Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: today's episode is a classic episode. It's a Friday, so
Speaker 1: it's time to look back at classics. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published on February first, two thousand thirteen. It is called
Speaker 1: tech Stuff navigates Google Maps and yeah, I'd be lost
Speaker 1: without it, so it's good that we actually covered this.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum and I dove into this topic and I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy this classic episode. It is the end
Speaker 1: of a long day here at How Stuff Works Headquarters.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I am anymore, which is good
Speaker 1: because we're talking about Google Maps. So hopefully I will
Speaker 1: be able to find some direction in my life by
Speaker 1: the end of the show, because we live in the
Speaker 1: incredible Sure. So you have a cell phone in your pocket? Right? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: technically my cellphones at my desk, but normally, yes, I
Speaker 1: would in fact have it in my pocket. Okay, you
Speaker 1: have hypothetical cell phone in your hypothetical pocket. I'll roll
Speaker 1: with that and therefore you were connected to a network
Speaker 1: of systems that knows exactly where you are. It's both
Speaker 1: reassuring and yet terrifying, which I think should be the
Speaker 1: slogan for Google Maps. I used to have that on
Speaker 1: my business card, Jonathan Strickland. Reassuring and yet terrifying. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about Google Maps now. Now, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I know and your research because we alluded to it
Speaker 1: earlier before we actually sat down at the microphones. You
Speaker 1: said you had sort of a kind of a grand
Speaker 1: scale timeline of the Google Maps experience, which is not
Speaker 1: what I was looking up. So I would be fascinating
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit more about this, of course. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is an extremely comple complex timeline that I
Speaker 1: that I paged together from a single document that Google
Speaker 1: has up on its website. So don't don't tell them
Speaker 1: how the sausage is made, Laurena. We are brilliant. They
Speaker 1: don't know that. I actually want to go a little
Speaker 1: bit back before their timeline starts, which was when map
Speaker 1: Quest launched. Oh yeah, now see, I remember the map
Speaker 1: Quest days, folks. For those of you who have never
Speaker 1: used the web, back in the mid nineties. That quest
Speaker 1: was a revelation because it was this idea that, hey,
Speaker 1: there's this place I want to go, but I don't
Speaker 1: read maps very well. I don't like having to sit
Speaker 1: there and stare at intersections, and I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how the folding works, or I have
Speaker 1: purchased the right one for this area. I don't know
Speaker 1: which streets are one way versus two way, and then
Speaker 1: I end up making a plan that ends up wrecking
Speaker 1: about a dozen cars, and I'm in a Michael Bay movie.
Speaker 1: Suddenly these are all bad things in my personal experience. Uh,
Speaker 1: Michael Bay, if you want me in your next movie,
Speaker 1: call me anyway. I can't explode the But the important
Speaker 1: thing here was that you could actually plot out a pathway. Now,
Speaker 1: back then that was pre mobile web for most parts,
Speaker 1: so you ended up having to physically print the document
Speaker 1: that would give you the turn by turn directions and
Speaker 1: then take that with you in the car, in the
Speaker 1: place of a more traditional map, which the company that
Speaker 1: created map Quest actually began by making traditional maps, and
Speaker 1: they still do. I think right probably you couldn't You
Speaker 1: could even have a voice turn by turn if you
Speaker 1: had a passenger read out, Hey, you know that street
Speaker 1: we just passed. We totally should have turned there. They
Speaker 1: could do it in a robot voice if they if
Speaker 1: you really want them to. Almost every single person who's
Speaker 1: written with me eventually starts to talk like a robot.
Speaker 1: That's interesting and all right for reassuring and terrifying. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that one's reassuring at all anyway. Um So,
Speaker 1: so yeah, let's you know, map Quest enjoyed a good
Speaker 1: several years on the web, pretty much unrivaled, and then
Speaker 1: then in two thousand four, Google which at the time,
Speaker 1: do you know what Google was doing in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: L for sho jesus see when Google incorporates I would
Speaker 1: have been discussing with Yahoo in two thousand No, I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened in well neither do I. So
Speaker 1: this is like, this is terrific. That's awesome. So that
Speaker 1: was a question of true you really wanted to know
Speaker 1: a lot of curiosity. I bet Google was looking around. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so at this time Google had already started to figure
Speaker 1: out how to monetize search. Okay, so this part I
Speaker 1: can talk about just off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: Google had cracked the code on monetizing search. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you look at Google as a company, a lot
Speaker 1: of analysts will tell you Google really is an ad company,
Speaker 1: not a search company. They serve up ads. They happen
Speaker 1: to do that primarily through search. Well, they also determined
Speaker 1: that searching it goes beyond just searching for a term
Speaker 1: and getting a web page back. It also could mean
Speaker 1: finding ways to get to stuff. Now, Google did not
Speaker 1: necessary really have the people in the house to develop
Speaker 1: that sort of technology from the ground up, right, and
Speaker 1: that is why they acquired two companies. They acquired where
Speaker 1: to and also Keyhole UM. Now, where Too was a
Speaker 1: Sydney based company UM Design run by two Danish brothers,
Speaker 1: I believe, and yes, I can never say that, so
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you did um and uh. And Keyhole
Speaker 1: was the company UM that had the software that would
Speaker 1: become Google Earth. Okay, all right, So yeah, so you've
Speaker 1: got the foundations for mapping software and and Google Earth,
Speaker 1: which Google Earth is a is a wonderful tool and
Speaker 1: it's really super cool. We will not be talking a
Speaker 1: lot about Google Earth in this podcast because it really
Speaker 1: goes outside the realm of what we're chatting about We
Speaker 1: might allude to it once or twice, but it's sort
Speaker 1: of its own thing as opposed to you know, it's
Speaker 1: like a separate product from Google Map. Sure, bits of
Speaker 1: it have been integrated to Google Maps to make it
Speaker 1: the rich experience that it is today, but for the
Speaker 1: most part it is a separate issue. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: integral to to creating the Google Maps experience that that
Speaker 1: we know of today. Sure. So that was That was
Speaker 1: two thousand four, two thousand five, UM February is when
Speaker 1: the project of Google Maps was announced on the Google blog.
Speaker 1: And at that time, Google Maps was available only through
Speaker 1: two web browsers. Those web browsers were Bob's who lived
Speaker 1: in No wait, no, I'm sorry, web browsers, not just
Speaker 1: two people. One was an Internet Explorer, which was at
Speaker 1: the time the dominant, overwhelmingly dominant browser. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: see like the whole rise and fall of the various browsers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the other one was not Netscape. Netscape was already
Speaker 1: off the charts at that point. It was Mozilla, which
Speaker 1: we would eventually think of as Firefox because Firefox it
Speaker 1: was not you know, Firefox is not Firefox is a
Speaker 1: direct descendant of Mozilla, but it's kind of a branch
Speaker 1: it split off. But anyway, at the time, those are
Speaker 1: the two browsers that supported Google Maps right um. Also
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, in June, Google Earth and Google
Speaker 1: Maps API both launched. Right API that's an applications program
Speaker 1: that allows developers to create stuff that works with whatever
Speaker 1: it is the product is. So lots of different products
Speaker 1: have this, not just in Google Application programming interfaces. Technically
Speaker 1: what API stands for so this is an interface that
Speaker 1: lets you build extra cool stuff that uses the technology
Speaker 1: developed by someone else. So Facebook, for example, has an
Speaker 1: API that allows people to build the various games and
Speaker 1: other apps that run within the context of Facebook. So
Speaker 1: the Google Maps API gave opportunities to other web pages
Speaker 1: to have this stuff integrated into their page. So you
Speaker 1: might see this was kind of a response to hackers
Speaker 1: who hackers were sit there and they were kind of
Speaker 1: reverse engineering Google Maps to figure out how it worked
Speaker 1: and to try and give it new abilities based upon
Speaker 1: their own experience, and Google eventually said, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and create an API to make
Speaker 1: this easier because there's some really cool stuff happening out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also once you once you give people the capacity
Speaker 1: to use your product on their page, then you can
Speaker 1: add your advertising into it. And yet again they are
Speaker 1: an advertising company. A lot more people use your stuff
Speaker 1: if you make it easier to use. Who would have
Speaker 1: funked it? Absolutely insane? Um And in October of two five,
Speaker 1: Maps for Mobile launched and uh and that was that
Speaker 1: was back early enough in in cell phone service industry
Speaker 1: that maybe not that many people were capable of using it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two thousand five, you're talking about a time when uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know smartphones. If you listen to our history of
Speaker 1: Smartphones episodes and if you have it, it's okay, we'll wait.
