For years, Google Maps has been a go-to tool for millions worldwide, seamlessly integrated into search results for instant access to directions, locations, and more. But if you’ve noticed something missing recently, you’re not imagining things. Due to European Union regulations, Google has been forced to remove its Maps functionality from its search results, marking a significant shift in how we interact with the tech giant’s ecosystem.
It’s been that way for months already. Maybe four or six I’d say.
I wonder whether alternative solutions were discussed: like Google retaining integration but breaking off Maps division into it’s own entity that has to use same API’s as everyone else and use the same integration points. Would’ve been more user-friendly thing to do.
how is it over? you just type in maps.google.com like you used to type in mapquest.con
But I still type in maps.google.com already because I don’t use Google search. But I still use maps.
Google maps is the best True dat. Double true.
Used to be, Waze is consistently better at producing faster routes now at least in the UK. I keep meaning to try out others like organic though.
Waze is owned by Google now so it basically is maps now just with a different skin and some better features.
Has been owned by Google for quite some time now, but traffic or accidents reported by users in Waze still take quite some time to show up on Google maps.
I use Waze when that matters but I’m usually using Google maps to look up stuff like what foo places are near me.
I’ll use organic sometimes too when I want directions but I don’t care that much about time.
Edit: food but it’s funny that way too
Talk about hyperbole…
Google Maps is over!
No, the integration in the search results when searching the web might be gone, but you can still go to https://maps.google.com/ and find what you need.
This is not a significant shift with how we are interacting with Google, it is a minor change.
Calm down.
This is not a significant shift with how we are interacting with Google, it is a minor change.
Eh… Most people (Not the tech literate ones) interact with the internet nearly wholly using the Google search bar. To the point where many have NO idea where to put a URL in their phone to actually go straight to a website and often just google the url and click the first link.
For those people, this will be a significant shift.
To underline this statement: Microsoft Bing is trying to spoof Google UI when people search Google.com.
Most tech literates do not understand the workflows of ppl who have no clue. Having done a shitton of 1st Level Tech Support for an ISP in my youth has given me the mostly useless ability to know how the clueless use their computer.I wish i could forget most of that bullshit tho, it brought me far too young to the conclusion that humanity is a long way from becoming immune to snake oil vendors, scam artists and con men because most people don’t have a fucking clue what they are doing.
“Google maps is over …there! It used to be here, now it’s there. Go click a link or something, like we did in the old days.”
Click a link? Oh you young whippersnapper! We used to have a note with written domain names or even IP addresses that we would type in if we wanted to go somewhere online.
Holy shit! Top comment right there! I read the headline and thought “Geez, that’s going to leave a massive hole in the maps market. There is no clear runner to fill that role. That probably means we’ll see a few years of innovations as competitors try their best to come up with that new killer feature that makes their maps the best.”
No.
None of that. Google.com will just act slightly different on their search pages.
A hyperbole would be to make a point, an intentional exaggeration for emphasis or generalization.
This is just a lie.
Sell your Google stocks now. This is the nail in the coffin!
I’ve had Google Maps added as a search option for years. Because I use Qwant for search, and the maps functionality in Qwant sucks.
It’s cumbersome to change habits if you just wanna search for X but can’t have the shortcut to the location in the results.
Now I need to double search.It is but it’s also better for consumers.
Google dominates search by bundling lots of services in one place and destroying all competition. They want you tied in to all their services and to never leave. You ar ethe product and they want to sell every bit of data they can and sell you to advertisers.
The tech giants keep abusing market dominance to dominate new markets. Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with windiws and destroyed the browser market. Then Google search sites and android aggressively pushes Chrome and now dominates the browser market. Microsoft bundles Teams in Office and destroys Slack; one of many egrarious actions by Microsoft over the years. Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use Safari - so you can’t bypass the Apple app and service marketplace - their 30% cut is too important.
Regulation is needed to break up the domination of these tech monopploes. By separating navigation from search, people get back in the habit of using other services for navigation results.
That might be Google maps, or that might be Bing maps or OpenStreetMaps. But Google can’t use bundling to make consumers too lazy to leave.
It’s a start. A minimal inconvenience for users benefits everyone longer term.
It could be handled better by forcing Google to offer choices for map providers as they literally already for browsing.
I agree, it is a slight annoyance, but that is all it is.
Or you could switch to another search engine such as Kagi or DuckDuckGo.
I understand the why of this but this is not an improvement. I suppose search engines should ask you which maps provider you want and then show results based on that.
I suppose search engines should ask you which maps provider you want and then show results based on that.
