Google combines Maps and Waze teams in restructuring move | Hacker News Reader

Google combines Maps and Waze teams in restructuring move

wsj.com

337 pointsstingrae437 comments

Slightly off topic, but I get a lot of frustration from Google Maps. Waze works well for me, while GMaps don't. So seeing those two merge more is bad news for me.

Google Maps is one of the services which actually does some minor damage to me. Delivery drivers usually blame me for not finding my street, while GMaps data is what is the problem. I've had one delivery person stuck in snow and require technical assistance in another street, because Google Maps shows my street there.

I cannot get Google to change my street name to correct legal one.I've tried 'suggesting an edit' it at least 10 times. There is no support to contact to or anything. I've looked. They say I don't have any proof that my suggested street name is correct - but I even add a link to Google Street view which has a literal street sign with correct name and coordinates. I tried official street registry links. Still rejected. It is insane.

I personally can use openstreetmap.org, but delivery drivers and etc. - they don't use it. So I am stuck in this non-sense.

Google also decided at one point that all street names in a Finnish city should be in Swedish.

Yes, Finland is a bilingual country and some southern cities have official names in Swedish, but this town was a full 300km from the southern border and zero of the street names had official Swedish alternatives. Google just decided to autotranslate all the street names with no fallback.

People complained, Google didn't care. At one point after a few weeks it just magically reverted back.

Meanwhile as an American living in Finland, I just wish I could have my directions in English, use Metric system, but have the names of streets and the like use the Finnish pronunciation. Instead it absolutely butchers the pronunciation almost beyond comprehension and gives me the streets in both Finnish and Swedish as further punishment.

Ha! Try living in Santa Catarina, Brasil

Not only is the portuguese pronounciation pretty bad most of the time (in their defense streets can have very annoying names over here), they don't use location to expand acronyms, so the state/province-managed highways ("SC-401" etc) get read aloud as "South Carolina 401". Couldn't be more wrong.

I'm not sure how this happens. Most of the time, only the English (even though I use the UK variant) voice does this incorrect substitution, but in some occasions the portuguese voice can try saying the english words "south carolina" with portuguese pronounciation, which is hilarious in a disappointing way.

(Maybe the pt-BR voice model knows to pronounce SC as humans do, just the letters, but the acronym expansion happens in text, before voice is involved, in some code paths? No idea, just guessing)

Yeah, Google absolutely butchering street names in non-English languages is a common theme. I no longer use the audio directions, they're that useless.

When I was first learning German, I set my Google account (and phone) to it, despite being in the U.S.

Google Maps' decision as to which street names to translate to German when using voice directions seemed completely arbitrary. Numbered streets I could kinda understand (e.g. First Street was called out as "Erste Straße"), but others were perplexing: it insisted on calling Rainbow Blvd. "Regenboden Boulevard" despite using (non-translated, but German-accented) English for every other nearby street.

If I was a German-only speaker, looking at street signs, I would have been lost.

(This was also an educational experience re: dark patterns. I eventually had to switch back to English, because I repeatedly almost got tricked into clicking "yes" instead of "not now" on things I didn't ever want to enable. Despite my having repeatedly opted out in English, Google almost got me to "consent" in German because my language skills there weren't as good.)

Street names in Denmark are often "so-and-so way" or "such-and-such street". Way is vej. Street is gade, pronounced a bit like 'girl'.

A typical Danish name might be Ny Munkegade -- new monk's street. Google maps directions produce "noy mun keg ade", which is utterly incomprehensible.

Another source of constant hilarity is when the voice guidance tries to pronounce the names of ring roads in Helsinki metropolitan area: Kehä I / Ring I. They're numbered using roman numerals (I through III) but Maps has no such knowledge of this so it just ends up rattling off the route number and "Kehä / Ring" with the ring road numerals as if they were just a literal letter I.

Sometimes the lane guidance also likes to pick up on the destinations from the overhead signs, trying to pronounce the Finnish and Swedish names with less than stellar results.

I'd also like that as a Finnish person, since I keep my phone in English, although I imagine I have a slightly easier time parsing them from "English" than you do.

You can change the language of Google Maps to Finnish, and still keep the phone on English. At least in the latest versions of Android. This makes it pronounce the street names properly

At least on Apple devices I found out that the Irish Siri version pronounces Finnish street names the least badly =)

> People complained, Google didn't care. At one point after a few weeks it just magically reverted back.

So Google did care?

At this scale, change takes time to unfold due to bureaucracy and technical reasons.

Most likely some government folks got upset enough for Google to care.

"Have correct street names in a mid-size Finnish town" wasn't in anyone's KPIs, so they didn't bother with it for way too long.

A few weeks sounds like the TTL of an easy, but low priority, task on some team's Kanban board.

I've had this, twice, in different addresses. Map edits seem to do nothing for wrong road names or roads not suitable for traffic. Causes havoc for deliveries.

Other mapping source datas (TomTom, HERE) all fix mapping issues, even if takes time to get it approved. For Google, it's a blackhole, the only way to get it properly fixed was to reach out to a contact at Google to raise it internally.

My wife and I noticed our Jets pizza kept getting delivered to the building behind ours.

The first couple of times it happened we were walking into the lobbies of neighboring buildings scouring for our delicious 8-corner.

Finally we figured out the mapping API they were using was wrong and asked Google to correct it.

I am now happy to report our 8-corners get delivered to the correct building lobby.

Google maps loves to confuse my house, "#X Y Ave", with a different house several miles away, "#X Y Ave South". It doesn't matter whether you enter the address correctly; Google will sometimes "correct" you over to the other one. My own sister ended up at the wrong house once, after following her phone's directions!

USPS knows what they are doing, but packages delivered by other services sometimes just don't show up. Delivery drivers are constantly confused; we have made a habit of putting long instructions in the order notes about the actual location. Sometimes this even works.

Speaking of USPS knowing what they're doing, their address normalization replaces our city name with the broader "Minneapolis," but multiple delivery services use that normalization without flowing the zip code through to directions lookup (whether a tech issue or driver retyping omission), which results in drivers calling us from another suburb 15 minutes away as the pizza goes cold.

Around the same topic, in two successive apartments I've been living in the app-based "disruptive" logistics services are unusable, apparently due to the way they are using GMaps. The legacy parcel delivery and mail companies have no issues finding our apartments, using the addresses, but at least both Uber and Wolt seem to always attempt pickup and delivery at the neighbouring lots.

My best guess so far is that they request driving directions using GPS coordinates for my address, which leads to GMaps reserve-mapping it to the neighbouring street, which is closer to the building but the drivers will face a fence. Food drivers usually leave the packages to a neighbour, Uber drivers make angry phone calls and claim that I'm not at the pickup point. Customer service keeps blaming me for failing to enter my address and location properly, so my improvement suggestions go nowhere past the first tier support.

I have to favour services with a proper localisation, usually the ones not developed around a mobile app.

For me, the most egregious behavior comes from those “disruptive” services trying to be “helpful” by using the address form as search instead of taking the address as is.

All of the possible choices invariably lead drivers to the wrong location.

No one at Uber read anyting like “myths programmers believe about addresses” it seems.

Also, my country (Portugal) has a postal code that almost uniquely identifies my house, and both Google Maps and Waze ignore it in favor of hand-wavy parsing of the rest of the address.

> Slightly off topic, but I get a lot of frustration from Google Maps. Waze works well for me, while GMaps don't. So seeing those two merge more is bad news for me.

I have the same, but my friend from the UK has the opposite. Does it depend on the country ? Where I live, when I use Google maps, it sends me into fields on roads that are gone already for ages while Waze works perfectly... Google maps sends me to places I cannot get out of or continue (so narrow that I cannot continue or turn and have to drive backwards to get out) etc.

>Does it depend on the country ?

It might be, but in my opinion, most of these problems can be solved with two minute call with a real person who has elevated access to Google Maps edits. This would save people months of frustration.

I never had any problems with other big tech support. Only Google

I arrived in Valletta taking the high speed ferry from Gozo.

According to Google Maps my hotel was a 20 minute meandering walk through the blistering heat.

Thankfully, I've been in the very hotel already and new this to be garbage information.

