're right, but in every patent infringement case against geo, the plaintiff's "damages expert" makes up a theory about this, so they can go after the AdWords money pot. Because there's no revenue in geo.

If Google endorsed one such theory, that would be bad, very bad, no good at all.

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