Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from House Stuff.
Speaker 1: What's hey there, everyone, and welcome to Tech Stuff. My
Speaker 1: name is Jonathan Strickland, Host extraordinaire, and I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting across from it. I'm there you go. She's
Speaker 1: basking in the glory that is the Strickland. It is
Speaker 1: the end of a long day here at How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works Headquarters. I don't know where I am anymore, which
Speaker 1: is good because we're talking about Google Maps, so hopefully
Speaker 1: I will be able to find some direction in my
Speaker 1: life by the end of the show, because we live
Speaker 1: in the incredible future. So you have a cellphone in
Speaker 1: your pocket, right? Uh? Well, technically my cellphones at my desk,
Speaker 1: but normally, yes, I would in fact have it in
Speaker 1: my pocket. Okay, you have hypothetical cell phone in your
Speaker 1: hypothetical pocket. I'll roll with that. Therefore, you are connected
Speaker 1: to a network of systems that knows exactly where you are.
Speaker 1: It's both reassuring and yet terrifying, which I think should
Speaker 1: be the slogan for Google Maps. I used to have
Speaker 1: that on 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, Lauren, 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 to which was when
Speaker 1: map Quest launched. Oh yeah, now see, I remember the
Speaker 1: map Quest days. Uh, folks, For those of you who
Speaker 1: have never used the web back in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: that quest 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 haven't
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 anyway,
Speaker 1: I can't explode the But the important thing here was
Speaker 1: that you could actually plot out a pathway. Now, back
Speaker 1: then that was pre mobile web for most parts, so
Speaker 1: you ended up having to physically print the document that
Speaker 1: would give you the turn by turn directions and then
Speaker 1: take that with you in the car, in the place
Speaker 1: of a more traditional map, which the company that created
Speaker 1: map Quest actually began by making traditional maps, and they
Speaker 1: still do. I think probably you couldn't. You could even
Speaker 1: have a voice turn by turn if you had a
Speaker 1: passenger read out, hey, you know that street we just passed,
Speaker 1: We totally should have turned there. They could do it
Speaker 1: in a robot voice if they if you really want
Speaker 1: them to. Almost every single person who's written with me
Speaker 1: eventually starts to talk like a robot. That's interesting and
Speaker 1: all right for reassuring and terrifying. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: that one's reassuring at all anyway. Um So, so yeah,
Speaker 1: let's you know, Matt Quest enjoyed a good several years
Speaker 1: on the web pretty much unrivaled, and then then in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, Google which at the time, do you
Speaker 1: know what Google was doing in two thousand four, Jesus
Speaker 1: when Google incorporates, I would have been discussing with Yahoo
Speaker 1: in two thousand. No, I don't know what happened in
Speaker 1: two Well neither do I. So this is this is terrific,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. So that was a question of true you
Speaker 1: really wanted to know? 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: necessarily have the people in the house to develop that
Speaker 1: sort of technology from the ground up, right, and that
Speaker 1: is why they acquired two companies. They acquired where to
Speaker 1: and also Keyhole UM. Now, where Too was a Sydney
Speaker 1: based company, UM Design, run by two Danish brothers, I believe,
Speaker 1: and yes, I can never say that, So I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you did um and uh and uh. Keyhole was
Speaker 1: the company UM that had the software that would become
Speaker 1: Google Earth. Okay, all right, so yeah, so you've got
Speaker 1: the foundations for mapping software and and Google Earth, which
Speaker 1: Google Earth is a is a wonderful tool and it's
Speaker 1: really super cool. We will not be talking a lot
Speaker 1: about Google Earth in this podcast because it really goes
Speaker 1: outside the realm of what we're chatting about. We might
Speaker 1: allude to it once or twice, but it's sort of
Speaker 1: its own thing as opposed to you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a separate product from Google Map. Sure, and 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, but but integral
Speaker 1: to to creating the Google Maps experience that that we
Speaker 1: know of today. So that was that was two thousand four.
Speaker 1: Two thousand five, UM February is when the the project
Speaker 1: of Google Maps was announced on the Google blog, and
Speaker 1: at that time, Google Maps was available only through two
Speaker 1: web browsers. Those web browsers were Bob's who lived in
Speaker 1: No wait, no, I'm sorry, web browsers not just two people.