Actually you just walk up some steps and three minutes later you arrive at the hotel.

When I told that to the proprietor he just groaned and told me that it took him years of effort to get Google to correct the street route they had marked to his hotel.

Let's just say this made quite a dent in my confidence in all things Google.

> but I even add a link to Google Street view which has a literal street sign with correct name and coordinates

Do the report from the app on a phone while you're at the location and take a picture of the sign yourself. I've had more success this way. I think it logs that you're actually looking the place while reporting and finds it more trustworthy.

You need to contact your city management. Their mapping departments that publish the official maps have the contacts to Google and other mapping companies. Possibly, the error actually originates from their dataset!

It doesn't originate from their dataset. I specifically linked city management's URL with correct street name in my "proof".

Weird. In any case, you have to contact them and have them fix it.

Yeah, I used to live in the Colorado mountains. There were two ways to my house. A slow 10-mile long dirt road or a faster 12 mile long highway followed by a 2 mile back-track on a very serious off road trail that I would only take my most-built-up Jeep on. Google maps kept telling people to go the off-road way where of course there's also no cell signal. I had to start telling people to explicitly use MapQuest (yes, MapQuest) to get to my house because Google and the others never figured out the way that an actual car could get to my house.

I'm having a similar issue but even deeper. It's not that Google doesn't accept my edits, it's that Google Maps doesn't even seem to support the format that my address is in. My house number is 1/2 and the neighbor is 1/1. No matter how many times and different ways I've tried to teach Google this, the search for 1/2 keeps showing the pin of 1/1 - which Google just shows as 1.

Can't you just add a note about this in your order details? I usually do that when I know the data on one of the services that delivery people use is wrong.

Add your address (or edit your street location) in Google maps. They've picked up most of my edits relatively quick.

Same for me, bur the parent poster said they tried that 10 times already.

Maybe ask more people to do it!

I did that from 3 different accounts. I've tried doing that on a phones with GPS on so the overlord might pick up that I am a local. But nothing works, I think I am 'shadow-banned' from edits now, because it says my edits are accepted but they are never updated on Maps.

Google map is not a mirror of openstreetmap but a lot of changes from openstreetmap are reported to maps. If streetmaps is already up-to-date with your street number, try to trigger a change (move a street number 1 meter, ..)

I've tried changing shape of the street to match satellite view. But only the shape change was accepted, not street name change.

Regarding OSM data, I think Google does not use any of OSM data, otherwise they would have to credit it and I don't see it credited. I don't think that OSM has any impact here.

> try to trigger a change (move a street number 1 meter, ..)

Please don’t do a small insignificant change in OSM just because it might trigger something somewhere else. Make changes to improve the map data in OSM!

That sucks. My street name was incorrect and it took me only a couple days to get Google Maps to fix it.

Maybe Waze will bring some of the good UX choices over from Maps. Like not increasing my risk of crashing by making me click past warning screens, or silently closing itself in the background, or again making me take my eyes off the road to hit the "are you really really sure you want to close Waze?" popup instead of just damn closing when I hammer the Back button.

Good UX choices?? Do you mean all the advertisements clutter and crap like almost invisible direction indicator (when not on a route) etc.?

Maps crashes in the background for me constantly.

Sure but in Waze it's intended behavior.

The only thing that keeps me from completely using Google Maps over Waze is the speed trap reporting (Google Maps has a similar feature, but it’s not nearly as effective as Waze’s).

I’m a nomad and have spent the last two+ years traveling the us. Google maps routing has degraded significantly in that time. I was really happy with it at first but it’s gotten worse over time. Now I dread using it and know it is going to fail to inform me correctly about which lane to be in, will pick odd routes (especially when not on the highway), and most annoying of all is they have added all sorts of phantom merges which often obscure the real next turn/exit until the last second because there is a nonexistent merge on the map.

> they have added all sorts of phantom merges which often obscure the real next turn/exit until the last second because there is a nonexistent merge on the map

This is the thing that I hate the most. It wouldn't be so bad if they kept a zoom level where I could see what's coming up, but they zoom in super tight until the phantom merge point is passed. If I'm traveling 60 mph and I have to cut across 3 lanes of busy traffic in less than a tenth of a mile, I'd like to have a fucking heads up. When cruising on the interstate, I'd like to know my exit number without having to scroll past all the instances where the number of lanes changes on my way there.

My Garmin GPS from 2007 had a better UX than this.

Try Here Maps. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Supports offline as well.

I fear that this will end up ruining my day.

I'm used to the speedtrap, speed limits and general crowd sourced alerts in Waze. I remember seing this in google maps, but it disappeared again. I don't know if my location (Denmark) has something to say about that?

That being said, the estimates that waze give me, especially for sudden accidents, are way off. I'm told it's better in the Copenhagen area, due to more users on the road, but where I live, it's almost non-existant.

I recently decided to give Apple Maps driving directions a try and was surprised to find that it notified me of a driving hazard (a trashcan on the road) in my lane a few seconds before I would have hit it. Does anyone know how they detect something like that ?

Someone called in the cops, who have interfaces with radio stations and other warning systems for road dangers. A local radio station here in Munich claims a latency time of mere seconds as soon as the police knows about it [1].

[1] https://www.radioarabella.de/geisterfahrer-wir-warnen-sie-in...

A user probably sent the report further down the road. Hazard reporting should pin the location right when you pull up the list of options, I think Waze does this when you click the report button.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212226

I think this is the dumbest feature imaginable - maps is aware there is an obstacle in the road and so it pops a toast up on the screen, attracting my attention to a timed button for me to confirm or cancel ??

That's it for me, too. And damn it's effective.

About two years ago I had an opportunity to run a "for fun" experiment. My family and another family went on vacation together but I had to come home a couple of days early due to business travel. Because of vehicle sizes, I ended up taking the other car home -- which was a small luxury SUV with a high-end radar detector ... somewhere inside the damn thing[1]. I had Waze up. For whatever reason, between two different states, the roads were teaming with traffic enforcement. When I stopped to fill up, I grabbed a small notebook and a pen and kept score: Radar/Waze with ticks under "Cop Missed", "Cop Found", "False Positive". The radar was worthless. It had lower false-positives than I'd expected (I remember those things going off all the time for nothing) but when it went off, it went off too late. It missed more than half of them.

Waze, on the other hand, had very few false positives. I suspect some that I marked "false positive" were really me failing to see the police officer[2]. This was "8-hours of highway (non-turnpike/toll)" and there was a police officer every 5 miles (I went 2, maybe 3 pages in tick marks on a hand-sized spiral-bound $0.99 gas station notepad). I don't even know that I bothered calculating everything out completely. For one, Waze did not miss a single speed trap that entire drive. Where I live (metro to a major mid-west city), it's rare that I'm the first reporter or that I see a cop that Waze isn't alerting me about already.

Beyond police, the reports for disabled vehicles (by law you must move one lane over where I live) is very helpful for both "ticket avoidance" and safety (if you care enough to follow the rules).

I prefer the Google Maps interface -- and generally everything else about it over Waze, but I use Waze 99.9% of the time and for every drive. I have it setup to not speak the directions because much of the time I'm traveling to places that I am very familiar with the routes (I might follow a suggestion over my own preference, though, because "Waze tends to be more right"). I use it, entirely, for the social reporting features. Though Maps, at one point, added this (is it still there?) it wasn't even close to the quality of that provided by Waze. I'm really hoping they "put the social features into Maps" and I'll switch to maps or "move the UI more toward Maps in Waze" and I'll continue using Waze.

[0] For context, I'm not an aggressive driver ... I don't drive that much any longer as it is so I tend to be a lot more cautious these days. But it's way too easy to not notice a 10-15 MPH speed limit change accidentally and driving laws are among the small set of laws that are more often broken unintentionally, than intentionally.

[1] I would have had no idea what the insane beeping was all about but it was a brand that a friend of mine owned growing up and I recognized the tone ... but he had it installed in a manner that it you'd never know there was one in the car except for the sound (they're illegal in Canada which they traveled to frequently). It was a very expensive model outfitted with the latest Radar Detector Detector Detector Detector Detector (odd or even number, I can't remember). I had no idea how to silence it so I was afraid I'd get pulled over and guarantee myself a ticket for having it.