Speaker 1: But you know that that's pretty early on in the
Speaker 1: history of smartphones. I mean, until we hit two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: when the iPhone comes out, smartphones did not really become
Speaker 1: a big thing in the consumer market. I mean, we
Speaker 1: had prosumers and executives who people in the business market,
Speaker 1: people who needed to be connected to their email all
Speaker 1: the time and bury all that kind of stuff above
Speaker 1: our pay grade. You know, they were taking advantage of
Speaker 1: this stuff. But yeah, it's kind of interesting that the
Speaker 1: Google got into that. Now, granted it makes perfect sense, right,
Speaker 1: because it's again, why why are you using these map
Speaker 1: programs in the first place. It's usually because you have
Speaker 1: to find your way to some other location, and so
Speaker 1: it makes us to do that most often, possibly business
Speaker 1: travelers have people who are going places. It turns out
Speaker 1: that if you want to get from point A to
Speaker 1: point B, it's not always convenient to carry a desktop
Speaker 1: computer with you in the way. Yes, yes, um, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then then two thousand and six was when um,
Speaker 1: some of Google Earth's satellite images started to be integrated
Speaker 1: into maps. Very cool, making everything shiny um. And then
Speaker 1: in July, Live traffic on mobile launched also cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: traffic is very cool. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how they do that later on. It's neat, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's mostly neat. It knows where you are, but but
Speaker 1: not you just you there. We go pretty much summed
Speaker 1: it up, but we will repeat it later in the show.
Speaker 1: Don't worry with a little bit more clarity and fewer pronouns.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah. Two thousand seven was when my Maps launched.
Speaker 1: My Maps being um uh the capacity for individual users
Speaker 1: to make customized, shareable maps without using that fancy API
Speaker 1: kind of stuff and needing to have an actual developer
Speaker 1: working in things cool. So this weird idea, like, uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to create a map that showed off,
Speaker 1: say a particular hiking route or jogging route or something,
Speaker 1: and you could send it off to someone else saying
Speaker 1: this is what I use because it's really well lit,
Speaker 1: it's safe, neighborhoods. That kind of stuff very useful. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're having a progressive dinner party and you want
Speaker 1: to show people the route from one house to the next,
Speaker 1: something like that progressive dinner party, it sounds like a
Speaker 1: different thing than it is. I usually have aggressive dinner
Speaker 1: parties where I just I just received further and further
Speaker 1: into the background that everyone who's listening is like, that
Speaker 1: is so not true. He just gets more and more boisterous,
Speaker 1: he does. But I have I have no transitions for
Speaker 1: any of these in in may view, it was a
Speaker 1: thing that he um and and that was that was
Speaker 1: when that was when they put some cameras on top
Speaker 1: of some cars and sent them out into the world
Speaker 1: and took a whole bunch of pictures of everything, upsetting
Speaker 1: some people, which we will talk about again later on
Speaker 1: in the podcast. Um, but but but giving you giving
Speaker 1: you the capacity to visit a place that you have
Speaker 1: never been and get an idea of what it's like
Speaker 1: to walk around there. Very useful. I I used this
Speaker 1: when I took a up to New York so I
Speaker 1: could figure out where I needed to go to catch
Speaker 1: the subway, and so I was looking for visual cues
Speaker 1: because uh, I'm a Southerner and I was lost in
Speaker 1: New York City and uh speaking speaking of which, a
Speaker 1: Google Transit was then integrated into Maps in October. Yes,
Speaker 1: very useful, so extremely useful, especially for people who do
Speaker 1: not drive. Yes, this this is the product that lets
Speaker 1: you look up things like public transportation schedules in various cities.
Speaker 1: And you know they roll it out gradually. You know
Speaker 1: they have to incorporate the data from various cities to
Speaker 1: to get it back to you. But it it is
Speaker 1: really really nifty. I use it all the time here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, where I'm going someplace where you know, I
Speaker 1: don't regularly go there, and I want to know, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if I need to get there by a certain time,
Speaker 1: what time do I need to leave my house or
Speaker 1: to to make that happen. So yeah, very useful tool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In April of two tho then walking directions were added,
Speaker 1: further furthering the capacity. I'm seeing capacity a lot. This
Speaker 1: episode's okay, I often say the word pumpkin for no
Speaker 1: apparent reason. Pump in technology podcasts. I can't explain it.
Speaker 1: Excellent walking directions April two eight, and then uh Matt
Speaker 1: Maker in August, which let people start to write in
Speaker 1: with changes um corrections to Google Maps, which is one
Speaker 1: of the really big important things we think about the software.
Speaker 1: We'll definitely get into that too, Yes, um. October was
Speaker 1: Maps for Android launched, something that I use frequently. I mean, seriously,
Speaker 1: it's one of It's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: don't think I could ever go back from having a smartphone.
Speaker 1: Is the map feature. Absolutely, I mean they are integral
Speaker 1: to my use. I do not remember what I did
Speaker 1: before I had that information on my phone. I certainly
Speaker 1: don't remember where I was. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time printing out directions. October of two nine my next
Speaker 1: plot point in this in this audio drama, and that
Speaker 1: was turned by turn Navigation and Android, another thing I
Speaker 1: use a lot, which, Yeah, back to that robot voice.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have a friend speaking in a
Speaker 1: robot voice. Anymore, your your phone. You can be friendless
Speaker 1: and your phone will do that for you. I actually
Speaker 1: count my phone as one of my closest friends, because
Speaker 1: otherwise the list is really short. Two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: biking directions added. Yeah, yeah, that that's also pretty cool now,
Speaker 1: and again this is one of those things that the
Speaker 1: crowdsourcing comes in handy. We'll talk about that again, but yeah.
Speaker 1: By by August of two thousand ten, google maps mobile
Speaker 1: heads surpassed a hundred million monthly users. That's a bunch.
Speaker 1: That's more than two um and uh making making google
Speaker 1: Maps in fact so big um and so popular that
Speaker 1: by November there was this really interes sting news item
Speaker 1: where there was an international dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I read about this. So from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you had the borders were established between Nicaragua and Costa Rican.
Speaker 1: This is a border that's been it was. It was
Speaker 1: a disputed border, which Google Maps, by the way, will
Speaker 1: mark in red on international borders right are in dispute.
