Re: @druck Not as good
"not having their own source data for maps is what killed them"
I can't see why anyone would want to provide their own source when the OS is available. They're not going to match it.
“The thing that snookered us came eight years after the event,” Kate Sutton of Streetmap told The Register late last week, following the High Court’s ruling that Google’s manipulation of search results did not destroy her business despite that being exactly what happened. Streetmap, the online mapping service, lost its High …
> The OS maps are not as accurate as those acquired by driving the roads... repeatedly.
Google accurate? Only in parts. That's precisely the reason why they dont show useful features like pedestrian or cycling footbridges, legal cut throughs in closed roads and all those little alleys that a pedestrian can use. Most of it's collected in Streetview and satellite images, but it's not applied to Maps.
Indeed. She is sounding like sour grapes. As a consumer, I would expect to see Google Maps higher up in search results, BECAUSE IT'S A BETTER PRODUCT.
Anything else, and that's not right.
I would also point out plenty of Google services, where the search results serve up competitors products before their own.
@Steve K
Useful maps, are drawn clearly, roads get exaggerated widths which are easier to comprehend, colours are used to convey additional information, legends are rendered in highly legible typefaces. I'm not saying that Streetmap was perfect, clearly the interface was a lash up, but the actual map was better than Google's. Neither was a patch on the kind of maps that OS, IGN produce and many programs are able to display maps based on OSM (Openfietsmap and the like) with far more information and clarity than Google maps. I'm just someone who doesn't appreciate getting lost, I hope that someone with cartographic expertise will step in and explain better why Google maps are so weedy. Is it because people in the USA aren't exposed to the sort of maps that Europeans take for granted?
Dammit, I want tracks and paths clearly differentiated. I want to see rights of way, land boundaries, terrain.
He's right that Google maps display far, far less information than the paper maps from OS that we used when orienteering as kids.
I agree entirely.
However, I don't use Google Maps for orienteering (and I'm certain that 99.99% of other users also don't). For that I would want a paper map (for anything "serious") or find another app that provides this (Ordnance Survey) for walks in the woods.
For finding addresses, finding businesses or restaurants, getting directions, sat nav with live traffic information, street view, traffic data etc etc etc Google Maps is streets ahead (apologies for lazy pun).
When there are multiple lanes exiting a highway, HERE and Google maps will tell you which lane to stay in. I should know. I wrote that code.
Again, there's more but I am posting as AC because I really do know what goes in to making a map.
There's more to a road than just a couple of road links stitched together. And a lot of work is done smoothing out the road links after a drive.
>To be fair, it's not really a use-case per se. He's right that Google maps display far, far less information than the paper maps from OS that we used when orienteering as kids.
He was explaining why he didn't find Google Maps useful; it's impossible to define 'useful' outside the context of use.
In any case, there will always be people whose use for maps goes beyond what Google Maps, Streetmap or even OS Landranger can deliver. There is a lot of geographic information available if you pay for it. I remember ordering some CDs from Ordnance Survey for around £100 a pop containing *.XYZ files. These files are exactly what they sound like, and the roughly two million points in each file described the terrain of a small area of countryside - when opened in AutoCAD, one could make out features on the scale of roads and houses.
Similarly, some Soviet-made maps of the UK were made that had even greater detail than the OS possessed, such as how wide and strong bridges were. Their intended use? Aiding in an invasion of Britain without getting your tanks stuck.
Google maps are pretty poor, their USP are the easy linking, street view, and route calculation, their weak spot, is the rather poor grey on grey map, and lack of national standard map features.
Google do not even support the grid reference, what kind of map is it without the grid?
This is the UK, we have the best mapping agency there is, we expect to see maps of similar quality, only Streetmap and Live have easy use of OS maps.
Google do not even support the grid reference, what kind of map is it without the grid?
Google don't support the restricted OS/OSNI grids that only works in the UK. Instead they support the global grid, WGS84 longitude and latitude, that covers the entire globe. It also happens to be the grid that GPS uses, so works perfectly with the location data available to mobile devices.
Don't misunderstand me, I am a major enthusiast of OS mapping, and the UK Grid Reference system: I have even been a member of the Charles Close Society. It's just that longitude and latitude work better for global mapping, as they always have done.
USGS is pretty good, on the order of the OS maps I've seen. (Old school maps were better than the new ones, but went out of date quick), the FAA's are among the best in the world, but of limited use. I'd never use Google for anything serious, like a long distance roadless journey.
Most people allow the word "map" to have different meanings, with different usages. If I want to cross death valley on foot, I'm going to get a USGS quadrangle, if I want to fly from New York to London, I'm going to use an FAA airmap and whatever the British equivalent is. If I want to get turn by turn directions, I'll use a Thomas guide.
"can you clarify why Google Maps are not useful?"