Speaker 1: One was an Internet Explorer, which was at the time
Speaker 1: the dominant, overwhelmingly dominant browser. It's interesting to see like
Speaker 1: 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 a Firefox is
Speaker 1: a direct descendanto Mozilla, but it's kind of a branch
Speaker 1: it split off. But anyway, at the time, those were
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 a p I that's an
Speaker 1: applications program that allows developers to create stuff that works
Speaker 1: with whatever it is the product is, so lots of
Speaker 1: different products have this, not just in Google. Application programming
Speaker 1: interfaces technically what API stands for So this is an
Speaker 1: interface that lets you build extra cool stuff that uses
Speaker 1: the technology developed by someone else. So Facebook, for example,
Speaker 1: has an API that allows people to build the various
Speaker 1: games and other apps that run within the context of Facebook.
Speaker 1: So the Google Maps API gave opportunities to other web
Speaker 1: pages to have this stuff integrated into their page. So
Speaker 1: you might see this was kind of a response to
Speaker 1: hackers who hackers were sitting there and they were kind
Speaker 1: of reverse engineering Google Maps to figure out how it
Speaker 1: worked and to try and give it new abilities based
Speaker 1: upon 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 capacity to
Speaker 1: use your product on their page, then you can add
Speaker 1: your advertising into it. And yet again they are an
Speaker 1: advertising company. It turns out a lot more people use
Speaker 1: your stuff if you make it easier to use. Who
Speaker 1: would have funked it? Absolutely insane? Um And in October
Speaker 1: of two five Maps for Mobile launched and uh, and
Speaker 1: that was that was back early enough in in cell
Speaker 1: phone service industry that maybe not that many people were
Speaker 1: capable of using it. Yeah, two thousand five, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a time when, uh, you know, smartphones. If you
Speaker 1: listen to our history of Smartphones episodes and if you
Speaker 1: have it, it's okay, we'll wait. But you know that
Speaker 1: that's pretty early on in the history of smartphones. I
Speaker 1: mean until we hit two thousand seven, when the iPhone
Speaker 1: comes out, smartphones did not really become a big thing
Speaker 1: in the consumer market. I mean, we had prosumers and executives,
Speaker 1: people in the business market, people who needed to be
Speaker 1: connected to their email all the time and bury all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff above our pay grade. You know,
Speaker 1: they were taking advantage of the stuff. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting that the Google got into that. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense, right because it's again, why why
Speaker 1: are you using these map programs in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's usually because you have to find your way to
Speaker 1: some other location, and so it needs to do that.
Speaker 1: Most often, possibly business travelers have people who are going places.
Speaker 1: It turns out that if you want to get from
Speaker 1: point A to point B, it's not always convenient to
Speaker 1: carry a desktop computer with you lit the way, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: um okay yeah. And then then two thousand and six
Speaker 1: was when um, some of Google Earth's satellite images started
Speaker 1: to be integrated into maps. Very cool, making everything shiny um.
Speaker 1: And then in July Live Traffic on Mobile launched a
Speaker 1: cool Yeah traffic is very cool. Yeah, we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how they do that later on. It's
Speaker 1: mostly neat. It knows where you are, but but not
Speaker 1: you just you there. We go pretty much summed it up.