Speaker 1: But but it had been settled in one way and uh,
Speaker 1: and then Nicaragua started to dig dig out part of
Speaker 1: the river that separates the two countries, like they were
Speaker 1: dredging the river, and technically they were dredging the river
Speaker 1: on the Costa Rica side of the border, because they
Speaker 1: took some exceptions. Costa Rica was like, hey, dude, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Except by saying hey dude, they actually
Speaker 1: sent an armed group of people to stand at the
Speaker 1: border of the river and stare directly at the Nicaragua
Speaker 1: side and then the over and on the Nicaragua side.
Speaker 1: You had the government say wait, wait, wait, Google Maps
Speaker 1: says the is on our side, whereas I think anyone
Speaker 1: would tell you that was probably a disingenuous move that yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that might have been. That might have been a little
Speaker 1: bit of a passing the buck. But anyway, multiply it was.
Speaker 1: It was resolved that they were in fact on the
Speaker 1: Costa Rica side, and they withdrew and uh and then
Speaker 1: Google also amended the map. But that's not the only
Speaker 1: time it's happened. There have been other cases where the
Speaker 1: particularly around bodies of water, because it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: see the dotted line underneath because it's always underneath all
Speaker 1: that water, so it's really hard to tell where the
Speaker 1: border is, and Google sometimes will uh you know, in
Speaker 1: their maps they have it laid out one way and
Speaker 1: in quote unquote reality, which your mileage may vary. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a different it's a different layout. So there
Speaker 1: have been cases like that. Yeah, right right, But you know,
Speaker 1: just just the fact that it was big enough that
Speaker 1: that a government could sit there and say, well, Google
Speaker 1: Map said, is impressive to me. I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: also we can justify this war because Google said this.
Speaker 1: I mean, gad, there was no war here. I don't
Speaker 1: want to I'm obviously exaggerating for effect, but um, but yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and eleven, uh, Android had Indoor Maps premiere,
Speaker 1: which is the fun thing where if you get lost,
Speaker 1: for example, in a mall instead of in a neighborhood, um,
Speaker 1: you can call up a map on your Android device
Speaker 1: and have it tell you where to go. Um. And
Speaker 1: then in two thousand and twelve, which which we are
Speaker 1: just recently out of, Google Plus Local premiered um. And
Speaker 1: towards the end of the year, Apple and Google Maps
Speaker 1: had some exciting things happen in that Apple totally kicked
Speaker 1: Google Maps at the App Store for the premiere about
Speaker 1: three months about three months. Yeah, it wasn't until December
Speaker 1: that it came back. So but we will also talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit later on in the episode. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and and now I think I'm gonna take a little
Speaker 1: bit of time here to talk about the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts that Google maps. Um, this is uh, this is
Speaker 1: the technical part of our episode. And I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get too deep into this because, for one thing,
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult to really really dive into
Speaker 1: it in an audio format. I kind of need visuals
Speaker 1: to help we can gesticulate all we want. Again, it's
Speaker 1: not really going to come from helping Lauren. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: unfortunately it's lost. But but a couple of things I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about before I really get into the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts. First of all, with the satellite imagery,
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting in that there have been cases.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about the border dispute, there have
Speaker 1: also been cases where Google has been asked by various
Speaker 1: entities to blur out some of their satellite imagery, which
Speaker 1: we should also point out Google is partnering with other
Speaker 1: companies to get the data and the images. It's not
Speaker 1: that Google has satellites encircling the earth constantly taking photos. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the satellite imagery is acquired through other other partners.
Speaker 1: But there have been times where Google has blurred stuff out.
Speaker 1: In some cases, it no longer does blur out a
Speaker 1: few of those places like the White House, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, right, but it used to be facilities. Um
Speaker 1: some it's like like like like military basis would be
Speaker 1: a big one, right, And and so there have been
Speaker 1: ties where Google has blurred that stuff out a little
Speaker 1: bit to make it less likely that someone might use
Speaker 1: Google Maps in a military strike against a target, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Also, Uh, if you ever wanted to
Speaker 1: know what Area fifty one looks like, you can actually
Speaker 1: see that on Google Maps. Yeah, you can see its
Speaker 1: satellite you. Oh yeah, no, it's it's it's there now. Granted,
Speaker 1: you know, we should also point out the Area fifty
Speaker 1: one hasn't really been an active secret base for a while.
Speaker 1: They moved that we would have to talk to the
Speaker 1: conspiracy stuff guys. I'm pretty sure they're in Colorado now actually,
Speaker 1: and that's not a joke. I think they're really. I
Speaker 1: think the new base where a lot of the secret
Speaker 1: Air Force stuff where they're doing test flights of secret
Speaker 1: aircraft is out of Colorado and not area if if
Speaker 1: do you want anymore, Um, that's just off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. But anyway, it is on there if
Speaker 1: you want to take a look at it. But getting
Speaker 1: into the nuts and bolts, it all starts with a
Speaker 1: project at Google that they call ground Truth. Now, if
Speaker 1: you think about all the Google maps you've seen in
Speaker 1: the various ways that you can customize it, where you
Speaker 1: can put push pens in, you can put different routes in,
Speaker 1: and you can view it in a million different ways,
Speaker 1: ground Truth is kind of the focal point of all that.
Speaker 1: Think of it as like the proto map. It has
Speaker 1: all this data and we're talking terabytes of data here
Speaker 1: that are going into making the maps what they are,
Speaker 1: and that kind of terrifying amount of data that we
Speaker 1: can't even really deal with on a mental level because
Speaker 1: think about the stuff that's involved in a Google map.
Speaker 1: You've got the actual graphical representation of the map up,
Speaker 1: so you've got you know, streets, You've got you might
Speaker 1: have you know, outlines of buildings, you have uh, the
Speaker 1: names of landmarks, that kind of stuff. On top of that,
Speaker 1: all of those those pieces of information are linked to
Speaker 1: um coordinates right, physical coordinates right exactly, so latitude and
Speaker 1: longitude you know that those are all identified, so that
Speaker 1: when you look at a map, you're looking at it
Speaker 1: the correct you know way. It's not just a bunch
Speaker 1: of random places. Hey, Now Rushmore is right next to
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon, which is right next to Disney World.
