If you don’t trust them, don’t use it. Problem solved.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Google Maps Warns You About Crowded Areas With Updated 'Busyness' Feature
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you don’t trust them, don’t use it. Problem solved.
One thing neither does properly yet is making „find parking“ more convenient. I hate parallel parking and therefore I usually look for a car park but it’s annoying to search for. There should be a proper car park filter
How do you think Google gathers the data to determine whether a place is busy? Yeah, that's right. They are tracking users' locations.
They likely generate it the exact same way Apple and Google calculate traffic conditions - by anonymously aggregating millions of users locations. I guess you could call it tracking, but I don't consider it a privacy violation.
Good to know. Crowds = high covid risk. I've been avoiding crowded places since the plague hit and I shall continue to do so for many years to come. Even if Covid ever goes away it'll still keep me safer from other diseases.
If Google want to make their maps usable, they need them to be reasonably up to date.
Where I live, they are around 8 to 10 years behind reality. My house, and much of the road it is on, are simply gaps. I can't navigate to or from my house! Just somewhere vaguely near.
Apple are bang up to date. They even have parts of a brand new development, just a couple of hundred metres away, that has only existed for a few months.
It is not that I live in a total backwater. It is a major town in the area.
Google also fails dreadfully in not showing footways. The centre of the town has lots of narrow alleys. Google shows a footbridge over a river, but most of the footways either side are not shown. Apple is very good and shows at least most of them.
The UK might well be different to other countries. But not that many years ago, I'd find usually Google far more up to date than Apple, TomTom or most other maps. And Google's satellite imagery is far more recent, though still behind Apple.
Where I live, they are around 8 to 10 years behind reality. My house, and much of the road it is on, are simply gaps. I can't navigate to or from my house! Just somewhere vaguely near.
Apple are bang up to date. They even have parts of a brand new development, just a couple of hundred metres away, that has only existed for a few months.
It is not that I live in a total backwater. It is a major town in the area.
Google also fails dreadfully in not showing footways. The centre of the town has lots of narrow alleys. Google shows a footbridge over a river, but most of the footways either side are not shown. Apple is very good and shows at least most of them.
The UK might well be different to other countries. But not that many years ago, I'd find usually Google far more up to date than Apple, TomTom or most other maps. And Google's satellite imagery is far more recent, though still behind Apple.
This can be the most sincere and honest comment I've seen here and although I haven't been back to Android since 2015, some of my friends do... I agree with you, the app that changed everything is Google Maps. By far.
Apple Maps is visually far more pleasant, but it lacks some of the beautiful things Google Maps allows me to do (save offline maps, several destinations in a route...). But it is all good competition.
Which could come across as calling everyone else less sincere and less honest. Do you really mean that?
People do suck. I'm sure thieves would rush into these areas to pickpocket.
I used Google Maps here in Cyprus for the first time in about 18 months, and was pretty shocked at how much junk is squashed into the app. The sense of simplicity is long gone - it’s quite an overwhelming set of features which make it feel very ‘bulky’ and cumbersome to use now. Less used to be more, but in Google’s case not.
I wish Apple had Google’s AI prowess (not that Busyness is necessarily an example of that) but I suppose that would come at the expense of less privacy? It just blows my mind what Google is able to achieve with AI in Google Assistant and what they‘ve done with photography in the Pixel phones for years now.
Very good indeed. Should now be possible to avoid very crowded areas.
I will put this in the file of "Things that sound utterly ridiculous but will most likely end up true"...you know...like 1984
Google does not do anything anonymously. They make almost all of their money tracking people for marketing.
They usually have 10 customers at this time. They currently have 15. It is likely you will need to wait to get a table.
From 20 miles away sitting at home? I thought I had super powers, wow!
I'll take usefulness over Apple Maps any day! Google can use my data to help make apps better like this.
To each his own. Apple maps has matured it's pretty useful for me. In addition, there are other maps besides Apple Maps Google Maps which are disconnected from these two ecosystems. I will take my privacy any day. My data is not for Google to collect and then sell to third parties, especially without any compensation to me.
For a nominal service fee, you can pay Google to report an area as super busy so the lemmings will stay away and you can get the things you need to do done.