Speaker 1: We will repeat it later in the show. Don't worry
Speaker 1: with a little bit more clarity and fewer pronouns. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah. Two thousands 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 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 re aggressive
Speaker 1: dinner parties where I just I just received further and
Speaker 1: further into the background that everyone who's listening is like,
Speaker 1: that is so not true. He just gets more and
Speaker 1: more boisterous. He does, He's but I have I have
Speaker 1: no transitions for any of that. In in may view,
Speaker 1: it was a thing that he um and and that
Speaker 1: was that was when. That was when they put some
Speaker 1: cameras on top of some cars and sent them out
Speaker 1: into the world and took a whole bunch of pictures
Speaker 1: of everything, upsetting some people, which we will talk about
Speaker 1: again later on in the podcast. Um but but but
Speaker 1: giving you giving you the capacity to visit a place
Speaker 1: that you have never been and get an idea of
Speaker 1: what it's like to walk around there, very useful. I
Speaker 1: I used this when I took a trip to New
Speaker 1: York so I could figure out where I needed to
Speaker 1: go to catch the subway, and so I was looking
Speaker 1: for visual cues because I'm a Southerner and I was
Speaker 1: lost in New York City and uh speaking speaking of which,
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 to
Speaker 1: make that happen? So yeah, very useful tool. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: April of two then walking directions were added, further furthering
Speaker 1: the capacity. I'm saying capacity a lot. This epiths. Okay,
Speaker 1: I often say the word pumpkin for no apparent reasons. Pumpkin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in technology podcasts, I can't explain it. Excellent, Okay, Walking
Speaker 1: directions April two eight, and then uh Matt Maker in August,
Speaker 1: which let people start to write in with changes, um
Speaker 1: corrections to Google Maps, which is one of the really
Speaker 1: big important things we think about the software. We'll definitely
Speaker 1: get into that too. Yes, Um October was Maps for
Speaker 1: 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. Um. October of two thousand nine
Speaker 1: is my next plot point in this in this audio drama,
Speaker 1: and that was turned by turn navigation and Android, another
Speaker 1: thing I use a lot, which, Yeah, back to that
Speaker 1: robot voice. You don't have to have a friend speaking
Speaker 1: in a robot voice anymore. Your your phone. You can
Speaker 1: be friendless and your phone will do that for you.
Speaker 1: I actually count my phone as one of my closest friends,
Speaker 1: because otherwise the list is really short. Two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten 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. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By by August of two tho, google maps mobile heads
Speaker 1: surpassed a hundred million monthly users. That's a bunch that's
Speaker 1: more than two um and uh, making making google Maps
Speaker 1: in fact so big um and so popular that by
Speaker 1: November there was this really interesting news item where there
Speaker 1: was an international dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I read about this. So from what I understand, you
Speaker 1: 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, but are in speed.
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 says,
Speaker 1: this is on our side. Uh, Whereas I think anyone
Speaker 1: would tell you that was probably a disingenuous move. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that might have been. That might have been a little
Speaker 1: bit of a passing the buck. But anyway, multimately it
Speaker 1: was it was resolved that they were in fact on
Speaker 1: the Costa Rica side, and they withdrew and uh. And
Speaker 1: then Google also amended the map. But that's not the
Speaker 1: only time it's happened. There have been other cases where
Speaker 1: the particularly around bodies of water, because it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to see the dotted line underneath because it's always underneath
Speaker 1: all that water, so it's really hard to tell where
Speaker 1: the border is. And Google sometimes will uh you know,
Speaker 1: in their maps they have it laid out one way
Speaker 1: and 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 government could sit there and say, well, Google Map
Speaker 1: said things impressive to me. I you know, I'm also
Speaker 1: scary we can justify this war because Google said this,
Speaker 1: I mean, grant there was no war here. I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I'm I'm obviously exaggerating for effect. But um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, UM. Two thousand eleven, uh, Android had Indoor
Speaker 1: Maps premiere, which is the fun thing where if you
Speaker 1: get lost, for example, in a mall instead of in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood, um, you can call up a map on
Speaker 1: your Android device and have it tell you where to go. Um.
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand and twelve, which which we
Speaker 1: are just recently out of, Google Plus Local premiered um.
Speaker 1: And towards the end of the year, Apple and Google
Speaker 1: Maps had some exciting things happen in that Apple totally
Speaker 1: kicked Google Maps at the app Store for for the
Speaker 1: premiere about three months, for about three months. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until December that it came back. So but we
Speaker 1: will also talk about that a little bit later on
Speaker 1: in the episode. Yeah. Well, and and now I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a little bit of time here
Speaker 1: to talk about the nuts and bolts of Google Maps. Um.
Speaker 1: This is uh, this is the technical part of our episode.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to get too deep into this
Speaker 1: because for one thing, it would be very difficult to
Speaker 1: really really dive into it in an audio format. I
Speaker 1: kind of visuals to help we can gesticulate all we want. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not really going to come from helping Lauren. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, unfortunately it's lost. But but a couple of
Speaker 1: things I wanted to talk about before I really get
Speaker 1: into the nuts and bolts. First of all, with the
Speaker 1: satellite imagery, that's kind of interesting in that there have
Speaker 1: been cases. You know, we talked about the border dispute.