Google could have done that, but they chose to go this router to inconvenience users, so that they then could blame the EU for this.
I suppose search engines should ask you which maps provider you want and then show results based on that.
Why would they ever enable choice. That’s not very capitalism
If they allowed users to select a default, almost everyone would select Google maps and get a better experience. By not giving the user a choice everyone loses, because Google maps is still going to be the top option. I’m surprised that this functionality either doesn’t exist already or isn’t allowed, because capitalism.
Some people would not select google though. And google can’t afford people knowing that there’s competitors to Google! So better fuck everyone over by just disabling the integration.
True. Google is using a monopoly and forcing users to use Google Maps on their platform.
There’s no competition, and everyone is worse of. It’s a long term good change by the EU.
Most browsers allow choice of search provider. If you choose Google, you’d get this, if you choose a different search engine, you’d get a different experience. People already had that choice.
The monopoly company try to argue like that, but as seen m365 and teams, windows and edge, safari and iPhone, iCloud and iOS, and many more.
Where you intend to use just one product of a company but the company bundles stuff so that lazy human beings, like most of us, just use their stuff and never check put the competition.
If we let it slide like that, in the far future, you decide shamppoo, food, gadgets, clothing etc. all from the same company that rents you your home and have full control over your live.
Do you want that?
almost everyone would select Google maps and get a better experience.
Spoken like someone who’s never used a different map provider!
Can you give me an alternative that you truely think is better than google maps, not just alternative, something that is objectively better?
Objective ways Openstreetmap is better:
- More regularly updated (one street I used to live on in Amsterdam – a cosmopolis – has only recently been added to Google Maps, whereas I used Openstreetmap to find my way there when I moved in four years ago).
- People who update it get credited rather than an already disgustingly rich company; you can submit edits to Google Maps but they often don’t get implemented, at least not with any alacrity, and they keep the intellectual property rights to the data you submit.
- Better for privacy (probably goes without saying).
- Open-source, for what it’s worth.
- The map is colour-coded and actually easily legible rather than every way being a white or light grey, sometimes hair-thin line on a white background.
- Actually useful for people not sitting in cars as it shows pedestrian ways, cycleways, parks in detail, crossings, gates, stiles, etc.
- Useful for non-navigation purposes, in fact it’s the map of choice for people gathering map data.
- The directions don’t send you the wrong way up one-way streets or along roads you can’t ride your vehicle on, among other mistakes.
- Openstreetmap shows public amenities like bins, water fountains, benches, etc. I’ve used it to help my dad who has Parkinson’s get a quick bit of rest while visiting cities, for example.
- Google Maps is admittedly quicker for looking for branches of big companies, but you can do that without a map, and Google Maps is chock full of random businesses registered at people’s homes and searches can be obfuscated because richer companies pay to come higher in the search results.
- Google Maps has public transport info, but the info is so often wrong that I would seriously advise against using it.
- I used to work at a train station and people would come up asking why the train shown on Google Maps wasn’t showing on the departure board;
- I’ve seen people miss the last train of the night because Google Maps said it was leaving later than it actually was;
- it often doesn’t show the quickest or easiest route and you can’t refine the search the way you can on public transport apps,
- etc. etc. I’d say the info on Google Maps is so bad that it makes Openstreetmap better because it doesn’t tempt you with the false promise.
- The other features Google Maps is garnished with aren’t really needed if you can read a map or if you just need a map, like:
- street view (nice to have and has made Geoguessr possible (now pay-to-play in part thanks to Google’s closed-source APIs), but itself updated by volunteers who have to resort to things like holding signs with their company names to get credit and only updated every few years or so on average),
- opening times (whether it’s correct information aside, you can just look that up otherwise and get it from the horse’s mouth), or
- searching for something like cafés within a given radius (when’s the last time you went to eat out and thought, “any café will do, but I’m slightly pickier than to warrant just walking further up the road to find somewhere, and I can’t be arsed just looking at the local area on the map and picking out cafés”? And are those cafés even open when Google Maps says they’re open? Not necessarily!).
- I’m sure something else I can’t think of at the moment. You can see I’ve been asked this a fair few times.
I will give this a good look. Thanks for the detailed response. I’m working on degoogling, but some products I’m not willing to move on from because the quality is just better, so I’m happy to have something to look into here.
Like… and hear me out… save the preference with some sort of Cookie technology? Do you think the EU would be up for that?
I can’t tell whether you’re being intentionally ironic. Yes the EU would be up for it. The EU didn’t ban cookies. Putting it simply, you do not need a cookie banner if you aren’t tracking people.