Speaker 1: And I mean that's not a little bit more precise
Speaker 1: than it used to be. Is all we're saying. We
Speaker 1: have we have precisely to scale right. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, you have things like business names included
Speaker 1: in this information. It's it's lots of info all together,
Speaker 1: and it's all there because you need to be able
Speaker 1: to look at the map in one of a billion
Speaker 1: different ways. So all this data is there, and then
Speaker 1: Google's algorithms are what have to make sense of the
Speaker 1: information and display the information that's relevant to you in
Speaker 1: the context that you are using the maps in when
Speaker 1: you when you go in and say, hey, I want traffic,
Speaker 1: HAIR want satellite, Hey I want to know how to
Speaker 1: get from point A to point B versus, Hey, I
Speaker 1: want to know how many different pizza places are around
Speaker 1: point B versus I want to know where the top
Speaker 1: rated restaurant in San Francisco. Is these are all different
Speaker 1: contexts you can use Google Maps in, and so it
Speaker 1: has to be able to be very flexible. Now when
Speaker 1: you're actually looking at Google Maps, what you're looking at
Speaker 1: is uh that has a top side a top bar
Speaker 1: in a sidebar, and those are just basic HTML. So
Speaker 1: it's just like which hypertext markup language. It's the stuff
Speaker 1: that the web is made of and dreams as it
Speaker 1: turns out that parts of life and then the rest
Speaker 1: of it it all well, originally it was all XML,
Speaker 1: which is extensible markup language. Now, extensible markup language is
Speaker 1: a way of telling a client, meaning a web browser
Speaker 1: in this case, how to display the information. So it's
Speaker 1: a set of instructions that says, here's all this data,
Speaker 1: and here's how you show the data to the person
Speaker 1: looking at it. Okay, So it's just a set of instructions, really,
Speaker 1: is what it What it boils down to. These days,
Speaker 1: didn't they switch to a to a JavaScript object. They've
Speaker 1: got Java script. Yeah, it's all JavaScript and it's all
Speaker 1: um it's JavaScript is what they program everything in. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's essentially Back when it first started, this was a
Speaker 1: C plus plus program. That was back when the Dutch
Speaker 1: brothers were working on it, and now it's uh, now
Speaker 1: it's all JavaScript stuff, but yeah, it's uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it was really heavily using x m L and UH
Speaker 1: and something called x s t L which is extensible
Speaker 1: style sheet language. You would apply that to the XML
Speaker 1: to get h t m L. All of that is
Speaker 1: just very technical, and it also ultimately doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: because they kind of switched to something called maps g L,
Speaker 1: which is a variant of the Web Graphics Library. That's
Speaker 1: the Java script you're talking about, part of the JavaScript
Speaker 1: Application Programming interface, and it renders interactive graphics, which is
Speaker 1: what Google Maps are. It's an interactive graphic that you
Speaker 1: can play with. It's actually really kind of cool the
Speaker 1: way that works. Um. I have to give a lot
Speaker 1: of credit, uh to Joel Webber. Now, Joel Webber is
Speaker 1: is a former graduate of Georgia Tech, but I don't
Speaker 1: hold that against him. Go Bulldogs, I'm a Gator. Oh
Speaker 1: oh well, then Joel and I both hate you. You
Speaker 1: learn things every day, right, so I mean, granted, I
Speaker 1: never once went to a football game, and I was
Speaker 1: not on the football team, so you weren't you don't
Speaker 1: have to hate me that much. She moves like a
Speaker 1: running back is all I'm saying. Um, anyway, what that means?
Speaker 1: I think running back is in baseball. So anyway, steroid,
Speaker 1: Sorry back to but no no. Joel Webber had he
Speaker 1: took a lot of initiative early early on in Google Maps.
Speaker 1: He thought it was a very interesting product, and then
Speaker 1: he began to reverse engineer it and kind of learned
Speaker 1: the way it worked. So it wasn't until fairly recently
Speaker 1: the Google started talking about what makes Google Maps tick.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say I think it was like
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve when they started letting journalists come in
Speaker 1: and they were essentially giving uh kind of a symposium
Speaker 1: on an overview of how it works. But before that,
Speaker 1: it took people who were actually to dig into it exactly,
Speaker 1: and Joel Weber was one of those guys. And he
Speaker 1: still has quite a bit of information up on the
Speaker 1: web that explains what he did and and sort of
Speaker 1: what he learned. And among those things, he learned that
Speaker 1: the the center pain that the actual map that you're
Speaker 1: looking at is made up of a grid of tiles,
Speaker 1: and that grid is a hundred and twenty eight wide
Speaker 1: and tall. Not all of those tiles are in view
Speaker 1: of the map. So so I think of the think
Speaker 1: of the map is kind of cutting off. It's it's
Speaker 1: the center of this tiled puzzle and the border around it.
Speaker 1: There are tiles that are outside of your your vision, okay,
Speaker 1: and you know you can dragon and move the map around.
Speaker 1: You know, you hold down the mouse button and you
Speaker 1: pull the mouse across and then the map moves. I
Speaker 1: believe the Google term for this, by the way, is
Speaker 1: slippy map. Yes, which I love this And it turns
Speaker 1: out the slippy map. The reason it works is that
Speaker 1: every single image you're looking at is absolutely positioned, and
Speaker 1: when you scroll, it is essentially picking up the tiles
Speaker 1: that are off screen on one side and placing them
Speaker 1: down on the other side. If you want to think
Speaker 1: of like a different way of of imagining this, Joel
Speaker 1: had a great example. Just imagine that you're on a
Speaker 1: train and the way that you continue moving forward is
Speaker 1: that you pick up the track you've just crossed over
Speaker 1: and you put it down in front of you so
Speaker 1: you can keep going. So as you're moving, your remove
Speaker 1: moving the track behind you and putting it in front
Speaker 1: of you, and that way, you just you don't have
Speaker 1: to end up generating the entire map, which would be
Speaker 1: a huge drain on resources. It's clipping it down to
Speaker 1: just the integral, right, and exactly the stuff that you need.
Speaker 1: It can cash stuff that happens to be around. And
Speaker 1: again you've got you've got stuff that's two or three
Speaker 1: or four fifty tiles off the border, right, so as
Speaker 1: you're pulling your first seeing stuff that's already loaded up,
Speaker 1: it's just wasn't in your view, right, and then the
Speaker 1: tiles that are essentially moving to the other side are
Speaker 1: starting to pull the data necessary in case you keep
Speaker 1: going that way. So it gives you the sort of
Speaker 1: infinite scroll ability um. And also it's it's very much
Speaker 1: a client side application. And what we mean by that
Speaker 1: is that while it's pulling data from servers, from Google servers,
Speaker 1: which has you know, have all this information, the most
Speaker 1: of the work is being done within the client, so
Speaker 1: on your computer, within the web browser, on your smartphone whatever,
Speaker 1: that's what's doing most of the work. And the good
Speaker 1: thing about that is it means that frees up the
Speaker 1: servers on Google side, because lots of people are using this, right,
Speaker 1: and we talked about how more than two, and we
Speaker 1: talked about how many different ways you can use it.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, with all the different ways
Speaker 1: you can use it, all the data that Google is holding,
Speaker 1: and the number of people, it's important that we that
Speaker 1: Google had designed it, and I say we that Google
Speaker 1: had designed the system in such a way that it
Speaker 1: doesn't bog down the server side or else. Every time
Speaker 1: we would try to use Google Maps, it would take forever.
Speaker 1: And because a lot of that work is being done
Speaker 1: by our devices, it means that you know, if there's
Speaker 1: something slow to computer's fault. That's not exactly true, because
Speaker 1: I mean there could be other issues obviously, but in general,
Speaker 1: it means that the system works more smoothly than it
Speaker 1: would if it was all server side. So I mean,
Speaker 1: like I said, I could get further into the actual
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of what Google Maps is doing and
Speaker 1: how it's doing it, but ultimately I think it would
Speaker 1: be more confusing than helpful. And also, we're getting to
Speaker 1: a point now where I have got to be completely
Speaker 1: upfront and honest with you guys, Like all of this
Speaker 1: I've got a pretty good handle on, but when I
Speaker 1: started going further in, it's going into a level of
Speaker 1: development and programming that's beyond my own personal experience. So
Speaker 1: at that point, I'd just be like, well, according to this,
Speaker 1: this word that I don't know affects this other word
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I'd rather just spare everybody that
Speaker 1: thank you, You're welcome. Hey guys, it's Jonathan from nineteen
Speaker 1: and I am so lost while I get my bearings.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor, and
Speaker 1: now back to the show. Alright, So, one of the
Speaker 1: many top that we said that we were going to
Speaker 1: come back to was Google street View. And the reason
Speaker 1: that we wanted to come back to this is that
Speaker 1: it has been a little bit contentious because it's this
Speaker 1: fabulous technology that, like we said, let's you visit a
Speaker 1: place that you've never been to. Let's you walk around
Speaker 1: an area that you are perhaps going to visit or
Speaker 1: are just curious about, without having to get on a
Speaker 1: plane and get out in the wet, in the rain
Speaker 1: and the cold. You know, it lets you do more
Speaker 1: once you get to a location. However, unlets you do
Speaker 1: more when you get to a location by virtue of
Speaker 1: the fact that it's taken detailed pictures of that location,
Speaker 1: including for example, the cars and people and children and
Speaker 1: dogs that were walking by when the photography was taken.