Speaker 1: There have also been cases where Google has been asked
Speaker 1: by various entities to blur out some of their satellite imagery,
Speaker 1: which we should also point out Google is partnering with
Speaker 1: other companies to get the data and the images. It's
Speaker 1: not that Google has satellites encircling the Earth constantly taking photos.
Speaker 1: Uh So the satellite imageries 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, But it used to be governmenties. It's like yeah,
Speaker 1: like like like military basis would be a big one, right,
Speaker 1: and and so there have been times where Google has
Speaker 1: blurred that stuff out a little bit to make it
Speaker 1: less likely that someone might use Google Maps in a
Speaker 1: military strike against a target. That kind of thing. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: if you ever wanted to know what Area fifty one
Speaker 1: looks like, you can actually see that on Google Maps. Yea,
Speaker 1: you can see it's satellite you. Oh yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's there now. Granted, you know, we should also
Speaker 1: point out the Area fifty one hasn't really been an
Speaker 1: active secret base for a while. They moved that we
Speaker 1: would have to talk to the conspiracy stuff guys. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure they're in Colorado now. Actually that's not a joke.
Speaker 1: I think they're really. I think the new base where
Speaker 1: a lot of the secret Air Force stuff where they're
Speaker 1: doing test flights of of secret aircraft is out of
Speaker 1: Colorado and noth Area fifty one anymore. Um, that's just
Speaker 1: off the top of my head. But anyway, it is
Speaker 1: on there if you want to take a look at it.
Speaker 1: But getting into the nuts and bolts, it all starts
Speaker 1: with a project at Google that they call round Truth. Now,
Speaker 1: if you think about all the Google Maps, you've seen
Speaker 1: in the various ways that you can customize it, where
Speaker 1: you can put push pens in, you can put different
Speaker 1: routes in, and you can view it in a million
Speaker 1: different ways. Ground truth is kind of the focal point
Speaker 1: of all that. Think of it as like the proto map.
Speaker 1: It has all this data and we're talking terabytes of
Speaker 1: data here that are going into making the maps. What
Speaker 1: they are that kind of terrifying amount of data that
Speaker 1: we can't even really deal with on a mental level
Speaker 1: because think about the stuff that's involved in a Google map.
Speaker 1: You've got the actual graphical representation of the map. So
Speaker 1: you've got you know, streets, You've got you might have
Speaker 1: you know, outlines of buildings, you have, uh, the names
Speaker 1: 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, the geophysical coordinates right exactly, so latitude and longitude.
Speaker 1: You know that those are all identified, so that when
Speaker 1: you look at a map, you're looking at it the
Speaker 1: correct you know way. It's not just a bunch of
Speaker 1: random places. Hey, Mount Rushmore is right next to the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, which is right next to Disney World, And
Speaker 1: I mean that's not a little bit more precise than
Speaker 1: it used to be. Is all we're saying we have
Speaker 1: we have precisely to scale right. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that you have things like business names included in
Speaker 1: this information. It's it's lots of info alltogether, and it's
Speaker 1: all there because you need to be able to look
Speaker 1: at the map in one of a billion different ways.
Speaker 1: So all this data is there, and then Google's algorithms
Speaker 1: are what have to make sense of the information and
Speaker 1: display the information that's relevant to you in the context
Speaker 1: that you are using the maps in. When you when
Speaker 1: you go in and say, hey, I want traffic, hair
Speaker 1: want satellite, Hey I want to know how to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point B versus Hey, I want
Speaker 1: to know how many different pizza places are around point
Speaker 1: B verse is I want to know where the top
Speaker 1: rated restaurant in San Francisco is. I mean, these are
Speaker 1: all different contexts you can use Google Maps in, and
Speaker 1: so it has to be able to be very flexible. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're actually looking at Google Maps, what you're looking
Speaker 1: at is uh that has a top side a top
Speaker 1: bar in a sidebar, and those are just basic HTML.
Speaker 1: So it's just like which hypertext markup language. It's the
Speaker 1: stuff that the web is made of and dreams as
Speaker 1: it turns out that parts of life, um, and then
Speaker 1: the rest of it it all well, originally it was
Speaker 1: all x AML, which is extensible markup language. Now, extensible
Speaker 1: markup language is a way of telling a client, meaning
Speaker 1: a web browser in this case, how to display the information.
