I still use gmail and drive for work but otherwise I’m never logged into anything google at home. Today when I tried to expand on a restaurant’s hours it wouldn’t let me see them without logging in, although it still worked in incognito. This restaurant screenshot is just a random other example I tried, but for the one I was actually checking google had the correct hours while the official website hasn’t been updated in awhile and had the old ones (website said they’re still open for dinner but they’ve only been doing lunch for a year or so now)
I work in 911 dispatch, we’re not really supposed to log into our personal accounts on the work computers, there have been a couple incidents (not specifically in the 911 center but other parts of our county government) where people have gotten viruses and such from opening links in their personal emails on county computers.
A lot of us in dispatch make pretty heavy use of Google maps. When a caller doesn’t know where they are and we’re not getting a good location from their cellphone, we can sometimes see a lot of details on Google maps that we can’t see on the maps on our dispatch software.
There have been a couple times a caller has described a house to me and a general area that it was in but not the exact address, but I was able to get that address from looking around on satellite view and street view.
Sometimes we can see businesses and other places on it that aren’t in our system or come up as something slightly different, like maybe everyone calls a school “the Smith School,” but the actual name of it, and how it’s listed in our system is the “John Q Smith Preparatory Academy” so if I search in our system for “Smith School” I won’t find it, but if I look on Google maps I might see that pop up.
There’s cases where like if the call is on the border between 2 towns and I need know which department to dispatch, I can look on maps for little landmarks that probably wouldn’t be listed in any map software so that I can ask something like “are you on the same side of the road as the house with a big statue on the front lawn, or are you across the street from that house?”
Point is, it’s a very valuable tool for my job in situations that can actually be life-and-death sometimes, and since I can’t log in to it at work, I worry about getting shut out from features I use or even out of the service entirely.
That is a point you need to bring up in your official capacity with the 911 dispatch you work for. Tell them what is going on and ask for a system account to be set up for each agent so that it’s just a formal login that is tied to the job and nothing else.
This is the way. It’s up to the employer to provide adequate tools for the job, if they decide to make others off-limits.
There’s OpenStreetMap. I’m not saying that it’s as suitable as Google Maps for you, but it’s a possible option.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/
The’re not a commercial service, and the database backing it is freely distributable, so it won’t get cut off.
It doesn’t have Google Street View, though, and attempts at reimplementing such a thing have been pretty weak, so if you need that functionality, won’t help.
I have tried open street maps it didn’t even have my address correct. It was absolute trash. There are very few things that actually work and work well when you need them to work. I would never trust that service to work well. It relies far too much on individuals to fix everything wrong with it. I had to submit my correct address to it which took several weeks to correct. And that’s just one address that I looked at that’s a standard address no big deal shows correct on every other map out there but if I were trying to rely on that for life-saving services hell no.
I agree with all your points. Just wanted to add that for bicycling, the OsmAnd app is superior to Google Maps, simply because the Google Map app doesn’t honor modified routes.
On the desktop, Google Maps lets you map bicycle directions, but they’re dangerously bad. Dangerous routes when it could have preferred a bike route or greenway, not understanding that sometimes you have to become a pedestrian for a few feet and use a crosswalk, or cross a patch of dirt, etc. And you have to force it into a safer route by adding the “drag to change route” dots and dragging them to the roads it should have used. However, if you share that route URL with the Google Maps app, it ignores all the changes and reverts to the bad route.
So instead I have to put that URL into GPS Visualizer and convert it to a GPX which OsmAnd honors. There are other GPX conversion websites too, but I’ve noticed subtle changes to my route when I was using those other sites.
All this could be avoided if the Google Maps app would just honor the desktop URLs, but it’s been this way for years so I doubt it will ever happen.
EDIT: fixed the link
The service is as good as the community who updates it. The more people using, the better it becomes. Be the change you want to see.
I don’t want to be the change to make it happen. I don’t want to be the beta tester of a product that’s supposed to be getting me around. What I want is I want a product that works I want something that functions when I need it to. When I go to an area that I am unfamiliar with and I’m using maps to try to find a house location a business whatever it is I don’t want to have to go in and beta test somebody else’s shit. That’s how Matt’s work.
Then stop whining about a community project and fucking buy a physical map.
For Google, the primary difference between a logged-in user and one who is not logged in is the absence of any contractual agreement that legally binds the anonymous user to terms assigned by Google.