Take an example. Look up Hardknott Pass on Google and streetmap.co.uk. What does Google tell you about the steepness of the road and the terrain in general? Now what does the OS map on Streetmap tell you? In case you're not used to reading maps I'll tell you that the OS's little chevrons on the road mean "steep" when single and "bloody steep" when doubled (1 in 7 to 1 in 5 and more than in in 5 respectively). What does Google tell you about the features you'd see from the road? What does the OS map tell you?
As I've written in other comments, Google maps are really just street maps, the OS maps streetmap.co.uk uses are real maps.
Google still hasn't learned how to create useful maps!
Ah, but Google's maps are perfect for what Google want to use them for: advertising business locations and other locations that keep Google the top search-engine choice (rather essential for their whole business model to survive).
A grey-grey map seems a poor design choice, until you realise that the boring grey base mapping makes locations stand out really nicely. Making the same locations stand out against the top-quality OS Landranger mapping is much more difficult.
Self serving tripe. Maybe when giving a soapbox like this the journalist concerned should be bothered to do some actual research rather than just pressing 'submit'.
In 2007 when the person in question claims his solution was technically superior, Google maps was full of ajaxy goodness, with draggable maps and fast response times and all sorts of things that made people in my office go "ooooo" (that's a quote).
Streetmaps then was an arrow clicking affair with bad response times, a lousy appearance and an appalling user interface with endless turn rounds. It prompted swearing not ooo-ing. You still can't use your mouse wheel on it to zoom in and out. Scanned in A-Z maps was and still is a lousy way to present map information on a computer screen.
Maybe rather than just bemoaning the dwindling revenue stream they should have started paying some of that revenue which was apparently almost £300000 a month into investing in some talented programmers and designers who could have kept the site up to date.
But apparently spending it all on lawyers was a better option.
Google is a damn search engine. If I search for a postcode I want to see a map. Furthermore I want to see the best one. The easiest to use one. The one with the best interface. That wasn't streetmap before Google maps came out and it certainly hasn't been it for a single day since.
This post has been deleted by its author
The product might not have been as good as Google's but that doesn't mean Google didn't abuse its effective monopoly of search in order to kill it.
I certainly hope no one believes that if a rival product had been superior Google would have selflessly promoted it ahead of its own offering.
Maybe the gobby commentard should read past the headline and see that the "he" that he talks about is actually a she. The story isn't written to say Streetmap was objectively superior to Google Maps, it's very clearly denoted as "she says", letting you make your own mind up as to whether you agree with the statement or not.
Kind regards,
The journalist who went down to the High Court and took down the application for appeal verdict word by word.
Sorry, it is you who are completely missing the point to jump straight to an "everything's sexism, isn't it?" argument.
The commenter did not read the article with enough attention to even note that the defendant was a woman. That's a pretty basic thing to get wrong, especially as her name is in the very first sentence (and "Kate" isn't exactly an ambiguous name), and the article repeatedly uses the word "she" throughout. Not knowing this basic fact is a strong indication that the they merely skimmed the headline and the last paragraph.
I think it's entirely fair to call someone out on making strong assertions based on the most glancing skim over what was actually written. ...If only in solidarity with the poor bastards who have to work for managers who do it day in, day out.
"Google maps was full of ajaxy goodness, with draggable maps and fast response times"
And Streetmap's maps were full of detail. Oddly enough, when I look at a map I want detail, not shiny.
"Google is a damn search engine. If I search for a postcode I want to see a map. Furthermore I want to see the best one."
And if I put a post code into Streetmap I'll see it on a map. Ironically it is actually a full-featured map I'll see it on. If I see it on Google I'll see it on something that's really no more than a street plan.
In 2007, Google was still buying their data.
I should know. I was working for one of the companies that was selling the data to Google and others like Garmin and some of the auto manufacturers.
Google was ahead in terms of displaying the data. In part Navteq didn't see the value in providing the data online.
Google? They would give you the first taste free. Once your website garnered enough hits, they would start charging you for the data.
There's more. lots more....
> Google dropped that back in 2015, and changed it to "Do the right thing".
Google _NOW_ is just a larger version of DoubleClick.
Seriously. Look at who the directors of Doubleclick were when google inadvisedly hoovered it up, and who the directors of Google/Alphabet are now. The cast your mind back to the evilness of Doubleclick.
It wasn't so much of a poison pill acquisition as taking on a zombie and trusting that it wouldn't bite people.
It's not good that it is difficult for anyone else to compete against Google, even if they are not actively doing anything evil - and Google has done nothing in this case, it's just that Streetmap wasn't as good.
But Google is a company just like any other, albeit a big one with lots of products and services, and can't be blamed for promoting their own products. To anyone who says "but that isn't fair" - if you go to the M&S website and search for a pair of trousers, would you expect them to also show search results from Burtons and Top Man in the interest of fairness? And give them equal weighting in the results? Thought not.