Speaker 1: So it's a set of instructions that says, here's all
Speaker 1: this data, and here's how you show the data to
Speaker 1: the person looking at it. Okay, So it's just a
Speaker 1: set of instructions, really, is what it What it boils
Speaker 1: down to these days, didn't they which to a to
Speaker 1: a JavaScript object? They've got JavaScript? Yeah, it's all JavaScript,
Speaker 1: and it's all um, it's JavaScript is what they program
Speaker 1: everything in. I mean, it's essentially back when it first started,
Speaker 1: this was a C plus plus program. That was back
Speaker 1: when the Dutch brothers were working on it. And now
Speaker 1: it's uh, now it's all JavaScript stuff. But yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really heavily using XML 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 scripture talking about part of the JavaScript Application
Speaker 1: Programming Interface, and it renders interactive graphics, which is what
Speaker 1: Google Maps are. It's an interactive graphic that you can
Speaker 1: play with. It's actually really kind of cool the way
Speaker 1: that works. Um. I have to give a lot of credit,
Speaker 1: uh to Joel Webber. Now, Joel Webber is is a
Speaker 1: former graduate of Georgia Tech. But I don't hold that
Speaker 1: against him. Go Bulldogs, I'm a Gator. Ho Oh well,
Speaker 1: then Joel and I both hate you. You learned things
Speaker 1: every day, right, so I mean, granted, I never once
Speaker 1: went to a football game, and I was not on
Speaker 1: the football team, so you weren't. You don't have to
Speaker 1: hate me that much. She moves like a running back
Speaker 1: as alarm, saying, um, anyway, what that means? I think
Speaker 1: running back is in baseball? So ANYWAYID sorry? Back to
Speaker 1: but no, no, Joel Webber had he took a lot
Speaker 1: of initiative early early on in Google Maps. He thought
Speaker 1: it was a very interesting product, and then he began
Speaker 1: to reverse engineer it and kind of learned the way
Speaker 1: it worked. So it wasn't until fairly recently that Google
Speaker 1: started talking about what makes Google Maps tick. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would say I think it was like two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve when they started letting journalists come in and they
Speaker 1: were essentially giving uh kind of a symposium on an
Speaker 1: overview of how it works. But before that, it took
Speaker 1: people who were actually to dig into it and 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,
Speaker 1: and you know you can dragon and and move the
Speaker 1: map around. You know, you hold down the mouse button,
Speaker 1: then you pull the mouse across, and then the map moves.
Speaker 1: I believe the Google term for this, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's slippy map. Yes, which I love this, and it
Speaker 1: turns out the slippy map. The reason it works is
Speaker 1: that every single image you're looking at is absolutely positioned,
Speaker 1: and when you scroll, it is essentially picking up the
Speaker 1: tiles that are off screen on one side and placing
Speaker 1: them down on the other side. If you want to
Speaker 1: think of like a different way of of imagining this,
Speaker 1: Joel had a great example. Just imagine that you're on
Speaker 1: a train and the way that you continue moving forward
Speaker 1: is that you pick up the track you've just crossed
Speaker 1: over and you put it down in front of you
Speaker 1: so you can keep going. So as you're moving, you're
Speaker 1: you're removing the track behind you and putting it in
Speaker 1: front of you. And that way you just you don't
Speaker 1: have to end up generating the entire map, which would
Speaker 1: be a huge drain on resources. It's clipping it down
Speaker 1: to just the integral right exactly the stuff that you need.
Speaker 1: It can cash stuff that happens to be around. And
Speaker 1: again you've you've got stuff that's two or three or
Speaker 1: four fifty tiles off the border, right so as you're
Speaker 1: pulling your first seeing stuff that's already loaded up, it's
Speaker 1: just wasn't in your view, right, And then the tiles
Speaker 1: that are essentially moving to the other side are starting
Speaker 1: to pull the data necessary in case you keep going
Speaker 1: that way, So it gives you the sort of infinite
Speaker 1: scroll ability um. And also it's it's very much a
Speaker 1: client side application, And what we mean by that is
Speaker 1: 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 clients, 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,
Speaker 1: right and we talked about how much more than two,
Speaker 1: and we talked about how many different ways you can
Speaker 1: use it. So with that in mind, with all the
Speaker 1: different ways you can use it, all the data that
Speaker 1: Google is holding, and the number of people, it's important
Speaker 1: that we that Google had designed it and I say
Speaker 1: we that Google had designed the system in such a
Speaker 1: way that it doesn't bog down the server side or else.