Im a web dev and I build almost all of my sites without cookie banner unless they’re really required (YouTube embeds, invasive tracking etc) and when I don’t include a banner, people usually think I forgot it.
It’s a shame that most people think the internet just has to be crap now and every site needs some dark pattern banner to track its users.
A dark pattern would be some sort of underhanded but legal tactic to trick or coerce a user into agreeing to something they wouldn’t otherwise.
But most websites aren’t using dark patterns for this, instead they just blatantly and plainly violate the law.
There needs to be a browser that auto blocks all cookies, and all cookie banners. You can whitelist the sites you want. Beyond that, your browser tells all the web “fuck you!”
Firefox + uBlock Origin does that for me. You just need to enable the Annoyances filter.
Brave does mostly a good job with this. Though some cookie banners still slip through, and other functional popups get blocked. Still makea browsing the Web more palatable.
This is true. No cookie banners, no ads. Hardly ever a problem
I’m unclear why you’re being downvoted for sharing reccomendations. So, because I’ve experienced similiar issues when I DID understand the downvotes, I’ll assume someone downvoted you because Brave isn’t their browser of choice, and they’re sitting at their computer like “NO! NOT BRAVE! WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE USE (insert obscure browser which may actually be a better experience, but only 50 people have ever heard of) INSTEAD??? WHY MUST THEY RECCOMEND THE MAINSTREAM BROWSERS???”
And then 3pm comes, and it’s time for him to give his sheets to his mommy for the weekly laundry.
Meanwhile, me, someone who’s used Firefox exclusively since 2004, is thinking “Hmmmm, maybe I SHOULD branch out and try other browsers! I’m sure I could try Brave? I’ll be…BRAVE…enough to try a new browser!”
And then I give myself a big hearty laugh as I drink a sip of my hot chocolate, and proceed to live the rest of my life not giving a shit why you were downvoted. Oh, also, have an upvote!
Apt username.
Yeah, you’re not allowed to say anything positive about Brave on Lemmy. Instant downvote. Then downvotes for talking about it being down voted.
It’s like you said something neutral about AI, if you don’t shit on it, they brigade you down.
Yes it’s very good at eliminating cookies, it tracks and sells your data, but not as widely as the big guys.
It’s very good at fingerprint resistance too.
Firefox with UO, privacy badger is very close to it’s level of perf.
You can install stuff to block your telemetry in just about any browser, knock out a lot of your tracking but still get tracked by your browser maker, your OS, your ISP…
But talk about brave, they just get pissy.
To make it even more clear let me rephrase it:
If you want to store sth like that, it would be classified as functional and you wouldn’t even need a cookie banner for it.
Only if you want to use it to track people you need to notify them
Pretty much. Although I continue to be annoyed this ever even needed to be asked. There’s literally a browser setting to communicate this “do not track”. EU really should’ve just forced everyone to respect it :/.
I agree – and before DnT, there was P3P, which also would have done it – but it is what it is at the moment.
I’m mostly exasperated with it because I wipe all cookies each browser restart, which is a much more-reliable and less-obnoxious solution than the EU’s regulatory approach of trying to convince the remote end not to make use of its ability to set them. If you do that, you get the cookie banner every time on sites that show it, which means that the cookie banner regulation has made my experience rather worse. And unfortunately, some sites show the banner to non-EU-based users – we don’t elect EU representatives, but we still get some spillover from their policies.
There’s some Firefox plugin that will try to hide the cookie banners:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/istilldontcareaboutcookies/
EDIT: Yeah, from the description on there, the author is doing exactly what I am with the “not retaining cookies” approach, and smacking into how poorly that interacts with the cookie banner regulation:
The EU regulations require that any website using tracking cookies must get user’s permission before installing them. These warnings appear on most websites until the visitor agrees with the website’s terms and conditions. Imagine how irritating that becomes when you surf anonymously or if you delete cookies automatically every time you close the browser.
If you want to store your map preferences, save the preferences to your account and make sure you’re logged in.
I’m not saying anything like this is preferable or whatever but there’s also little sense in removing all semblance of user experience in favour of removing power from tech giants.
You can literally store all preferences in cookies without a problem with EU legislation.
Is this news? The “Maps” tab has been missing from my search results for a while here in Germany.
Same in Denmark
For users, this tight integration was incredibly convenient.
In Firefox, I have had any search starting with “gm” set up to do a Google Maps search. So “gm Omaha” will go to Omaha.