[2] Where I live, on-ramps make great speed traps. If positioned just so, you can't see them until they're behind you, and you can't see them in your passenger mirror at all if it's a typical mirror/aimed the way most drivers aim them -- requiring you to turn your head to locate them (something you're probably not in the habit of doing while chilling at highway speeds).

I will be very sad on the day when Google decides to kill Waze. It is the only Google product I use and I will never abandon it because of one personal reason: it allows users to record custom voice for directions.

My wife recorded her voice in Waze and I love hearing from her telling me "turn left, honey", "be careful, there's cops ahead!"...etc.

I have been surprised Waze has stuck around as long as it has. I stopped using it a number of years ago, but my wife still uses it.

I have used Waze regularly since 2014, and my perception is that it plans more aggressive routes (trickier turns, using side streets, etc) to shave off a few more minutes than Maps, whereas Maps will stick to the major, less complicated routes. But I haven't used Maps for routing lately, so I wouldn't be surprised if Waze/Maps are more similar than I realize.

I stopped using Waze (I live in Los Angeles) because it would give a slightly faster route with unprotected left turns that was riskier, more stressful, and ultimately not much faster in reality.

>riskier, more stressful, and ultimately not much faster in reality

I used to think the same until we A/B tested it a few times (Maps/Waze) with different cars going to the same destination.

Waze really was faster very time.

Yep, I use Waze to run around my city at peak traffic because its traffic info is somehow better and it manages to pick a fast ish route every time.

From personal experience, i've regretted ignoring waze because "i live here and know better" every time at rush hour.

I wonder why can't Google Maps use the same routing, even as an option?

Friend of mine lives in South Pasadena. He mentions that since Waze he has a lot more traffic on the road behind his house, just people cutting through to save 30 seconds!

Oh no! The public using a public road!

In L.A., I'll keep Waze open for the speed trap reports but I'll ignore the turn-by-turn directions.

I'm surprised you've seen a speed trap at all in LA county to be honest

I use Waze but that part of it actually bugs me, because it's hard to tell if it's telling me to go on some side route for a real reason (avoiding a big accident) or just because it's guessing it will be 90 seconds faster.

Interesting. In Colombia Waze prefers safer roads and highways, whereas Google Maps has sent me down incredibly dangerous mountain paths.

Can confirm. Google maps was more than happy to send me down this "road" in Baja. http://ushuaiaorbust.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/IMG_7956...

Google Maps is surprisingly bad at handling dirt roads around my area. It has happily directed me down many awful roads and a couple times through open land without any visible road at all. The estimated travel times can be pretty funny too, like estimating 5 miles down an abysmal dirt road should only take 7 minutes.

I know these sorts of scenarios aren't a priority for them, but I'm surprised they don't even have a roughly accurate estimate given how much location tracking info they collect. If 40 people this year have driven a stretch of road with a range of travel times from 25-40 minutes, an estimate of 7 minutes seems pretty obviously wrong and easy to catch.

I've seen Google Maps try to direct people down "roads" that would cause problems on a horse. And some of these errors have persisted for years, despite many reports to Google.

We have this problem in VT. There is a road here called the notch, which is too narrow for a semi truck to pass, and there is no way to turn around once you get stuck in it. This means that if you drive into it, you have to call someone to help you back down the mountain, and you get a big fine.

This results in 5-10 semis getting stuck every year. There is nothing that google is willing to do to help the state out. The state has put up signage telling drivers their GPS is wrong, and they ignore it.

In Northern Austria you find a lot of "no gps" signs at the start of agricultural roads. Seems that many lorry drivers rely on google maps for navigation and those small roads are ill-suited for their vehicles, e.g. due to weight limits or sharp turns.

When I bought my first (used)car and was driving it back it told me to go some farmer's backyard...

While not on the same level of dangerousness Google Maps will also route me through a nature reserve, with no street lights, cattle grids and no snow plowing in winter. All while the normal highway is 5km to the east and a little bit backed up.

This highlights that routing algorithms do not understand the concept of safe driving and cannot evaluate how dangerous it is to just pick any alternative route.

Nice ride! The FJ Cruiser is a hidden gem of the late noughts - early 2010s (otherwise a pretty bland period when it comes to cars).

I had this problem often with google maps trying to aggressively optimize routes while i lived on the peninsula. Usually involving taking 7 extra turns and hopping on to 101 for a quarter mile in order to save thirty seconds. It took me a lot of extra time to feel comfortable navigating myself (and gave me the impression that a lot of things were much further way) because of the bad navigation… not to mention rage inducting missed turns because of lag or somewhat ambiguous intersections. Very much in favor of a “no crazy uncle secret shortcut mode”. I don’t need to drive through a residential neighborhood or take the exit immediately after the highway entrance or take the next seven lefts, thank you. I moved back to the Midwest where such shortcuts rarely exists and that problem is just one less.

I've started using Waze again because its UI allows me to control music at the same time as navigation is on. But it does aggressively reroute me during heavy traffic. I've started to ignore those though; going off the highway through small side- and country roads might save a minute but it's a lot of extra effort.

The advertisements are getting more intrusive for Waze. You can’t tap the directions area to see the rest of the set of directions until you tap out of the advertisement.

Waze routes have started to look more like maps routes though with the environmental gas saving trip focus instead of the most direct or fastest route.

I may try Apple Maps or something else. The waze directions don’t account for traffic and the capability to follow the directions.

I have had the exact opposite experience, and maps also generally seems to have trouble accurately determining location compared to waze. Last few years, maps tends to suggest routes that might shave a few seconds if you never needed to stop to make turns, but otherwise end up being much slower, not to mention have many more traffic flow changes to manouver through. Maps also frequently places me on adjacent or cross streets to where I'm driving, whereas waze actually seems to realize that no, I did not just jump my car up a 20 foot berm and over a sound barrier to drive down a parallel road.

> maps tends to suggest routes that might shave a few seconds if you never needed to stop to make turns

I've definitely noticed this getting worse; it likes to suggest I do a zig-zag route across rural areas. If I didn't have to decelerate for a 90 degree turn it'd probably be much faster, but I do. Maybe the Maps devs are all in fast-cornering supercars.

Side streets really shouldn't be used as major thoroughfares. That's sort of an anti-feature for me - I don't like ruining a neighbourhood by using it as a shortcut all the time.

I've had that issue with maps TBH driving up and down 35 in Texas(among other things). Taking me off the interstate on a detour through the hood with a dozen turns, stop signs, speed bumps, unprotected street crossings... To save 2 minutes on a 4+ hour trip.

Bad Google!

In Israel, Waze is the only real choice. Maps is not up to date on construction and changing roads, nor is its real-time traffic system accurate.

In the US I solely use maps

I like it because I drive a lot on unsealed roads, and Google Maps doesn't want to help me find a fast route that involves gravel, whereas Waze has an option to allow that.

Waze doesn't seem to be aware of fords, but then, I wouldn't expect it to be.

I also like that I can tell Waze "I ain't afraid of tricky intersections", and that it's happy to take side-roads if it'll get you there slightly faster, which Google Maps prefers not to do.

My main use case is to "warn me of problems ahead" when I don't need navigation help. For example, it saved my butt when the road ahead iced-over suddenly. I saw numerous accidents ahead and pulled off before I was in trouble or stuck on the road behind a wreck. I passed several scary big truck accident scenes a couple hours later once the road had been sanded.

I still use Waze. It has better incident reporting than Google. Also it reports where the cops are.

My girlfriend was completely obsessed with getting the Waze badges for keeping it on while driving.

And then she hit the final badge and that was it. She was crushed. Why can't they just keep making more badges?

Tell her to make a new account and see how many accounts she can complete.

NG++

I only go back to Waze when I need the "plan a drive" feature, where you tell it what time you want to arrive, and it tells you when to leave.

That feature exists in Google Maps, by clicking through the "depart at/arrive by" button

Can you also just put a destination and it'll show some sort of histogram of when the traffic is the busiest? Basically that + community warnings is the reason I'm 100% using Waze for driving directions.