Speaker 1: Every time we would try to use Google Maps, it
Speaker 1: would take forever. And because a lot of that work
Speaker 1: is being done by our devices, it means that, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's something slow to computer's fault. That's not exactly true,
Speaker 1: because I mean there could be other issues obviously, but
Speaker 1: in general, it means that the system works more smoothly
Speaker 1: than it would if it was all server side. So
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, I could get further into
Speaker 1: the actual nuts and bolts of what Google Maps is
Speaker 1: doing and how it's doing it, but ultimately I think
Speaker 1: it would be more confusing than helpful. And also, we're
Speaker 1: getting to a point now where I have got to
Speaker 1: be completely upfront and honest with you guys, like all
Speaker 1: of this I've got a pretty good handle on, but
Speaker 1: when I started going further in, it's going into a
Speaker 1: level of development and programming that that's beyond my own
Speaker 1: personal experience. So at that point I'd just be like, well,
Speaker 1: according to this, this word that I don't know affects
Speaker 1: this other word I don't know, and I'd rather just
Speaker 1: spare everybody that, yes, thank you, you're welcome, and now
Speaker 1: back to the show. Alright. So one of the many
Speaker 1: topics that we said that we were going to come
Speaker 1: back to was Google street View. And the reason that
Speaker 1: we wanted to come back to this is that it
Speaker 1: has been a little bit contentious because it's this fabulous
Speaker 1: technology that, like we said, let's you visit a place
Speaker 1: that you've never been to. Let's you walk around an
Speaker 1: area that you are perhaps going to visit or are
Speaker 1: just curious about, without having to get on a plane
Speaker 1: and get out in the wet, in the rain and
Speaker 1: the cold. You know it, lets you do more once
Speaker 1: you get to a location. Sure, yeah, however, and lets
Speaker 1: you do more when you get to a location by
Speaker 1: virtue of the fact that it's taken detailed pictures of
Speaker 1: that location, including for example, the call ours and people
Speaker 1: and children and dogs that were walking by when the
Speaker 1: photography was taken. And some people had a problem with this.
Speaker 1: Some people said, hey, maybe maybe my baby should not
Speaker 1: be on Google street View. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: that picture of me coming out of the adult entertainment establishment,
Speaker 1: uh in downtown Atlanta. So that now whenever anyone looks
Speaker 1: at said adult entertainment establishment on Google street View, they
Speaker 1: see that, by the way, is a generic me, not
Speaker 1: me me, it's the royal Me. I guess, I guess
Speaker 1: how that works. But but no, that's exactly that's exactly right. There.
Speaker 1: There were several communities not and also individuals that objected
Speaker 1: to Google street View, saying that, uh, it violated privacy,
Speaker 1: that they felt it was kind of creepy. There were
Speaker 1: people who who said that this is going to turn
Speaker 1: into a tool for thieve to use. They can they
Speaker 1: can virtually case a house without ever having to actually
Speaker 1: go into the neighborhood. Sure, or the kind of higher
Speaker 1: paranoia of this is going to turn into a government
Speaker 1: tool for those countries that do not have CCTV already. Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or or that uh, you know, maybe the day that
Speaker 1: Google street View went through my neighborhood was after I
Speaker 1: had not not taking care of my lawn yet. And
Speaker 1: so now then later when you try to sell your
Speaker 1: house exactly, and people like, m, that's a dump. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it may very well be any of those things. Now,
Speaker 1: the flip side of that is that there were people
Speaker 1: who had fun with Google street They would see that
Speaker 1: the Google street View, they would either know that the
Speaker 1: car was scheduled to go down the street at a
Speaker 1: certain time, or they would see it, and they would
Speaker 1: stage various humorous things to happen so that it would
Speaker 1: be captured by the Google street View car as it
Speaker 1: went by. We've talked about some of these in previous
Speaker 1: episodes of Tech Stuff, where there were people who would
Speaker 1: create a virtual parade on on a street and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. If you look at Google street View and
Speaker 1: you look at you know, art projects or parade that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, it'll pull these these images up and
Speaker 1: you can actually see how creative people were. I saw
Speaker 1: one where it was a group of larper's all in
Speaker 1: uh full foam, gearing on each other's wonderful You're going
Speaker 1: through a suburban neighborhood and like there's all out melee happening. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean if it were me, I know what I
Speaker 1: would want to do. Like anytime I knew that there
Speaker 1: was gonna be a Google street View car going through
Speaker 1: New York, I would be like, Okay, guys, it's Warriors
Speaker 1: cosplay time. Who wants to be the Baseball Furies? Who
Speaker 1: wants to be the high Hats? We are gonna go
Speaker 1: out there and bangers. We are gonna make some noise.