Speaker 1: And some people had a problem with this. Some people said, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe my baby should not be on Google street View. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you shouldn't have that picture of me coming out
Speaker 1: of the adult entertainment establishment, uh in downtown Atlanta. So
Speaker 1: that now whenever anyone looks at said adult entertainment establishment
Speaker 1: on Google street View, they see that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a generic me, not me me. It's the royal me.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess how that works. But but no,
Speaker 1: that's exactly that's exactly right there. There were several communities
Speaker 1: not and also individuals that objected to Google street View,
Speaker 1: saying that, uh, it violated privacy, that they felt it
Speaker 1: was kind of creepy. There were people who who said
Speaker 1: that this is going to turn into a tool for
Speaker 1: thieves to use so they can they can virtually case
Speaker 1: a house without ever having to actually go into the neighborhood. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: for the kind of higher paranoia of this is going
Speaker 1: to turn into a government tool for those countries that
Speaker 1: do not have CCTV already. Sure, yeah, yeah, or or
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, maybe the day that Google street
Speaker 1: View went through my neighborhood was after I had not
Speaker 1: not taking care of my lawn yet. And so now
Speaker 1: the later when you try to sell your house exactly
Speaker 1: and people like, m, that's a dump. Yeah, it may
Speaker 1: very well be any of those things. Now, the flip
Speaker 1: side of that is that there were people who had
Speaker 1: fun with Google street They would see that the Google
Speaker 1: street View. They would either know that the car was
Speaker 1: scheduled to go down the street at a certain time,
Speaker 1: or they would see it and they would stage various
Speaker 1: humorous things to happen so that it would be captured
Speaker 1: by the Google street View car as it went by.
Speaker 1: We've talked about some of these in previous episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, where there were people who would create a
Speaker 1: virtual parade on on a street and yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: If you look at Google street View and you look
Speaker 1: at you know, art projects or parade that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: it will pull these these images up and you can
Speaker 1: actually see how creative people were. I saw one where
Speaker 1: I was a group of larper's all in uh full foam,
Speaker 1: gearing on each other. Wonderful. You're going through a suburban
Speaker 1: neighborhood and like there's a melee happening. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: if it were me, I know what I would want
Speaker 1: to do. Like anytime I knew that there was gonna
Speaker 1: be a Google street View car going through New York,
Speaker 1: I would be like, Okay, guys, it's Warriors. Causplay time.
Speaker 1: Who wants to be the baseball furies? Who wants to
Speaker 1: be the high hats? We are gonna go out there
Speaker 1: and bangers. We are gonna make some noise. Can you
Speaker 1: dig it? That's probably the whitest can you dig it?
Speaker 1: I think it probably was. History is being made right here.
Speaker 1: Come out and play a dear. That's a documentary for
Speaker 1: you folks out there for Warriors. Late seventies look important,
Speaker 1: important information. But yeah, so so it's gonne, you know,
Speaker 1: both with the privacy issues and as well as like
Speaker 1: people you know, taking advantage of it to have some fun.
Speaker 1: I think I think for the most part, Google enjoys
Speaker 1: the whole let's have fun with it thing as long
Speaker 1: as it's within the realms of you know, safety and
Speaker 1: good taste. But the but as the privacy thing has
Speaker 1: been a lot more complicated. I mean, you've had entire
Speaker 1: community say we don't want this. We think we're a
Speaker 1: gated community. You do not get this is private property.
Speaker 1: You don't get to come in through here. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: Google's whole motto is that they want to index the
Speaker 1: information of the universe, and part of that is all
Speaker 1: of the places you can go on the planet Earth.
Speaker 1: So there is there has been this problem. Now. The
Speaker 1: other thing about street View is that it's actually been
Speaker 1: very helpful with Google Maps in making them more accurate.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about earlier. If you were just
Speaker 1: looking at a map, a physical map, a paper map
Speaker 1: in your hands, you might not be able to find
Speaker 1: the best route from where you are to where you're
Speaker 1: going because you might not be able to see which
Speaker 1: which roads are no longer open, or which ones are
Speaker 1: one way streets, what's under construction exactly. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that Google street View would do is that
Speaker 1: the routes that these cars would take would help validate
Speaker 1: which routes are open to vehicles. So if if a
Speaker 1: Google street New car could not go up a street
Speaker 1: it's because it might be a one way street or whatever,
Speaker 1: then that information was part of the information that be
Speaker 1: saved and would be integrated into that proto map I
Speaker 1: was talking about, and you know, really when you think
Speaker 1: about when you're getting directions from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: it's pretty complex. It has to take into account all
Speaker 1: of those things and say, all right, this may not
Speaker 1: seem like it's the fastest route, but this it is,
Speaker 1: because yeah, it's really complex. But Google street View helped
Speaker 1: that out. So the Google street View provided two different
Speaker 1: kinds of information. It provided that the images, which that
Speaker 1: was the obvious one, top level, but also the route
Speaker 1: information by the actual route the cars had to go
Speaker 1: through in order to capture all those images. So that's
Speaker 1: it was sort of a validation method that Google used
Speaker 1: as well. On top of that, we had the whole
Speaker 1: idea of this crowd sourcing, which we had talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier. But crowdsourcing. Google uses crowdsourcing in
Speaker 1: two ways, or at least two ways one of Google Maps.
Speaker 1: Google Maps. Google uses crowdsourcing in lots of ways, but
Speaker 1: Google Maps in particular to two main ways. One of
Speaker 1: them is traffic, and generally speaking, they're tracking, um, people
Speaker 1: who happened to be using cell phones, particularly cell phones
Speaker 1: using Google Maps and tracking their progress either through uh,
Speaker 1: you know, little anonymous GPS tracking or anonymous uh cell
Speaker 1: phone tracking, you know, as you move from from another
Speaker 1: and the idea is that, hey, you know, if if
Speaker 1: the same user is able to make their way through
Speaker 1: this this particular street at this particular speed, that gives
Speaker 1: me an idea of how how fast traffic is going
Speaker 1: and whether or not, Yes, what color code? We need
Speaker 1: to break that up as yeah, exactly like if they're
Speaker 1: if they're crawling, they're either not in a car or
Speaker 1: traffic is bad. And this is aggregated, so it's not
Speaker 1: just a single person. We're talking thousands upon thousands of people.
Speaker 1: And the important thing to remember is that, assuming that
Speaker 1: we're all on the up and up, here is anonymous data. Right.
Speaker 1: So Google doesn't know it's a particular person. Right, It
Speaker 1: knows that it's your phone, but it doesn't know that
Speaker 1: you are Jane Smith and that you are going from
Speaker 1: your home to your office pet smart to write. All
Speaker 1: it knows is that this particular phone is moving at
Speaker 1: this particular speed in this particular place. So beyond that,
Speaker 1: it doesn't know that that phone belongs to Jane or
Speaker 1: that Jane is on her way to commit a hit
Speaker 1: for the mob. Right, it does not it does not
Speaker 1: record the starting and stopping points, which is another thing
Speaker 1: that people were worried about with directions, right, right, of course,
Speaker 1: if I put in I need to know how to
Speaker 1: get to this point, is it going to be saved
Speaker 1: somewhere so that Google knows that I went from here
Speaker 1: to there? Obviously, depending upon what you're doing, that could
Speaker 1: be very sensitive information, very undesirable share like up hunting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say that, you know, my boss is like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, um, this weird thing popped up. It turns
Speaker 1: out it looks like you've been going to every single
Speaker 1: one of our rivals recently, and a lot of our
Speaker 1: rifles are coming out with really similar products to ours.