Here is a screenshot of the feature I'm talking about: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/waze-plann...

Basically, I know I want to go to A, but I'm not sure when to leave, I just know I want to avoid as much traffic as possible, so when should I leave? The feature kind of answers that.

Not on mobile (iOS) unless they hid it very effectively. Only on web.

Can't you do that in Google Maps?

I've used Waze since first getting a smart phone and continue using it. It got us from California to North Carolina, and does a great job when driving up north or down to Florida. Hopefully this doesn't get affected by this change. I prefer it over Apple Maps or Google Maps.

Why did you stop using it? It is superior

I am stumped by that person's comment. Waze is superior in every single way for navigation:

Faster adjusting to real-time traffic, better navigation UI, more importantly tells you where polices are but also other various things that are good to know beforehand.

Google maps is still useful to pre-plan a route, get information about businesses, restaurants, opening hours and just better overall building information with street view and such, but I'd never go back to using maps for navigation unless they do exactly as waze does.

Extremely popular in europe. Shows locations of speed cameras and police checks.

Extremely popular everywhere

Didnt they say that they would always be separate teams? Im not surprised by this move but surprised because I could swear when they bought it they said they would maintain both teams...

Yup and Windows 10 was the last version of Windows.

That wasn't from an official rep.

And they did for 9.5 years.

I'm personally happy that they maintained this for so long. Even if the apps were to get merged, I'd mostly be content.

The data sharing between the 2 services has mostly gotten them to a point where they both give very comfortable estimates about traffic.

Waze is still better because someone Maps will tell you to turn too early when Waze's timing is more realistic.

Though I'm not a direct user, I've recently seen Waze has some glaring errors that Google Maps doesn't - especially on "special" days.

I saw the most spectacular failure like this on Good Friday this year, where I had to take a cross-town trip and Waze was telling my Bolt driver that it would take 2h+ (and trying to make them avoid all large roads), when in reality and in Google Maps, the city was essentially empty and the trip took ~30 minutes.

The 2h+ estimate was definitely correct for a normal day, but that day was part of a long weekend and no one was around, and yet Waze had absolutely no idea. Even on normal days, it typically significantly overestimates how long rush hour lasts by at least another hour.

Maybe this is somehow specific to my city, but at least it shows that in some places Google Maps and Waze use significantly different data (or weigh different sources very differently).

I'd be shocked if there is 5% of the original Waze OR Google Maps teams from 10 years ago.

You'll be surprised - that's all I'll say about that

"Always" as in mIRC. I jest, but in software it often does make sense to consider a decade to be solid lifecycle. LTS releases of Ubuntu live the order of a decade [0], for example. Consider any existence beyond that to be a reincarnation.

But we should find a better way to describe this than using language like "always" and "forever"...

[0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

I'm curious because I don't get the reference as a longtime mIRC user. When did mIRC use the "relative always"?

mIRC ended its lifetime license agreement with all who purchased its software 10 years out. Discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33864660

I believe that clause had an end date of 5 years after the acquisition, google kept their end far longer than that, but it’s still sad to see

>Didnt they say that they would always be separate teams?

Google says many things. Always believing them is a huge mistake.

Makes sense. I’m surprised they weren’t already by this point.

What’s the benefit of Waze being a separate app at this point besides the brand name? Why not just fold it into the main Maps app?

Besides the brand? I don’t drive but I know plenty of people who use Waze as the “car gps” but gMaps as the “search engine for places”.

Even if it’s just a GUI, different apps get you different experiences, and if you succeed it’s a bigger % of phone usage. People who mentally treat location searching and navigation as separate tasks (worthy of separate apps) are at risk of leaving for a competitor. So build two tools specific to each use case. It’s the Unix way.

I don’t know if this is the case, but it’s likely there is some left over legal issues to wrt user data.

Yeah Waze is just such a different experience for me. I haven't noticed the "riskier driving" mentioned by others in this thread but in Waze I find the voices friendlier in the languages I speak, giving instructions more often timing them better. Also you have the aspect of seeing other Waze users on the road, giving the app a cozier familiar feeling in a way. The ads suck though but oh well

Use case - Road warrior who spends around 3 months a year traveling in various areas of the US, 50/50 urban areas vs rural or very small towns.

I find the Waze experience on Carplay to be far superior to Gmaps. I prefer how it provides access to the key features like reporting/voice prompt, the size/position/color how things are displayed, etc. The level of detail (surrounding streets and landmarks) is more useful on Waze.

My experience has been that Waze seems to have better traffic prediction and avoidance in the areas I use it. Just last night I was following a cow orker from the plant we were working at to a restaurant about 30 mins away. We were right behind each other when my Waze suggested taking the exit and following a different route than my friend. I arrived at the restaurant a good 5 minutes before him, I asked, and he was using gmaps.

From my experience Waze always optimized for getting to the destination as fast as possible, which I really liked. Other navigations like to keep instructions simple and keep you on the large roads, Waze has no problem routing you through 10 extra instructions to save a minute.

Disclaimer: I haven't used Waze in years so this might have changed.

I'm not sure it is a compelling justification to have two whole separate apps but Waze's pitch seems to be "we'll send you down all the little residential streets to save a minute or two" and Google Maps is more conventional.

> What’s the benefit of Waze being a separate app at this point besides the brand name? Why not just fold it into the main Maps app?

There are differences in my region which make me think that the apps have different mapping and routing engines.

Turn by turn dirrections and road condition information are much more accurate in Waze. There's a larger Waze local community that helps keep maps up to date.

We do use Google Maps, but mostly as a Yellow Pages substitute or for checking business opening time.

1. Waze has some 150M active users which you're risking

2. Waze has features that google maps does not (?) s.a the "ETA histogram"

Then Google should add those features to its main product. It seems idiotic for Google to maintain two maps products like this--and has been for years.

Makes the UI even more complex. I think for a complex use case such as maps it makes sense to have 2 different UIs.

Risking those customers to who? Apple maps? Tom Tom?

Waze used to route you on the fastest route regardless of how private or rich a neighborhood is. Don't know if that's the still the case, but Google maps definitely doesn't give you the absolute fastest route, but rather the fastest route that takes major roads.

Could be related to Braess's paradox? In this case "adding lanes" would be "increased routing"

> [The] idea was that if each driver is making the optimal self-interested decision as to which route is quickest, a shortcut could be chosen too often for drivers to have the shortest travel times possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

Personally I'd rather not go through neighborhoods for just a tiny micro-optimization because of how much more "work/attention" is required given the increased pedestrian traffic.

A recurrent complaint about Waxe is creating bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic on residential roads. So yeah probably.

Could this be simply a case of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few"?.

For example I live near a busy road during "rush hour" in the morning and evenings. A few mins up the road from me 2 major roads intersect which causes more hassle during these peak times. Now If you are travelling West to East to wish to turn right at the intersection to continue your journey south its quicker during those times to cut though my neighborhood (and same in the other direction) and cut out the queues leading up to the intersection. However my neighborhood's roads are not designed for that much traffic to flow though them (cars parked in the street narrowing the roads and reducing visablity of pedestrians esp kids playing outside).

The handful of locals that travel though the neighborhood to get home (live one side but enter the other) are fine however if Google Maps routed everyone wishing to make that turn though the neighborhood it would make the neighborhoods roads much less friendly to the pedestrians of the neighborhood esp at times kids are going to school or are back home from school and playing outside.

Keeping the through traffic to the major roads keeps everyone safer, and actually faster overall because the major roads aren't littered with cards parked in the road creating bottlenecks.

Much like how the london underground lies to travellers and routes them around long detours during busy periods to help prevent a crush if they all went the shortest & fastest route possible - https://youtu.be/IrHRQSm6LIs?t=57

Not really my experience. Seems to depend what "mood" Google Maps is in. I've definitely had it take me on circuitous routes even with recent snow which almost always makes the circuitous routes worse. If you somewhat know the area you can of course usually override.

In France, Waze is essentially a speed trap detector, I am sure it is the biggest use case, more than navigation. Maps don't do that.