I haven’t read a Google EULA in some time, but as I recall it was long and full of rights and waivers and privileges and protections you assign Google in regard to anything wherein you might possibly have legal standing. The log-in request is not universal, nor is it random, so it’s safe to assume as a hypothetical that for whatever reason, Google wants that in this specific scenario, in this specific geographical region.
On the other hand, if you’re not signed in – AND Google can’t link your anonymous use to an actual agreement you have with them elsewhere – Google just doesn’t have that same comfortably protected legal situation. (See Disney’s recent legal behavior for an example of why, if Google can still link your non-signed-in behavior to an existing EULA elsewhere in their walled garden, you may still be fucked.)
OP’s map seems to be located in the EU, which makes a legal difference as well. We already know that Google does whatever the fuck Google wants in the US, but in the EU laws tend to have more teeth as well as legislators very willing to go after violators.
All that said, I am not an attorney in Spain and I damn sure don’t work for Google, so don’t come at me lol.
Sure, go ahead irritating me when trying to use your service. Pushing me to log-in is THE way to drive me to other services. They have nothing to offer that’s worth/can justify logging in. nothing.
They probably don’t care if you use a different service if you don’t log in to use theirs. If you don’t log in they can’t easily monetize you by tracking your data and building a portfolio. Otherwise you use their resources at a cost and they don’t make money.
So threatening to leave for other services isn’t exactly a threat.
For a long time google existed without an option to create an account
Except the government wanting this information didn’t exist. That’s the future, you ID will be tracked (it already is) and the government will know exactly what you say, where you go, and what you do. Throw it at an ‘AI’ for ‘normalcy’ and you have Minority Report in a much sadder way.
Everyone is under suspicion. Criticism of Israeli genocides detected! Apply terrorism charges. Right to a jury ignored or circumvented.
Man, this is accurate, but I tested Mapquest recently. I like that I can make my position icon a cute little rainbow unicorn, but also it couldn’t locate the second Walmart in town. I get the pharmacy at one and the tire place at the other. And the store itself for neither. Like, I really want to know the pharmacy hours here Mapquest.
There is two options: either you have a corporation so everything and they require a way to pay their employees (and most will want some profit), this is the Google way. Of course you can switch to an alternative of a less evil corporation, but you will still be part of that system. The other option is crowd sourced, where everyone who uses also provides a bit. If you use an app based on data from OpenStreetMap, you will find local information lacking. But the beauty is, you can easily contribute. I think Wikipedia is the biggest example of how this system can work. Personally I use CoMaps. Can recommend it, but there are similar options that are just as open source.
You should see what they did with reCaptcha. Today for the first time I got the popup telling me to scan a QR code with my phone in order to continue. Well, fuck that.
Make sure to tell the owner of the site why you don’t wasn’t to use it anymore.
Oh the irony of installing that app through Google Play 🫠
This pisses me off as well, but it is essential to get it working in Android Auto. They purposefully block “maps”-type apps from showing no matter what I do via ADB (spoofing the “Installed from Google Play” requirement, for example). Best I can do is login to a throwaway account on Play, download OsmAnd (or similar), and disable networking (GrapheneOS) again for the “Play Services” app.
They will make everything mandatory log in for 100% named tracking soon, unless regulations call for otherwise.
These tech companies are the ones demanding ID laws to use the internet on computers. Microsoft OS already serves unique identifiers that can track down computers, and they want to close the loop.
They already have an overwhelming amount of information about us anyway, but the more perfect the dataset the more power, control and advertising revenue it affords.
These billionaire owned companies all want to enslave us all with absolute control. Call me paranoid or dismiss what I’m saying if you would like, but unless we can fix our politics in all of our respective areas to free them from the yoke of big money it will only get worse.
Can’t you just press dismiss? And make a ublock filter to stop it happening again
Nope, didn’t work. I tried zapping elements with ublock but it wouldn’t load the business hours.
Everyone has their breaking points. The enshittification will continue until morale improves (by leaving Google).
The only Google properties I still use are YouTube and Scholar (occasionally).
Pirating youtube is pretty doable right now. There’s invidious which is just a mirror then there’s ytdlp for people who fuck with command lines. Or Stacher if you don’t
I have used ytdlp before but mostly to download music. It’s really powerful though I’m quite lazy about doing the research into all of its features.
Discoverability is still important to me. I should check out invidious, since I’ve never heard of it! Thanks!