Speaker 1: That would be I mean, clearly, you know that's unethical
Speaker 1: behavior on the part of the user, but that's just sure.
Speaker 1: But for example, um, yeah, the other way that the
Speaker 1: traffic data is garnered is via microwaves. Oh wow, so
Speaker 1: like when people are making popcorn? Yes, okay, but that's
Speaker 1: but that's another episode that is in fact an episode
Speaker 1: that Jonathan and christ did previously. Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I was like, this sounds really familiar, but I didn't
Speaker 1: research this. We've already done this bit seventy something episodes,
Speaker 1: kind of hard to keep track. He has no idea anymore. No,
Speaker 1: I don't even know where I am. That's why I
Speaker 1: need this podcast also ages getting to him. Thank you.
Speaker 1: There has to be one in every episode, doesn't there?
Speaker 1: There does? Okay, that's fair anyway. So that was one
Speaker 1: form of crowdsource. The other one is you were talking
Speaker 1: about the the the map maker. Where this idea about
Speaker 1: in your personal experience using Google Maps, you might encounter
Speaker 1: a situation where the map is not accurate, and it's
Speaker 1: allowing people, um to be helpful. It's allowing you to
Speaker 1: inform the map experience. Yo, dude, you totally turned me
Speaker 1: down the wrong side of the street or the road
Speaker 1: you wanted me to take as a private road and
Speaker 1: I cannot actually drive on it. I encountered that actually yesterday.
Speaker 1: But it was because Google Maps can't counter user stupidity,
Speaker 1: and in my case, it was that I wasn't really
Speaker 1: thinking I was. I was going to a specific location
Speaker 1: on the minds anywhere. It was I was going to
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Botanical Gardens so I could see some pretty lights.
Speaker 1: Well that's a classy place to go down it is
Speaker 1: I felt totally out of place. My wife, however, completely
Speaker 1: at home. So trying to get to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Atlanta Botanical Gardens has a there's
Speaker 1: a parking structure that's a a sent to Atlanta Botanical Gardens,
Speaker 1: but it's run by a different company, right, So when
Speaker 1: I put Atlanta Botanical Gardens into the Google Maps program,
Speaker 1: it's telling me how to get to the gardens themselves,
Speaker 1: which are off of little private roads that I cannot
Speaker 1: actually can act success. If I had put in the
Speaker 1: parking garage from the very beginning, then it would have
Speaker 1: sent me the correct way to get to actually enter
Speaker 1: the garden. I did not do that. So in that case,
Speaker 1: I actually didn't counter a problem. Not granted, you know,
Speaker 1: I just realized that I was on the other side
Speaker 1: of the enormous park and I just had to go
Speaker 1: around around and then I got there. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a big deal. But in other situations that could be.
Speaker 1: So Matt Maker, lets you correct those sort of problems
Speaker 1: and send send information to Google and say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just f y I fix this. Yes, And we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure that that's not based on a single users experience.
Speaker 1: Because that would be very dangerous, and you can easily
Speaker 1: troll the system, you know, you I can. Here's here's
Speaker 1: how I would use it. If that were the case.
Speaker 1: Everywhere I would go, I would say that the closest,
Speaker 1: fastest route was not working, so that way I could
Speaker 1: guarantee there never be any traffic because people would be
Speaker 1: routed around it. That would be insidious. That's that's how
Speaker 1: I think. This is this is the way I think.
Speaker 1: I think, How can I manipulate the system to benefit me?
Speaker 1: That's terrifically evil. Thank thank goodness, Google is slightly less
Speaker 1: evil than you and have it counted for for such things,
Speaker 1: you know. That's that's the thing. They really do anticipate
Speaker 1: people gaming the system, and so they're wants to bad Google. Right,
Speaker 1: So anyway that both of those methods are really important
Speaker 1: for Google Maps, uh, you know, just to just to
Speaker 1: give the best user experience possible. Because even though you know,
Speaker 1: Google is in the business of selling ads essentially or
Speaker 1: selling ads space, you know, they have to make products
Speaker 1: that are are user friendly, and it's part of what
Speaker 1: makes the product yours. It's part of part of what
Speaker 1: makes it interactive, and it adds into that entire slippy
Speaker 1: map concept of of being able to to go in
Speaker 1: there and mess around with it and really dig your
Speaker 1: fingers in then. And of course also you can add
Speaker 1: in your businesses information into a map. You can edit
Speaker 1: business and businesses information, you can provide reviews of a business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's literally mapping to other parts of the Internet.
Speaker 1: So it's not just showing you the physical location of
Speaker 1: a place that you're searching for. It's giving you access
Speaker 1: to other resources that gives you more information about the
Speaker 1: place you're looking for. It's kind of this whole idea
Speaker 1: of marrying the physical world in the digital world so
Speaker 1: that the two are integrated so tightly that we have
Speaker 1: access to pretty much any kind of info you want
Speaker 1: at any time you want, any place you want, which
Speaker 1: has its benefits and its drawbacks. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: also kind of touch back. We talked about this briefly,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: happened with Apple. Right. So, Apple comes out with the
Speaker 1: iPhone five as well as the release of the sixth
Speaker 1: generation of iOS, the operating system for the iPhone and
Speaker 1: iPad and iPod Touch, and for that it had developed
Speaker 1: its own map system, Apple Maps, Apple Maps, and UH.
Speaker 1: People began to notice that Google Maps was no longer
Speaker 1: available within the Apple app Store, which I was struggling
Speaker 1: to name earlier today, and then I got out, oh wait,
Speaker 1: yes they are the one that's called the app store,
Speaker 1: but yes Google Maps. Google and Apple had had sort
Speaker 1: of a a weird relationship, a love hate relationship. There
Speaker 1: was a time when Eric Schmidt, who was at that
Speaker 1: time the CEO of Google, he was also sitting on
Speaker 1: the board of directors of Apple, and then eventually he
Speaker 1: resigned his position as a member of the board of
Speaker 1: directors UH, and he cited that it was because he
Speaker 1: felt there was going to be an increasing conflict of
Speaker 1: interests between the two companies. And and in fact, there
Speaker 1: were several reports that Steve Jobs was more than a
Speaker 1: little put out when Android hit the market because he
Speaker 1: said that he felt that Android was copying Apple. Whether
Speaker 1: or not you think that makes him somewhat hypocritical with
Speaker 1: his sighting of Picasso saying that good artists borrow graad
Speaker 1: are steele. Uh, that's beside the point. Anyway, the die
Speaker 1: had been cast. There was this contentious relationship between Apple
Speaker 1: and Google, and then Apple released its Apple Maps app
Speaker 1: that that introduced turn by turn navigation, which was a
Speaker 1: huge deal. That was something that Apple users have been
Speaker 1: asking for on the iPhone and had not gotten. They
Speaker 1: have still not gotten. Yeah, well no, no, because Apple
Speaker 1: Apple Maps does have it, but Apple Maps was buggy.