The thing is: what Waze does is borderline illegal, and it is regularly updated to still do its thing without getting struck down. Google Maps is "cleaner", and therefore much worse at detecting speed traps. I guess the questionable legality is a good reason for keeping these apps separate.

Many people still use Waze for getting live traffic updates on a roadtrip (object on road, police speed trap ahead). I don't think those features were fully incorporated into Maps.

> Many people still use Waze for getting live traffic updates on a roadtrip (object on road, police speed trap ahead).

Once I showed my father-in-law the "police reported ahead" and "hazard reported ahead" features he was sold. He now demands Waze on every road trip and he's not especially tech-savvy. Google doesn't supply this same data.

Not true, I receive the very same updates (object on the road, speed trap, disable vehicle etc.) on Google Maps app on Android all the time.

I definitely get those alerts on Google maps. AFAIK it literally is the same data, the reporting system is already shared between the two apps

Why not though? Is there a point to having two maps apps run by two different teams?

Never understood this either. Even if they need to be separate apps on user devices for brand / user / other reasons, seems like they should be light skins on top of the same core app. Amazing it took 10 years to combine the teams.

On my old phone, Google Maps would chew up my battery but Waze had no problems. I used Maps just for finding new restaurants and other places.

Not sure "a map app that chews up battery" is a desired use case.

Waze's use case: navigation without using all the battery

Maps's use case:

> I used Maps just for finding new restaurants and other places.

Waze is much better in some countries while GMaps in others like the US. Waze is better mostly in countries where it's very popular.

gMaps has really bad direction detection imo, Waze is fantastic. Every time I use gMaps it gets very confused about where I’m facing and will randomly assume I’m turning left or right, I’ve seen this happen on both iOS and android, Samsung, LG, and Pixel, since gMaps started having turn by turn directions. Idk what gMaps is doing wrong but it’s really annoying.

Having separate apps is better for users. I personally find Waze way better than maps for driving (it's still crap mind) - whatever your opinion about their relationship merits, consolidation will remove choice.

It doesn't surprise me that Google's doing it, what's the point in having a monopoly if you can't use it to your advantage. It's not good for users though.

The Founder/CEO of Waze wrote a terrific, in-depth post on his decision to leave Google two years ago: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s...

Very insightful post. And as much as a reader might think it highlights dysfunction at Google, the continued growth and success of Waze within Google argues otherwise.

> Work life balance. When I was growing up in Tech in the ‘90’s - there was no such thing as work life balance. We loved what we did and wanted to succeed so we worked like crazy to achieve great things.

Because remember, it's only "actual work" when this guy is doing it

> Young people want it all - they want to get promoted quickly, achieve economic independence, feel fulfilled at Work, be home early, not miss the Yoga class at 11:00am etc. Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it's the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy.

Based off of my own personal experiences, the yoga instructor thing is a gross misrepresentation. Not only this, but a highly dismissive, caricatured way of talking about people you work with

> I have always been a pretty passionate guy, especially at Waze. After the acquisition, I was invited to speak on many different Google panels and events and very quickly, I began racking up my HR complaints. I used a four letter word, my analogy was not PC, my language was not PG… I actually stopped speaking at events where the majority appreciated what I was saying but the minority that was offended by something (words and not content) made it a pain.

I wonder if it ever crossed this guy's mind that maybe he is the problem. At least he's broadcasting his own entitlement under his own name for everyone to see

>I wonder if it ever crossed this guy's mind that maybe he is the problem.

Of course not: he's such a narcissist that this would never occur to him.

Also he's expecting (presumably) things and sacrifices that he does from people paid less than him

Nah, he is actually right. Tony Fadell agrees with him too (hid book has a full chapter on it). He is not PC in his language, but he is direct. I feel like more people are responding to his phrasing, not the message. Building products requires focus and intencity. Staying human and healthy requires taking time off. Both things need ti be balanced, Google not necessarily does it the right way.

>I feel like more people are responding to his phrasing, not the message

Lack of ability to communicate is not a good quality in any leader. Phrasing is as important as the message many times.

> You need to be able to answer the "what have I done for our users today" question with "not much but I got promoted" and be happy with that answer to be successful in Corp-Tech.

As a long-time Googler with very mixed feelings, I feel this deeply.

That post makes me think Google might be actually a nice place to work.

Yes - my reading of that post is that Waze was a toxic place to work, and the author is annoyed because Google is not.

> Having trouble scheduling meetings because [...] "I’m taking a personal day" drove me crazy.

Yikes.

Other things (from that article) he was apparently irritated about:

- Not being able to just fire people he didn't want anymore

- Having to spend engineering time on things like Privacy protection and Legal compliance

- Work life balance

- Employee entitlement

- Equity compensation being relatively stable, not a win-or-lose lottery ticket

... and then a bunch of rants about political correctness, not being allowed to say offensive things, pronouns...

Yikes is right! Holy cow!

It just gets worse after that

> The worst thing is that this was inline with the policies and norms - I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected some level of personal sacrifice when needed. I don't believe long hours are a badge of honor but I also believe that we have to do whatever it takes to win, even if its on a weekend.

You're making map app dude, week later or earlier on a feature won't save the world

I'm actually glad to see these responses here, because I have the exact opposite feelings, and I think it highlights a huge generational disconnect.

I agree with the author. It is somewhat shocking to me that so many employees in tech feel, or at least project, that being available during normal working hours is "kinda optional". And to be clear, I'm not talking about someone that has a real emergency. But to have the expectation that one should be available between 9-5ish is somehow considered "toxic" is just baffling to me. I'd also highlight that many professions, e.g. those that have shift work, are nowhere near as lax.

That seems to be annoyed they cant just fire people they dont like. Double yikes.

yes, a wazer friend of mine was like "we were all like, that was the best PR for getting people to work here"

Sounds terrible to me. I'd rather work at pre-acquisition waze, sounds like your work mattered and people weren't just droning along for money.

So get out as fast as you can reasonably can after your startup is acquired by a company like Google. Droning on for money sounds pretty good to a lot of people.

So I take it that your current workplace, which is somewhere that you do prefer to work at, resembles pre-acquisition Waze? Or why else would you want to work there?

And according to your bio is Dropbox? Well good thing you let the whole HN know that Dropbox is toxic to work at.

> people weren't just droning along for money

Nahh they were pitching google to get the mega bucks so they could rest and vest on the roof.

Different people have different priorities when it comes to choosing a place to work. For some, a stable and secure company like Google might be the best option, while others might prefer a more dynamic and fast-growing company like Waze. It really depends on what you're looking for in a job. I know that I had periods in my life when I would prioritise one over the other and vice-versa.

The biggest problem arises when a workplace has a mix of employees who have different motivations and goals. Some may be content with just doing their job and going home, while others may be ambitious and want to do great things. This can lead to resentment and hostility when these different perspectives clash. It's the role of the HR department and recruitment to make sure you don't get too many outliers in any direction, but alas those are often doing really poor job with this. Not to mention that the quality of "being a good fit" has been branded "problematic" so it's often not even taken into account.

As the economy moves from a period of growth to a recession, the balance of motivations and goals among employees is likely to shift. And the amount of entitlement will reduce.

> Today, in Silicon Valley, work life balance has become sacrificing Work for Life - not a balance.

(Not in Silicon Valley, but...) I have never regretted sacrificing work for life.

>> (Not in Silicon Valley, but...) I have never regretted sacrificing work for life.

That sounds like you're striking a balance. Obviously, if you "sacrifice" work too much, eventually you won't be able to afford your life, either because you'll be fired or your lax employer will suffer and not be able to pay.

Sometimes it takes a while to manifest.

The founder guy who complains about not been able to fire people that easily and at the same time that people don't care too much about the mission of the team is just too much for me. I'm glad he doesn't work at G anymore.

He should go work with Elon at Twitter. Sounds like he and Elon would get along great.

> And as much as a reader might think it highlights dysfunction at Google, the continued growth and success of Waze within Google argues otherwise.

Some of the most dysfunctional work environments I've worked in followed periods of great business success. The marketplace success can obscure a slow descent into workplace dysfunction. When the profits are rolling in, it's easy to have large swaths of dysfunctional managers and teams blend in, and nobody is looking too hard. It's when the profits come back to earth that the teams are forced to excise the dysfunction or face failure.