Speaker 1: Can you dig it? That's probably the whitest can you
Speaker 1: dig I think it probably was. History is being made
Speaker 1: right here. Come out and play a dear. That's a
Speaker 1: documentary for you folks out there for warriors late seventies.
Speaker 1: Look at that important important information. But yeah, so so
Speaker 1: it's gone, you know, both with the privacy issues and
Speaker 1: as well as like people you know, taking advantage of
Speaker 1: it to have some fun. I think I think for
Speaker 1: the most part, Google enjoys the whole let's have fun
Speaker 1: with a thing as long as it's within the realms
Speaker 1: of you know, safety and good taste. But the but
Speaker 1: as the privacy thing has been a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've had entire communities say we don't want this.
Speaker 1: We're a gated community. You do not get this is
Speaker 1: private property. You don't get to come in through here. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Google's whole motto is that they want to
Speaker 1: index the information of the universe, and part of that
Speaker 1: is all of the places you can go on the
Speaker 1: planet Earth. So there is there has been this problem. Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing about street view is that it's actually
Speaker 1: been 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. It'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 it is, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really complex. But Google street View helped that out.
Speaker 1: So the Google street View provided two different kinds of information.
Speaker 1: It provided that the images, which that was the obvious one,
Speaker 1: top level, but also the route information by the actual
Speaker 1: route the cars had to go through in order to
Speaker 1: capture all those images. So that's it was sort of
Speaker 1: a validation method that Google used as well. On top
Speaker 1: of that, we had the whole idea of this crowd sourcing,
Speaker 1: which we had talked about a little bit earlier. But crowdsourcing.
Speaker 1: Google uses crowdsourcing in two ways, or at least two
Speaker 1: ways one of Google Maps. Google Maps. Google uses crowdsourcing
Speaker 1: in lots of ways, but Google Maps in particular to
Speaker 1: two main ways. One of them is traffic. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, they're tracking um, people who happened to be
Speaker 1: using cell phones, particularly cell phones, using Google Maps and
Speaker 1: tracking their progress either through uh, you know, little anonymous
Speaker 1: GPS tracking or anonymous uh cell phone tracking, you know,
Speaker 1: as you move from from another And the idea is that, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, if if the same user is able to
Speaker 1: make their way through this this particular street at this
Speaker 1: particular speed, that gives me an idea of how how
Speaker 1: fast traffic is going and whether or not, Yes, what
Speaker 1: color code we need to break that up as Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly like if they're if they're crawling, they're either not
Speaker 1: in a car or traffic is bad. And this is aggregated,
Speaker 1: so it's not just a single person. We're talking thousands
Speaker 1: upon thousands of people. And the important thing to remember
Speaker 1: is that, assuming that we're all on the up and
Speaker 1: up here, it is anonymous data. Right. So Google doesn't
Speaker 1: know it's a particular person. Right. It knows that it's
Speaker 1: your phone, but it doesn't know that you are Jane
Speaker 1: Smith and that you are going from your home to
Speaker 1: your office to pet smart to write. All it knows
Speaker 1: is that this particular phone is moving at this particular
Speaker 1: speed in this particular place. So beyond that, it doesn't
Speaker 1: know that that phone belongs to Jane or that Jane
Speaker 1: is on her way to commit a hit for the mob. Right.
