“****! They got it wrong AGAIN! This is ****-****!”
“You’re really selling me on this iPhone-thing, Ben,” my brother cheerfully chimed in.
I was pissed. I’d been in Austin for a week and was at the wrong place again.
Why?
Google Maps.
…
In July of 2007, I made a spur of the moment decision with a friend to buy a van and go on a road trip for three months. On the trip, we lived in that 17 year old van for three months and 15,000 miles. My traveling buddy had a phone that plugged in to Google Maps and put your location on the map using cell phone triangulation. It was hardly precise, but it was useful to finish about 80% of the job…sometimes.
There was a specific moment in New Orleans when we were looking for a restaurant in the area. The triangulation had us a few blocks away, but the Google Maps function kind of helped us find the place. The situation begged the discussion of integrating GPS into Google Maps, allowing you to always know where you were and what was around you.
I soon found out that the second generation of the iPhone would have GPS integrated. Having destroyed my cell phone and cancelled my service for four months, I later signed up with AT&T even though their coverage isn’t the best and I would be waiting more than six months to get the iPhone.
By the time I got my iPhone, I was on yet another road trip…this one lasted six months, going solo, and going to fewer cities. During the second month while I was in Chicago, I bought my iPhone nearly as soon as it came out. I immediately justified the cost in terms of my savings of time and energy by not needing maps, always knowing where I was and where various shops/restaurants/etc are located. In other words, I decided that the iPhone would save me more than $400 in time and energy because of its integration of GPS and Google Maps.
I was right.
I loved that thing.
I always knew where I was, where I was going, and could always find a late-night, last-minute place to crash in the middle of a 40+ hour drive, say, from Denver to Boston.
But all of that glory, that ease of use, that always-on-pointness…it all changed when I moved to Austin a week ago.
To digress, here’s the difference between tooling around in cities I don’t know, and tooling around Austin: I know Austin. I know the major roads, the various areas and neighborhoods, and what is generally around. I lived here for two years from ‘99-’01 and have visited at least once or twice a year since I left.
Anyway, back to how Google Maps has made my life worse…
Looking for Torchy’s Tacos (best tacos in the world, btw) the other day, Google Maps shows two downtown locations for Torchy’s. One of those locations has been closed for quite some time, and the other – to my understanding – never existed. (And it’s not labeled as “Unverified.”)
Last night, we came back from a day of toobing on the Comal and wanted to make margaritas for my brother and a buddy who was in town. Easy. Head to the grocery store for the necessary ingredients.
With Google Maps?
Not so easy.
First, I searched for an HEB that I thought was in my area. Google Maps shows me where it is, I go there, it’s not there. Whatever. There’s another just up the road. Whoops! No there isn’t! I head home. Pissed.
Today, we need to go to an auto parts store to replace a broken headlight for my brother’s car since he’s heading back home across the country. We find a shop, head there, and…Nope! Not there either! Whatever. We head to Fry’s (it got that right), but end up passing another auto parts store that I had specifically searched for. That’s even more ridiculous.
After that, we look for the outlet malls with several different search terms (specific companies and outlet-related keywords), and it never found the mall. We had to stop to ask for directions to a place that Google Maps should have known about.
On the way to the exit that we are supposed to take, we see this beautiful map.
Going North on I-35:
Seriously?
…
If someone were to tell me all of this, I might be inclined to say “Well, Austin is definitely growing and changing, maybe Google Maps just hasn’t been updated?” This would be acceptable if the places I was looking for were new…and none of them are – they’ve all been there for years.
…
In defense of Google Maps, they’re right half of the time and I get right where I want to go. The problem is that the other half of the time that they’re wrong ends up being a complete waste of time. As a customer, it becomes expensive to use Google Maps. There is a cost: Time, Energy, and Lost Opportunity. I’m now more inclined to actually do research online to get physical addresses rather than use the search functions on Google Maps.
While putting more of my own time and energy into making Google Maps work in order to compensate for its inaccuracies, it’s certainly not the intent of the product’s use.
…
I love Google’s products. I use GMail for my personal email, I use Google Apps for my businesses, I exclusively use their search engine, I’ve been a consistently-producing AdSense publisher since it came out, I use Google Docs almost every single day, and I will soon be moving my scheduling and task management to Google Calendar.
I love Google’s consistency and their top-notch quality. As a consumer I love them and as a business-person I have utmost respect for them.
But when it comes to Google Maps, to put it politely: Get it together.
(p.s. One other request: Add Interstate Rest Areas to your maps. It would be much appreciated by us weary road travelers.)
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