Wow, I think that post it's amazing because it gives you a real inside look to what happened in big tech companies.

I'm amazed that it only have 10 comments...

Yeah; it really is an insightful post (as are the sibling comments here). I kind of want to have people write a response to that essay in lieu of whiteboard coding now.

Anyway, at all jobs (so far) I've deeply cared about the quality of our product and the company bottom line, which explains why I'm invariably miserable at big company jobs.

I can actually think back to explicit feedback when I was passed up for a promotion that boiled down to "improve brown nosing skills, even if it puts the core business at risk".

The core business at that particular former employer is imploding; I'm long gone, as are 90% of the people I'd like to work with again (many left for similar reasons).

Anyway, there were lots of forehead slapping moments for me while I read that post.

Having said that, the main insight was the central thesis of Office Space. Same shit, different horse, I guess.

TL;DR "Why don't people work as hard for 250k as I worked for 100M? They must be lazy"

You see this at hyper growth startups, where founding team / seed stage hires work nights and weekends, while complaining loudly about the people hired at series A/B who are logging off at 5pm (and who stand to make 1/10 or 1/100 the equity exit but might be paid 10-30% more on a cash basis).

Early stage equity is one hell of a drug.

As a founder/manager, it’s irrational to expect anything other than fundamentally different levels of output from each “ring” of growth on the tree, because the inputs are very different. Anybody would work much harder for inter generational wealth than they would for a cool $500k. It’s shocking how common it is for early people to project their personal expectations on others and experience dissonance as a result.

Success of a product is only tangentially related to how much of a pain in the ass a place is to work for. Even less so when you are talking about a multi-billion dollar market leader like Google.

If anyone at Gooogle is wondering why they are going through this pain or might have been fired it is because TCI, which is an activist hedge fund, decided they want to make more money and they have a giant share of ownership of Alphabet stock.

TCI sent Google a letter [1] telling them they need to cut people to get higher margins (>40%) as well as pay the investors more (stock buybacks).

Google is choosing to do what this group of investors says instead of supporting it's employees.

Just so you know.

[1] https://www.tcifund.com/files/corporateengageement/alphabet/...

Edit: This data came from me asking myself of the headline "ok who is it that is putting "Pressure to Cut Costs" on Google." Luckily TCI made it really clear

They can send all the letters they want. Larry & Sergey have controlling interest[0] in Alphabet and can very much decide to ignore any of this if they want. In effect, TCI can't compel them to do anything they don't want to do.

I think merging Waze and Google Maps teams is actually smart, whether it cuts cost or not seems like they have similar goals as a product.

That said, doesn't mean Alphabet won't head some investors letters or something, so its always possible

[0]: https://capital.com/alphabet-shareholder-who-owns-most-googl

I can’t comment on Google specifically but it is possible to have de jure controlling interest, while another party has de facto control because they can threaten to unload a huge position and tank the price.

Even in that scenario, the people making that threat are not actually in control. The ones with control are choosing to do this, rather than lose money.

These people are not forced to make more money at the expense of others. It's their choice.

Thank the price? With 0.5%? I'd be stunned if Googlers themselves didn't sell 6B in GOOG annually.

>>I think merging Waze and Google Maps teams is actually smart,

Only if the Waze teams takes over for the Maps team..

Google Maps is TERRIBLE app, I hate it. and if the Maps team is going to start messing with Waze it will be ruined

As someone who only really uses google maps, what makes Waze so much better? (Specifically non car driving directions)

Waze: 4 out of 5 scary Uber drivers who drive aggressively, abruptly turn on to obscure side streets at the first sight of another vehicle, and blare the navigation voice as loud as possible on their smartphone speakers choose Waze.

Seriously, Google Maps being a all-caps TERRIBLE app? Come on. It's basically the gold standard.

I think they've been merging the codebases already anyways. Maps has added Waze's selling points already (speed trap warnings, etc).

The re-routing in Waze always seems a little better than the offers in GMaps.

Related question here, do you know if they have done anything public with that data besides showing you a speed trap in real time? Like are there any summary maps of where speed traps typically occur?

I just hope they keep Waze as it is and don’t make it worse.

> In effect, TCI can't compel them to do anything they don't want to do.

Yes, they can. It’s called fiduciary responsibility, and shareholders sue for it all the time.

Their fiduciary responsibility is not to defraud the shareholders. Milton Friedman’s idea that management’s only constituency is the shareholders is not actually a matter of law.

Management can just say “in our judgement X is the right thing to do, not Y”. Google is too big for TCI to try to gain control over.

"We took a 50 billion dollars and lit it on fire" is meaningfully different from "we structured our teams in a way that you think is inefficient."

In the US you can sue anyone for anything. It doesn't mean you'll win a damn cent though.

No, you are very incorrect here. I am sorry to say that you fell for some spicy headlines, and there is no evidence to suggest TCI's letter had anything to do with this restructing.

TCI has a trivial stake in Google — at most, less than half of one percent of the company[0]. By voting shares, Larry and Sergey alone control >50% voting power[1]. TCI has nowhere near enough influence to move the needle in any appreciable way here.

[0] $6B / $1200B market cap (edit: to clarify, this is an upper limit, in practice it's even less because of super-voting shares owned by the founders)

[1] https://capital.com/alphabet-shareholder-who-owns-most-googl

You're mixing up voting shares and Class A common stock

No, I don't believe I am. Can you clarify what you think I've mixed up?

Class A shares (such as TCI have) have regular voting rights. Class B shares (such as Larry and Sergey have) have 10x voting rights. Thus, as I understand it, TCI's voting voting power is at most roughly ~0.5. In practice, it's way less than that due to all the class B shares[0], reinforcing my point.

[0] https://capital.com/alphabet-shareholder-who-owns-most-googl

>GuruFocus data, as of 29 November 2022, revealed that 59.13% of Alphabet’s stock was owned by insiders, including the two founders, while 22.21% of common shares were owned by institutions including brokerage firms, hedge funds, pension funds and asset management companies.

It’s two different measurements. TCI owns 0.5% of the company but gets less than 0.5% of voting power.

Ownership percentage is only important because of how it lets them impact the stock price.

Wow, I seriously never thought Google would be vulnerable to activist investor actions because it's market cap is too big and its shareholders too idealistic. I'm still not sure that's not the case? Activist investors are sending letters all the time, and it's not a given that they are taken seriously, only if a shareholder vote would approve of their company policy goals. How do you know that TCI has a serious chance of that happening? If not then it's likely that Google's leadership just ignores it.

They aren’t, TCI can call for whatever they want but they have no power in terms of board voting.

What is the angle then for them sending such a letter then? I’m just curious who TCI is and what their deal is? Are they just myopic or is this a publicity stunt?

From the headline and article respectively:

"Google Combines Maps and Waze Teams Amid Pressure to Cut Costs"

"...as the search giant faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs."

"The activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management called on Alphabet to aggressively cut costs last month, writing in a letter to management that it thought the company’s head count was too high."

Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?

>Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?

What a masterclass in logical fallacies.

The implication of the article is that generally investors think Google is too liberal on spending (anecdotally, I will tell you this sentiment is very real).

The WSJ used a specific and public example of someone putting that into writing, but if you think a non-Top 20 shareholder can convince Google to do something (that Google doesn't believe most of its shareholders want), then you really don't understand how corporate governance works.

Even the more aggressive well-known activists rely on the idea that they can convince more than 51% of shareholders to agree with them

Google is doing this because it thinks the majority of shareholders agree with it, otherwise they'd tell TCI to kick rocks (as often happens with activists, Google knows that no-one can actually buy enough shares to influence their management decisions, unlike some SMID caps.)

>Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?

That's a misrepresentation of what the WSJ piece says. All the article is doing there is highlighting that there has been external pressure on Google to cut costs.

The excerpt you highlighted points out TCI's request for reduced headcount, while a few paragraphs earlier, the article says that there is no plan to reduce headcount.