Speaker 1: That was the problem. But that was the thing, was
Speaker 1: that they were asking for it for ages U like,
Speaker 1: and once Google Maps came out for Android and once
Speaker 1: it incorporated navigation. UH. I had a lot of friends
Speaker 1: who had iPhones who were very much irritated by this
Speaker 1: because they said, well, you know, Apple leads the way
Speaker 1: in the smartphone experience. They defined the smartphone experience for
Speaker 1: the consumer in the United States at least several other
Speaker 1: parts of the world as well. Why are they trailing
Speaker 1: behind Google? And part of the reason was that, you know,
Speaker 1: Google didn't really want to work with Apple so much,
Speaker 1: and Apple didn't really want to work with Google so much.
Speaker 1: There was enough tension there that UH that they were
Speaker 1: they were increasingly becoming competitors in the market, and Google
Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to give you my toys.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to keep those toys and that
Speaker 1: way that differentiates my toys from your toys and the
Speaker 1: way people will buy my toys and not your toys
Speaker 1: and uh. And Apple was like, well, fine, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make our own stuff and when which is a perfectly
Speaker 1: valid response, I'm making it sound like they were being
Speaker 1: petulant children. That's not that's not the case. It's it
Speaker 1: made perfect business. What what maybe he didn't make as
Speaker 1: much sense was that they released the maps app for iPhone,
Speaker 1: possibly too early. Yes, there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who felt that the application was not as polished as
Speaker 1: it needed to be, and then it did, in fact
Speaker 1: have lots of bugs in it. Now, Apple got its
Speaker 1: map data from primarily from tom Tom, which has great data,
Speaker 1: which is pretty okay. Yeah they do, they do, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they've they've got they know their stuff and you know,
Speaker 1: and we mentioned earlier Google gets their map data from
Speaker 1: like sources and then has to merge it all together.
Speaker 1: And Apple got it from more than just tom Tom,
Speaker 1: but tom Tom was the primary source of the map
Speaker 1: data for Apple. So something was going on between the
Speaker 1: data that they were receiving and the implementation of the
Speaker 1: application itself that made it less accurate. There's something wiggy
Speaker 1: in that algorithm that we were talking about earlier, that
Speaker 1: actually pulls the the important information out and presents it
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, so you might not notice that there
Speaker 1: is a river in the way of your route because
Speaker 1: Apple failed to pay attention to that. Or there was
Speaker 1: a pretty well reported incident where the Government of Australia said,
Speaker 1: don't use Apple Maps because it's it's taking this one
Speaker 1: route that should go a fairly simple way and putting
Speaker 1: people through. Yeah, it was a desert. It was essentially
Speaker 1: it was essentially routing people through a huge desert that
Speaker 1: was a part of an enormous park in Australia. And
Speaker 1: the fear was that people would be using the application
Speaker 1: to try and go someplace, they would get rerouted through
Speaker 1: the desert, lose signal, lose signal and not have enough
Speaker 1: gas to get out and they're stuck in the desk.
Speaker 1: And then accidental walkabouts are not really Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: Australia at the time of the story, it was just
Speaker 1: starting to get into summer. You know here it's here
Speaker 1: it's winter because we live on the upright side of
Speaker 1: the world and they live on the upside downside of
Speaker 1: the world. I love you Australians also Kiwi's I Love
Speaker 1: you too. It's Jonathan nineteen again. I totally know where
Speaker 1: I am. I just don't know where I'm going anymore.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna take another quick break. So this was
Speaker 1: this was a big issue, and so it was a
Speaker 1: double whammy, right because they kicked Google out of the store,
Speaker 1: the Apple app was not fully baked. In fact, famously,
Speaker 1: the guy who was in charge of the whole iOS
Speaker 1: thing was asked to leave Apple, became a consultant and
Speaker 1: then was kind of pushed out. Yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker 1: It was a huge hubbub. I had so much of
Speaker 1: that hubbub coming through, coming through my internet perceptors that
Speaker 1: I just did not even update my phone. I use
Speaker 1: an iPhone and I did not upgrade. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to mess with Apple Maps. I chow was to ignore
Speaker 1: the entire situation, and and a lot of people did that.
Speaker 1: And about three months later, so it was late December
Speaker 1: of two thou mid to late December been mid December
Speaker 1: when Google Maps reappeared in the App Store, complete with
Speaker 1: turn by turn navigation and uh and Google took the
Speaker 1: opportunity to kind of twist the knife a little bit
Speaker 1: and talk about how great their map data was. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind again, the Apple data wasn't necessarily what was wrong.
Speaker 1: It was something else between the data and the implementation.
Speaker 1: But at anyway, Google definitely took a little bit of
Speaker 1: time to kind of say, look, how awesome we are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they they also, I mean it became the most
Speaker 1: popular download within hours on the app Store. You know,
Speaker 1: clearly people had been clamoring for it, and and that
Speaker 1: um also I might have I might have missed this
Speaker 1: one on my timeline. But but in December of two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, Google Maps hit one billion monthly active users.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people trying to find their way
Speaker 1: to the same restaurants I'm going to. So why I
Speaker 1: can never get in? I just need to be a
Speaker 1: little more famous people, just a little more famous. I'm
Speaker 1: not quite famous enough to get a good table at
Speaker 1: a restaurant. So if you guys can help me with that,
Speaker 1: that'd be awesome. If you can clout me up in
Speaker 1: good table and restaurant, I would really appreciate it. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's going to help, but you know,
Speaker 1: I can't hurt you can. You can bring in your
Speaker 1: phone and just say, like I have cluses, look at me.
Speaker 1: Look how important I am. Yeah. Yeah, McDonald's does not
Speaker 1: take that serious. Now do it and do what you can. Listeners,
Speaker 1: keep us, keep us well fed. Yeah, so we wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of conclude this episode talking about what is
Speaker 1: in store for Google Maps. What's the future, like, you
Speaker 1: know what? What is Google working towards to make Google
Speaker 1: Maps even more interesting and yet potentially worrisome? It's just
Speaker 1: the way it is. Again, what was that? What was
Speaker 1: there catchphrase from earlier? I have zero I'm looking goldfish
Speaker 1: reassuring and yet terrifying. Something like that, re you sharing
Speaker 1: and yet terrified. I don't have my business cards, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you for sure. Um. According to uh to
Speaker 1: Michael Jones, who is one of the employees at Google,
Speaker 1: the chief technology Advocate, I think his is his title.
Speaker 1: It is a great title. Google names things so well.
Speaker 1: I'm jealous of their entire marketing department. But um, his
Speaker 1: his vision of the future. Um he was just talking
Speaker 1: about the other day in interview, is that Google really
Speaker 1: wants to provide individualized information on the go, which means
Speaker 1: that as you're as you're walking down a street with
Speaker 1: your Google Maps app open, it might start telling you like,
Speaker 1: oh hey, scene from your favorite movie was filmed in
Speaker 1: that lot over there, Maybe you want to go check
Speaker 1: that out. Or oh hey, you really like Vietnamese food,
Speaker 1: and the highest rated Vietnamese restaurant within a five mile
Speaker 1: radi is right over there on the other side of
Speaker 1: the block, so you might want to go check that
Speaker 1: that out. It's pretty cool, I mean, but the idea
Speaker 1: here is that Google is not just using your previous
Speaker 1: use of Google Maps to determine this. They're using everything
Speaker 1: like your actual search history, your search history, your Google
Speaker 1: Plus account, all of that integrated information that starts getting
Speaker 1: just a little bit stockery. Yeah, and you wonder to
Speaker 1: what extent could this go to? And I made some
Speaker 1: very goofy ridiculous examples to Lauren before the show, which
Speaker 1: I'm not going to repeat because really it's just they
Speaker 1: got silly. But the point being that if if you like,
Speaker 1: let's say that you have a job, and you you've
Speaker 1: logged into a job version of your Gmail um and
Speaker 1: your job is with the CDC. Sure, so you might
Speaker 1: do a lot of different searches on very specific types
Speaker 1: of health problems. What would Google Maps think of that? Like,
Speaker 1: where would the Google maps, like do you want to
Speaker 1: go to the clinic? I mean, it's me, it's you know.