That is, I create a bookmark that’s aimed at:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=%25sand then in the Bookmark Manager, set the keyword to “gm”.
Kagi – which uses bang prefixes to do searches on external sites – appears to have done the same thing on the service side with “!gm”. So “!gm Omaha”. (They normally have their own, OpenStreetMap-based map thing, but if you want to do Google Maps, that’ll do it.)
EDIT: For some reason, the Lemmy Web UI seems determined to convert “%s” to “%25s” in the URL above, and I can’t seem to find an escape sequence that avoids that. It’s intended to just be “%s”.
I use DuckDuckGo so I use
!m.%25 is the URL encoding for 0x25 (or 37 decimal), the ASCII code for the percent sign. Basically it seems to recognize that it is a URL and then URL-encode characters that are not allowed in URLs
Probably it should only do so if the link is actually being hyperlinked which doesn’t happen for blockquoted text, so I guess it’s probably a Lemmy bug.
Thanks that’s really useful
“Over” my ass…
Pics or it didn’t happen
EU working as intended
Yes I read this only as good news. You’d have to be pretty thick for this to be a major issue for you.
Yes I have an issue with authoritarians controlling private business with the threat of violence
Then the US oligarchy under Trump with no environmental or antitrust regulations and bribes from the wealthy deciding policy should be paradise for you.
For my part, I’m happy to have some possibility for safe food and water and some hope of maintaining my privacy and not be forced into using products and services due to the fact that they have monopoly position in the market here in the EU.
Yes because the US doesn’t have safe food or water, good point
There’s quite a lot of pretty good evidence to back up your point already. When Trump is done there will be plenty more.
You mean the ingredients other countries ban that rfk wants to ban? That will make food less safe like the eu…?
For anything good he will do for food, he will do more damage to the medical profession. And there will have been 10 people in that position by the time Trump is done, so probably he won’t accomplish much anyway. In Trump’s last term he gutted tons of air and water safety regulations, so there’s every reason to expect him to do the same this time.
Yes, private business should be allowed to act fully unfettered, our health and wellness be damned
Didn’t say that
Didn’t even notice. Well done EU.
Is this a big deal? I realize I have a skewed view because I dropped Google search ages ago, but… when I need maps results I go to a maps app, I never really relied on the search bar for that, even when I did use Google search.
It is also a pain in the arse for a normal user. When I search for a local plumber, instead of typing my query into the address bar, I need to go to maps.google.com first, and search there. These days, half of my searches are for businesses (the other half for spelling or correct usage of a difficult word), and all those searches now need to be made directly on the map page.
You can reactivate the map integration in your Google account settings. Something called “Linked Google services”, check “maps”.
For a user who never uses maps or a user who always uses maps, this has no effect.
It’s for those who use both integrated, but thats pretty rare nowdays. Much easier to ask maps “restaurants near me, plumbers open near me” than having to watch gemini type something out and “rate your plumber” forums, or worse aggregated yelp links.
Nobody will be affected by this, except maybe our data to be harder to mismanage. The headline is stupid.
Much easier to ask maps “restaurants near me, plumbers open near me” than having to watch gemini type something out and “rate your plumber” forums, or worse aggregated yelp links.
Even easier to just slap the thing you’re looking for into the search bar and then read the reviews and get directions all from the one webpage, why did you bring Gemini into this?
Nobody will be affected by this
Nobody I know opens maps to search shit, every one of them would be impacted by this
“read the reviews and get directions at the same time”: yeah thats what map does.
When you use a google search, gemini fills at least a quarter of the page with shit.
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That explains why I
- Can’t search for <city> and get a direct link to the maps + position
- The toolbar of services missing maps entirely.
For all the things the EU does…What a stupid decision.
This may feel bad short term but this is actually good long term. It opens up the possibility for competitors for similar map services to exist. When google combined their search engine product with their maps product, everyone had to automatically use their map product. This is very monopolistic
For example in duckduckgo you can type “city !gm” and it will take you to Google maps search results for “city”.
You can also use ddg.gg as a quick way to be redirected to duckduckgo.com without having to type the whole thing
But they had to take 20 years for that decision.
True but still annoying.
Wondered if I did something wrong and this happened well before I read about it here.
Do you ever wonder why most Europeans has about 40 telecom companies offering you internet at your particular address? Regulation and anti-monopoly works.
Still showing up in Australia right now.
Probably stay like that until Australia joins the EU
Well they’re in the EBU*, so that’s only one letter off… maybe soon?
^(*an associate of the EBU, couldn’t let my technically incorrect joke stand)
LOL
