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Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

Mildly interested to see if they come up with anything useful regarding cultural map differences.

An ongoing PITA in Thailand was Thais being absolutely baffled by Google Maps. You couldn’t hand your phone with an pin to a driver and expect it to make sense. All the taxi drivers and motorsai guys have smart phones — hell I even saw one at the _win_ using a VR helmet — but were totally perplexed by Google Maps. Weirder still was the insistence at places like Ikea that you drew a map to your property, but the map they wanted needed to be entirely landmark based.

I feel like there was some underlying sociological issue there where Thais thought of maps in terms only really of landmarks, and not as birdseye views of territory. Would be fascinated to know what Grab’s experience of it is, and also if Grab and friends are slowly converting professional drivers to real maps.

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To be fair, I find modern Google maps absolutely perplexing as well, the user experience has really degraded as ads and other functionality has been shoved in on top of what I want - a map to get to where I'm going.

Instead it's so damn slow as to be hard to get anything done while on the go, even with maps downloaded, modern Android phone, etc.

It really, really needs a simplification refresh.

I just learned from this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HSYTIEXa5w that google localizes it's driving directions to be landmark-based in certain countries. In this video it mentions India specifically.

Why would Grab need to "convert professional drivers to real maps"? According to the article, it's already solving for all the unique problems by building out their own map.

Your reads to me like you expect that if someone comes to you and gives you GPS coordinates, you should be able to know where that is because you have a GPS in your pocket. No, you'd need to put the GPS coordinates into something and have it translated to something that made sense for you, like into Google Maps. Same goes for Thais, even if it's a PITA for you.

Unique problems require unique solutions, and I think your definition of a map is probably too closed-minded. Imagine trying to take a real map and deliver something here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQyVMy6_n1k

While your point is certainly valid, the parent's experience lines up with mine. There is a disconnect for rideshare/delivery drivers even between getting instructions from Google Maps vs. me reading out instructions straight from Google Maps. If I say exactly what Google Maps, then we're able to get to where I need to go.

I will say that it is changing, though. For younger rideshare drivers, there is a greater reliance on and ability to use Google Maps. In my experience, it is older drivers that have an interesting time adapting. This makes me think that there is certainly some ostensibly unrelated cultural norms at play: for example, Thailand exhibits a high degree of social hierarchy dependent on age, and a priority on saving face. Totally ignoring Google Maps, if I know the best way to get somewhere in Bangkok, and I know that most taxi drivers don't, me communicating it in Thai as respectful as is culturally appropriate can and does get shut down or ignored. In these instances, we invariably get lost and/or stuck in traffic.

Is a dislike for Google Maps in navigation completely a function of cultural values? Probably not, but this kind of technology isn't thought to be by default an amazing convenience in many parts of the world.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

> Why would Grab need to "convert professional drivers to real maps"?

Because Grab have been around a long time and their custom maps are pretty new

> I feel like there was some underlying sociological issue there where Thais thought of maps in terms only really of landmarks

This is such an interesting comment, I'm curious of your age. I grew up and learned to drive before smart phones existed and landmark based directions were extremely common. Directions like this were expected, moreso than street name based directions. "Take a left at the 3rd light after the freeway, then a right after 7-11, and it is the 5th house on the left with the blue door and red Truck in the driveway".

What is interesting is that these drivers are still using this older method.

I've seen both delivery drivers (on motorcycles) and Grab taxies use GPS navigation in Thailand. Regular taxi drivers might have an ego thing or something. Or maybe they can't read the latin script.

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