Speaker 1: It just it raises questions now, and then from a
Speaker 1: from a broader perspective, Let's say that you're using your
Speaker 1: own personal Google account and you do a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, bizarre searches. Uh, it kind of makes you wonder,
Speaker 1: like how much of this it gets personalized. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be anonymous, so Google is not supposed to actually
Speaker 1: know that that this is tied to you personally. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the royal you. It's that. It's it's
Speaker 1: not you, Jane Smith. It's it's it's the person who
Speaker 1: does these searches and goes to these places would like
Speaker 1: these things. And it's hard for us to kind of
Speaker 1: reconcile that in our heads and divorce that from who
Speaker 1: we are personally. So it starts to feel like Google
Speaker 1: not only knows where we go and what we do,
Speaker 1: but it's telling us what to do now and we
Speaker 1: need to follow those instructions carefully. Um, it is a
Speaker 1: little weird. Now, this being said, I personally think that
Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting thing, and I'm I'm more
Speaker 1: I'm open minded enough to say, bring it on. I
Speaker 1: want to see how this works out. And I want
Speaker 1: to see like the kind of suggestions Google comes up with.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and Uh, I've been using field Trip, which is
Speaker 1: a Google app. I talked about it with Chris in
Speaker 1: a previous episode a few episodes ago, where it's it's
Speaker 1: a location based service that looks at where you are
Speaker 1: based upon you know, occasionally it's pining your your device
Speaker 1: to see where you are based upon your either cellular
Speaker 1: triangulation or GPS or whatever. And then it says, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick look in this area and see if
Speaker 1: there's anything the area that would interest him and you
Speaker 1: kind of or her and you you kind of let
Speaker 1: the app know what you are, what your interests are. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's not broad categories I want sports or I
Speaker 1: don't want restaurants. Mine as always I want food is
Speaker 1: always a food in history. Those are the two that
Speaker 1: I will always pick. And so I get a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff like best Beignet's in Atlanta, which honestly not
Speaker 1: a lot of competition there, but uh and uh and anyway,
Speaker 1: Uh it's a parish by the way. Anyway, the p
Speaker 1: A R I s H Free plug uh the any Anyway,
Speaker 1: the the app does this by by checking its database
Speaker 1: and and referencing against your physical location and occasionally giving
Speaker 1: you stuff. And you can even tell it how frequently
Speaker 1: you went up to how often I want them all
Speaker 1: the bloody time, or do it or only when I
Speaker 1: opened the app or sometime in between. I've got it
Speaker 1: in the in between because I don't want to get
Speaker 1: I don't want my phone vibrating every five seconds thinking
Speaker 1: I've got a message and it turns out it's hey,
Speaker 1: there's a place that sells burgers. You like food, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't need it quite that frequently, but
Speaker 1: that that's kind of an example of what Google Maps
Speaker 1: could incorporate in the future. But in the case of
Speaker 1: Google Maps, it would be even more personal, so it
Speaker 1: would be based like if if it noticed that I
Speaker 1: had done a lot of searches for like Indian food.
Speaker 1: I love Indian food, and there are only a few
Speaker 1: restaurants that I know of that serve really good, authentic
Speaker 1: Indian food that are near me. I know there are
Speaker 1: a lot more that are further out of my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So I've done a lot of searches. Well in the future,
Speaker 1: Google Maps will be taking uh, well, we'll notice second
Speaker 1: of stuff. It'll cross reference with my search history. And
Speaker 1: let's say I go to some other city, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, London and says, hey, you like Indian food,
Speaker 1: let me tell you where to go. We've got We've
Speaker 1: got a thing for you. Yeah you want some kebabs,
Speaker 1: we can give you kebabs, or if you want real
Speaker 1: Indian food, if you want if you want the various
Speaker 1: curries or vende loose I'm a vendeloo fiend then um yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean in that sense, it's interesting, but there
Speaker 1: is still this lingering fear that perhaps this information is
Speaker 1: somehow being tied to us as our identities, and that
Speaker 1: it could that it could be stored or us and
Speaker 1: get used against us in some way, or or even
Speaker 1: even just some people get a little bit creeped out.
Speaker 1: I get a little bit creeped out that I'm being
Speaker 1: advertised to so specifically. Sometimes I mean, when it's when
Speaker 1: that's useful, it's terrific, But very occasionally I just get
Speaker 1: this pin in the back of my head that's like,
Speaker 1: why does it know that about me? It makes me
Speaker 1: think that in the future we're all going to only
Speaker 1: see the stuff that we are truly interested in and
Speaker 1: not see all the other stuff that we're not interested
Speaker 1: And I'm okay with that because occasionally I I flipped
Speaker 1: through something like Reddit or I'm randomly changing channels, and
Speaker 1: I think I could have lived happy ever knowing that
Speaker 1: that was a thing. And if I have my life
Speaker 1: where I mean, granted, it also means that you're it
Speaker 1: also means you you're less adventurous and all. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the process of discovery is really terrific.
Speaker 1: And also I mean, what will it Will it de
Speaker 1: authenticate the process of discovery? Will you never again have
Speaker 1: the terrific feeling of walking down the street and going, hey,
Speaker 1: that hole in the wall looks terrific and walking in
Speaker 1: and having one of the best meals of your life. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are a lot of questions here. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe Google will build that into the algorithm where occasionally,
Speaker 1: just so like you know, Lauren never comes out of
Speaker 1: her shell. Just down the street is a tap dancing
Speaker 1: and jazz dancing uh school. We're going to convince her
Speaker 1: to go in there and take classes, and then she's
Speaker 1: gonna have a recital and everyone's gonna go. It's not recital,
Speaker 1: is it whatever? The dance equivalent is absolutely no clue. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we'll see. That's that's why it would pop up for you,
Speaker 1: because it would say, like, you know what Lauren needs.
Speaker 1: She needs to get out more, she needs to needs
Speaker 1: to to shed this shy exterior and and just let
Speaker 1: her inner choreographer shine. I think I think that if
Speaker 1: Google can talk, that is in fact what it would
Speaker 1: say about me. I'm pretty sure Google would never stop
Speaker 1: slapping me. Just grow up, grow up Strickland pretty much
Speaker 1: what I would get all the time. That's that's what
Speaker 1: if it weren't for a for a employee handbook laws here,
Speaker 1: it has to work, so I'm sure that would happen
Speaker 1: in the office. I've not slapped here. It's fine, it's happened, Josh.
Speaker 1: Josh alternately praises me and hits me. It's it's nice,
Speaker 1: k fans. They are great people. And that wraps up
Speaker 1: this classic episode about Google Maps. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future episodes, you can
Speaker 1: send me a message. The address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. You can drop me a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook or Twitter to handle it. Both of
Speaker 1: those is text Stuff h s W. And you can
Speaker 1: go to our website that's text Stuff podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can search the archive of every episode ever published.
Speaker 1: You can find a link to our online store where
Speaker 1: you can purchase tex Stuff merch. Every purchase you make
Speaker 1: goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it, and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.