> Are you suggesting that the WSJ is totally off base by drawing the conclusion that pressure from TCI, via this letter, is not the cause of the restructuring?

Yes. In fact its off base enough that I don't think they actually make that claim in the article.

TCI holds something like .5% of alphabet market cap, that's less than is held by multiple individual human investors in Google, and likely less than rank-and-file employees hold collectively. It'd be weird to pay any attention to such a group.

Yes, I have read so many news articles about Google that are trying to tenuously piece together a narrative where there isn’t one. An investor with 0.5% of outstanding shares and effectively 0 voting power can’t make Google do anything. They can post pdfs and work the PR machine (which hates Google because news media sees Google and Facebook as their main competitors for revenue ie ads), and WSJ can try to link the two, but that doesn’t imply any causality

Normally, I'd read your comment, grab my pitchfork and join you. This time, I disagree. Here's what TCI wrote in their letter:

>The company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high.

>Headcount is too high.

>... the business could be operated more effectively with significantly fewer employees.

Yeah, cash-hungry hedge fund calling for layoffs. Got it. Yet here's an excerpt from the WSJ article on this restructuring:

>Google said it planned to maintain Waze as a stand-alone service and didn’t plan to conduct any layoffs as part of the reorganization.

> Google said it planned to maintain Waze as a stand-alone service and didn’t plan to conduct any layoffs as part of the reorganization.

Counterpoint - why would Google announce layoffs to the WSJ before it even happened? It’s possible that it’s in the works…

You can't criticize a company for something they haven't done...

They don't need to do a layoff to do a layoff. If you just set the (new) HC to 0 or significantly below replacement rate, you get reduction in staff just due to churn. When teams are sizeable, even with very low churn they lose employees over time. And then if you are more insidious, you can start introducing unpopular measures "in the name of business" that increase churn.

Totally down to eat my hat and join you if it happens. My pitchfork's looking quite lonely.

I'm open to changing my mind here so which are you suggesting:

1. Google did the Waze Maps/Maps merger to appease TCI so they could prevent layoffs

2. The Waze Maps/Maps merger is unrelated to the TCI memo

If they intended to maintain it as a separate app, why did the leader of it leave? Knowing Google, I find it hard to believe that Waze under the Google maps lead will get resources and continue.

TCI's letter says they own $6 billion worth of shares. According to [1], Alphabet's market cap is $1.216 trillion as of today.

Now, if Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, and all the pension funds got together, that might add up to something.

[1] https://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/market_cap

Its a big problem these funds that are essentially custodians are taking their customers voting power to break corporations to their will. Needs to be legislation that curbs this as many others have been saying.

I'm tempted to say "they're the owners, that means they have the votes."

Which is true. And "many others" is a vapid, meaningless phrase.

However, proxies are voted in accordance with the "recommendations" of a very few advisory firms. That means that if you buy 10 million dollars worth of ETFs, all of those many, many shares are voted without your input. I'd certainly support legislation to give the "final" owners of those shares the right to vote the proxies themselves.

Maybe that's what you meant.

Also the CEO of that fund is the highest paid employee in the UK. IMO he should cut his salary to improve returns for his investors.

'highest paid employee' usually means 'has arranged ones personal financial affairs badly'.

In the UK, being a salaried employee means you pay a rather high rate of tax, compared to other schemes used by rich people - like for example having some of the work done as charitable work, having mostly stock, getting paid via a company, etc.

Another explanation might be that tech companies are doing poorly in general at the moment, and Google is one of the few companies that hasn't done mass layoffs yet.

That's not "another explanation" that's the exact dynamic:

TCI, who do not actually run the business, are threatening the CEO (addressed to Sundar) that they will move their money if Google doesn't do what they say - namely cut costs etc...

Is it more likely that TCI investors know how better to run Google than Google does or that they don't care and are blindly seeking alpha with no care for the people that run it?

Probably a bit of both but yes the rate hikes have been especially hard on tech. I think it is also a reasonable question why Google needs to have two competing products that do the exact same thing.

Is it true that tech companies are doing poorly or is it something else, like the free money is nowhere around and tech companies are now expected to actually make money like a traditional company?

The story seems about the same everywhere: When money was pouring and people were spending more time on their devices than usual, the projection was that people will just resign from the physical world and live in VR so hire as many people as possible but that projection looks silly now.

TCI owns much less Google stock than employees do. Larry, Sergey, and Eric still have most of the voting rights.

TCI is making the news for being an activist investor calling for layoffs because 1) the media is frothing at the opportunity to announce Google layoffs, even though none have been announced 2) the goal of an activist investor is to drum up support to make their activist wish happen.

That's pretty normal communication from investors. Everyone cuts costs, so some of yours will see a chance to make you do the same. I would be very surprised if Sundar loses sleep over this pdf.

Source: been on receiving end of such messages (bit smaller endeavor than Google though :-)).

Google is doing what its owners want it to do and not what its highly-paid employees in cash-losing divisions would prefer.

Are "Property rights just for losers"?!

Nobody is arguing that Google is not legally allowed to do this. People here merely argue that it's not a smart business move to make employees unhappy when the company has spent (and wants to spend in the future) lots of money to make and keep employees happy. Google is not a shoe producer or Cobalt mine in case you haven't noticed.

Whose property?

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/360/pg360-images.html

The usual short-term thinking. Get more money quickly at the cost of the first major layoffs that demoralizes the company leading to nasty internal politics, gradually destroying the company from within.

Google has no expectation to “support its employees” by employing them unnecessarily. It’s not a jobs program. Frankly the fact that Waze is a separate org NINE YEARS after acquisition is astonishing and would only be justified if there were strategic reasons for doing so.

Counterpoint - Google employees get a large portion of their compensation in stock, particularly in upper management, and consequently have incentive enough to keep the share price high on their own.

> giant share of ownership of Alphabet stock

6 billion dollars worth or 0.5% of the market cap. Not so big

As a former Google employee, I don't think TCI is wrong.

TBH, Googles plethora of chat apps shows TCI is not wrong. Yet another chat app is bored people looking for something to do.

They're careerist, not bored. The promotion process at Google is how you advance your career, and shipping new applications and features is how you get promoted.

To be clear:

1) All shareholders will benefit including the employees who were well paid in stock.

2) When you sell an ownership stake you have to listen to owners. You might as well blame whoever decided to go public or sell the activist a stake.

3) Larry and Sergei have super voting shares and can block it if they want. But they probably want their shares to increase too.

Larry and Sergei do not have to listen to owners. They can do whatever they want as long as they can credibly claim they believed it was good for the company in some sense.

What are they activists for?

Also, are letters like this normal? I have never seen a letter like this, but you always hear that all shareholders care about is money. And yet, here we are with a letter that brazenly says something just below “fuck all employees, we want more money just because we have you some money”. I mean, part of their argument is some random person’s quote that companies could be smaller. For one, that’s a weak and amateur argument for an investor to make. And sure, that’s probably true, but the tone of this email is extremely flippant towards anyone that isn’t themselves.

I'd like to introduce you to Carl Icahn...

Or else what? There is nothing TCI can do to force Google to do anything.

If TCI had a legit gripe it would be that too much revenue comes from one source (advertising, which at over 80% is indeed dangerously high). Google is lazily doing things to address that, but not trying that hard.

But TCI didn’t do that.

A lot of people have said the same thing. And they happen to be right, too. Business isn’t charity.

Misallocation of resources is bad for broader society. Great for those who benefit from the misallocation though

How much pressure can activist investors really exert over a company the size and influence of Google?

If I was Google I would tell them to take a walk if they want to.

I think I might agree with TCI.

Case in point: Why has Google had two navigation apps with entirely separate redundant teams for almost ten years?

They own $6 billion in stock. Against a market cap of $1.2 trillion.

Shock! Horror! People who own shares in the company, have a view on what management should be doing and expressed it to them!

How dare they. :rollseyes:

They own less than 1%.

I doubt S&L will care.

"We are rich. Please make other people more poor, so we are more rich."

What is wrong with that exactly? Investors risk their own money to expect a return. Large investors have a say in the management. Google’s leadership has no obligation to support it’s employees at the expense of its shareholders.

ur thinking is exactly what caused economies to crumble several times over the last decades

>Google’s leadership has no obligation to support it’s employees at the expense of its shareholders.

