Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ No, it’s not you: Google maps really did get crappy

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

As a cartography aficionado I also have notice the declining quality o Google maps, and in particular the disappearing city names. The author talks about the imbalance (too few cities, too many unnamed roads) at a certain scale, but if you zoom in you'll also notice it difficult to find street names and the names of rivers (you also get a totally different selection of city names). As suggested, these chages to Google maps are probably because it is optimized for mobile (lines good, text bad). "Unfortunately, these 'optimizations' only served to exacerbate the longstanding imbalances already in the maps. As is often the case with cartography: less isn't more. Less is just less. And that's certainly the case here."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 24, 2024 5:16 p.m.

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