Bad example.
If M&S offered a clothing search engine then showed their own offering even though your query clearly indicated that you wanted Ben Sherman, then I might agree with you. The screenshot in the article where it even offered to correct the spelling just indicates vindictiveness.
There's no vindictiveness in the screenshot - just an example of someone not knowing even the basics of web searching (which applies not just to Google, but any other). Just sticking "streetmap" on the end of a search term is too generic a word to get to Streetmap - you can't blame Google for suggesting the correction, and what should Google do with that search coming from outside the UK?
Do the search the right way: either go to to or bookmark streetmap.co.uk and search from there, which will get results from Streetmap and only that. Or, if you really must use Google as a proxy searcher for another site, then search for "aspley guise site:streetmap.co.uk" and Streetmap's result will come up first.
Look back a few years in these forums for the "facebook login" thread for another example of the folly of this.
... Streetmap had the lead and stopped innovating. Google was the stroppy upstart and innovated and didn't stop innovating. That's why Google Maps became dominant.
Yes, Kate Sutton had a challenge, but I'm sorry, but if you sit on your laurels and don't do jack, you might as well pack it in.
"Google was the stroppy upstart and innovated and didn't stop innovating."
It's got a hell of a way to innovate before it matches OS standards. If they were really serious about producing good maps why didn't they buy the OS's mapping and add their own interface? If you're serious about maps it's content that matters and Google's mapping content is minimal.
Google's mapping content is minimal.
This is true, because Google aren't interested in maps, they're interested in locations.
They want people to use Google rather than Bing to search for locations. Because Google has to remain the number-one source of information on the web, otherwise their advertising income dries up very fast.
Once you've found your required location Google then encourages you to get directions to make it as easy as possible to get there: you don't even need to be able to read a map!
The boring grey-grey map background is only there as the minimum mapping needed to show people where to find stuff.
This is true, because Google aren't interested in maps, they're interested in locations.
I would suggest that Google aren't interest in maps, but in creating a widely available geographic information platform onto which third-parties can readily develop and add their overlays, on to which Google can add their services, such as location based advertising.
This approach has created both some limitations and some benefits, as any one who uses Strava (they switched from Google maps to OSM back in 2015) and similar applications/services that take real world GPS data and try and marry it to map data, the issues become quite pronounced with the handling of elevation. However, this usage (mapping of real world GPS on to map) has also given problems with OS maps, as at times the map has been drawn out of scale and distorted so as to enable the presentation of important details.
So
“I’m happy that I fought the battle because at least I kept some lawyers in wine”
FTFY
I use streetmap a lot, because it has far better maps than google's : they're OS based. And you can save the tiles, unlike google. And stick them back together if you have the patience.
Google may be convenient for city use, but all that fancy stuff doesn't make it a better product.
Instead, the question being asked in court is: did Google abuse it's search-engine dominance to starve out Streetmap, rather than just competing on merit?
It has to be said, the "Objective justification" argument presented by Google seems somewhat strange ("In my opinion, I think I'm best for the job"?) - in fact, I'm mildly surprised there hasn't been any comparisons to the browser-integration debacle which led to Microsoft getting a slapped wrist from the EU.
Anyhow, coming back to the technology, and Streetmap in particular...
I have to agree that I remember mapping technology being clunky back in the day - but I can't say exactly when that day was, or which suppliers earned my wrath - or indeed, how much of it was due to browser technology and connectivity speeds being much more primitive.
Because, y'know: it's been a decade or more. And beer.
Equally, I can't really comment about how good Streetmap was versus Google Maps back in 2007 - as far as I know, unless someone's maintained a video archive detailing their functionality at the time, the only way to accurately compare their relative merits would be to borrow a Tardis and jump back a decade.
Finally, I'd note that while £300,000 sounds like a large sum - I'd love to have that landing in my bank account every month - but for an IT company, it's not actually a huge amount. Once taxes and overheads are accounted for, it's only really enough to fund maybe half a dozen staff.
In fact, I suspect Streetmaps never really stood a chance against larger companies like Google, who could throw far more resources at their implementation, as well as integrating it with their other offerings and technology, such as natural language processing.
Perhaps if they'd gotten some investors behind them early enough, or if they'd been able to build up some sort of patent portfolio, Streetmap would have done better - other companies such as TomTom and Garmin have found themselves in similar situations and are having to evolve. But I can't help thinking that Streetmap simply weren't in a position to scale up at the rate needed to compete.
Streetmaps use OS maps, but not to a sufficient level of detail for my liking, at the level OS map would be useful (for proper footpath detail etc.) you get some crappy A-Z style map.
Way back I generally preferred Multimap to Streetmap but it did not take long before I preferred Google maps for general ease of use & it was easy to script up around it