Because that is unethical

The stock is down over 30% YTD. One of the biggest investor is asking for cutting costs. I understand how this is hard for an employee, but I do not see what's wrong here. If it was your company or you were one of the biggest investor in the company, would be asking to cut costs and focus on efficiency, specially with the last 12 months of hiring and a likely recession to look forward to next year?

If I was a sheep, sure.

Google is still growing revenue YoY despite 2021 being a huge year for online services due to pandemic shifts.

They’re making hundreds of thousands in net profit per full-time employee.

A dumb CEO would do layoffs at this moment. They don’t need to financially, and the morale hit (and lost productivity) could be disastrous for the company.

But yeah, since other companies are doing layoffs, Google should too.

"One of the biggest investors"

Not really. TCI doesn't even appear in the top 10 [1], and even if they were, the Founders still hold controlling interest.

[1] https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...

Found the MBA.

Soon... Waze to be renamed as Google Maps. Old Google Maps will continue to be available for Google Enterprise customers and will continue to be called Google Maps. /s

I still use waze almost exclusively and it's consistently the best way to "plan" a future drive and have a reasonable expectation of traffic and when to leave.

I found this section interesting (of the TCI letter referenced in posts above) and I wonder how much this is factoring into Google exec thinking?

> Reduce losses in Other Bets

> Over the last five years, Other Bets has generated only $3 billion of cumulative revenues but incurred a massive $20 billion of cumulative operating losses. Alphabet's investments in Other Bets have been unsuccessful. Alphabet should reduce annual operating losses in Other Bets (which we expect to amount to $6 billion this year) by at least 50%.

> The biggest component of Other Bets is Waymo. Unfortunately, enthusiasm for self-driving cars has collapsed and competitors have exited the market. Ford and Volkswagen recently decided to shut down their self-driving car venture, saying: "We have looked at this every way you can and we just see the profitability a long way out." Waymo has not justified its excessive investment and its losses should be reduced dramatically.

And is this kind of thinking just bandwagon, and not potentially accounting for some distinctive performance that Waymo may be on the verge of? (of course, seems like every AV company promises they're on the verge of something breakthrough)

Some day we'll have the technology to report speed traps via CarPlay. I'm guessing that they got a lot of pressure to nerf this feature from law enforcement, as crowdsourcing realtime info on speed traps kinda ruins it for the cops by giving everyone using Google Maps a very powerful long-distance detector.

Well on the technology side, if you use Waze, "some day" is today. There's a big fat "report" button in the lower right hand corner of the CarPlay display, and then you hit the little police dude icon, and off goes your report.

Surprised they didn't merge Waze features into G Maps and discontinue Waze as a separate app long ago (could still have Waze app that's a wrapper around Google Maps)

Eh, I can see why features like 'speed trap reporting' and 'encourage drivers to file congestion reports while driving' might be released under a different brand.

At least here in Spain Google Maps warns of speed cameras and has options for reporting police/congestion, etc. It’s just little icons on the map, though, and it doesn’t actually audible warn you of upcoming cameras.

Even Apple Maps reports speed cameras. Google Maps doesn't?

The difference is Waze reports mobile cameras and police on the side of the road (via user reports).

Google as far as my understanding only shows fixed/permanent cameras.

Computer Science graduations up 600 percent since 2011.

I like Waze on many things, but it can be a bit sluggish and dated looking. Police reporting, and traffic routes are sometimes just better. You can also chat with a fellow Wazer ahead of you to see what's going on. Google Maps though is generally superior on app performance and any need for walking, mass transit, etc.

Don’t mess with my Waze.

Also why does Waze think train crossings are a huge deal. It seems to go to great lengths to warn me a bout them.

It's a safety thing the government and railroads had been begging the navigation apps to implement for years.

https://9to5google.com/2020/08/12/waze-railroad-alerts-app-u...

In some countries (Romania) they are -- you have to slow to a crawl since they are usually very bumpy. But I agree Waze is too aggressive, since train crossings are always well signaled.

I have been stuck on one way roads at a train crossing for 30 minutes at a time, making me way late for work. So I would actually love that in google maps.

Tell me you live in the Midwest without telling me you live in the Midwest.

Sorry if that's wrong. This was a feature of my boyhood, but I've never seen it in California.

Portland actually

This is an acquisition that should've been blocked. They only bought Waze to kill the competition and making sure no one else buys them. I know Waze did things differently, being much more crowd sourced, but it's not why they bought them.

I had a disastrous drive with Google Maps recently where my family's lives were in peril... https://joelx.com/first-fifth-wheel-road-trip/17702/

I used to have a high level of trust in Google Maps, but starting six months ago or so, the directions got substantially worse.

The first meaningful re-org they did. Keeping them separate makes no sense. They already duplicated a lot of effort for all these years.

To be honest, Google Maps has degraded in quality and popularity ever since it came out. Other options have become more popular, so I guess Google is going to combine this with Waze and try and make one final effort to become the best navigation app.

I think this is for the best of Google's interest.

This is great news! It's about time! I was so excited to see the instant, crowdsourced traffic news in the Maps app. I was shocked when they didn't integrate right away. I use Waze for most drives but then have to switch to Maps for better business info

I was never too fond of the GUI of Waze. Luckly there is some neat development in "adjusting" that: https://highwayradar.com/

I'm sorry but this UI definitely gives me the vibes and engineer designed it and not somebody well versed in product design. There's so much going on here with clashing typography and elements that I don't even know where to look.

aaand whenever someone IRL looks at a webapp that is up to date with the latest UX standards, they immediately see that it is also crap.

Website is pretty broken on mobile ironically, but will give this a try. Neat how it aggregates ads-b aircraft transponder data. I do wonder what is business model is. Author claims donationware.

I believe highwayradar its mostly for integration with other apps but mostly to connect with radar detectors for seamless integration. There is a fantastic app on rdforum.com that integrates the v1 gen 2 radar detector with the crowd sourced alerts from waze. Ive used it for years and its flawless. The app im referring to is also donation ware.

Hopefully this breathes life into the absolutely stagnant Google Maps division.

I'd wager Maps is going to become more real-time, like showing a blob where a current festival is, mapping the trajectory of a scheduled protest, local activities. Like they did with forest fires.

Related post on the Waze forum: https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=367207

Ugh.

I probably need to start using Apple Maps more often, don't I?

Apple, being a "functional organization"[0], would never have had two entirely separate maps apps in the first place.

It is quite good at routing though. Of course this very strongly depends on where you live.

[0] as opposed to a "department" organization, not a "dysfunctional" organization

TIL that Google owns two mapping services/apps. Where’s the sense in that? And why are they only consolidating their offerings now?

> And why are they only consolidating their offerings now?

Pressure to reduce costs.

Not sure if this is good or bad, but I hope they've removed the current Google Maps product owner - their maps have sent me down very dangerous roads (especially in France and Poland) - once it tried to send me up the side of a mountain to get to the back of an Obsevatory - rather than via the front door.

They keep doing UX changes which mess with muscle memory, that already make their product more unsafe - rather than improve the product itself.

Please keep in mind, he didn't send you there personally. The algorithm did. I've experienced this several times my self, very frustrating and sometimes even dangerous. I think it's unavoidable if you take into account that they operate on planet-scale. Not saying that they can't do better, but probably it's not "someone's" fault.

TIL Google own Waze.

The most frustrating thing about Waze is that it doesn't have offline maps. I get that the main selling point is live traffic data, but that's not necessarily an either/or with offline maps.

Google is so bloated

Ah, FFS!!!

Just when I thought I fled Google.

@&$/"!#%¥

Not sure I understand, Google has owned Waze for some time.

Yeah, my point exactly.

That one time that I missed ... way back in 2013.

First time I hear about Waze. I’ve been using maps since it’s initial release

Uh-oh. I can easily imagine how Waze gets Google-transmogrified into something that's only 80% useful to the average person, instead of 95% useful.

Google, I'm sorry I never clicked on any of those Waze ads for petrol stations or fast food.

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