Speaker 1: It does not It does not record the starting and
Speaker 1: stopping points, which is another thing that people were worried
Speaker 1: about with directions. Right. Right, of course, if I put
Speaker 1: in I need to know how to get to this point,
Speaker 1: is it going to be saved somewhere so that Google
Speaker 1: knows that I went from here to there. Obviously, depending
Speaker 1: upon what you're doing, that could be very sensitive information,
Speaker 1: very undesirable share like job hunting. Yeah, let's say that
Speaker 1: you know, my boss is like, hey, you know um,
Speaker 1: this weird thing popped up. It turns out it looks
Speaker 1: like you've been going to every single one of our
Speaker 1: rivals recently, and a lot of our rifles are coming
Speaker 1: up with really similar products to ours. That would be
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly, you know that's unethical behavior on the
Speaker 1: part of the user. But that's just sure. But you know,
Speaker 1: for example, um, yeah, the other way that the traffic
Speaker 1: data is garnered is via microwaves. Oh wow, so like
Speaker 1: when people are making popcorn. Yes, okay, but that's but
Speaker 1: that's another episode. That is, in fact an episode that
Speaker 1: the 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 something episodes kind
Speaker 1: 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. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair anyway. So that was one form of crowdsourcing.
Speaker 1: The other one is you were talking about the the
Speaker 1: the map maker, where this idea about in your personal
Speaker 1: experience using Google Maps, you might encounter a situation where
Speaker 1: the map is not accurate, and it's allowing people, um
Speaker 1: to be helpful. It's allowing you to inform the map experience. Yo, dude,
Speaker 1: you totally turned me down the wrong side of the
Speaker 1: street or the road you wanted me to take as
Speaker 1: a private road and I cannot actually drive on it.
Speaker 1: I encountered that actually yesterday. But it was because Google
Speaker 1: Maps can't counter user stupidity, and in my case, it
Speaker 1: was that I wasn't really thinking I was I was
Speaker 1: going to a specific location on the mines anywhere. It
Speaker 1: was I was going to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens so
Speaker 1: I could see some pretty lights. Well, that's a classy
Speaker 1: place to go down it is. I felt totally out
Speaker 1: of place. My wife, however, completely at home, so trying
Speaker 1: to get to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Atlanta Botannical Gardens has a there's a parking structure that's
Speaker 1: adjacent to Atlanta Botanical Gardens, but it's run by a
Speaker 1: different company. Right, So when I put Atlanta Botanical Gardens
Speaker 1: into the Google Maps program, it's telling me how to
Speaker 1: get to the gardens themselves, which are off of little
Speaker 1: private roads that I cannot actually can act success. If
Speaker 1: I had put in the parking garage from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: then it would have sent me the correct way to
Speaker 1: get to actually enter the garden. I did not do that,
Speaker 1: So in that case, I actually didn't counter a problem. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: you know, I just realized that I was on the
Speaker 1: other side of the enormous park and I just had
Speaker 1: to go around around and then I got there, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't a big deal. But in other situations that
Speaker 1: could be very So Matt Maker, lets you correct those
Speaker 1: sort of problems and send send information to Google and say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just f y I fix yes. And we're pretty sure
Speaker 1: that that's not based on a single users experience, because
Speaker 1: that would be very dangerous. And you can easily troll
Speaker 1: the system, you know you I can. Here's here's how
Speaker 1: I would use it. If that were the case, everywhere
Speaker 1: I would go, I would say that the closest, fastest
Speaker 1: route was not working, so that way I could guarantee
Speaker 1: there never be any traffic because people would be routed
Speaker 1: around it. That would be insidious. That's that's how I think.
Speaker 1: This is. This is the way I think I think.
Speaker 1: How can I manipulate the system to benefit me. That's
Speaker 1: terrifically evil. Thank thank goodness, Google is slightly less evil
Speaker 1: than you and has accounted for for such things. You know.
Speaker 1: That's that's the thing. They really do anticipate people gaming
Speaker 1: the system, and so they're wants to Google right. So
Speaker 1: anyway that both of those methods are really important for
Speaker 1: Google Maps, uh, you know, just to just to give
Speaker 1: 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 being able to to go in there
Speaker 1: and mess around with it and really dig your fingers in.
Speaker 1: And of course also you can add in your businesses
Speaker 1: information into a map, you can edit business and businesses information,
Speaker 1: you can provide reviews of a business. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's literally mapping to other parts of the Internet. So
Speaker 1: it's not just showing you the physical location of a
Speaker 1: place that you're searching for. It's giving you access to
Speaker 1: other resources that gives you more information about the place
Speaker 1: you're looking for. It's kind of this whole idea of
Speaker 1: marrying the physical world in the digital world, so that
Speaker 1: the two are integrated so tightly that we have access
Speaker 1: to pretty much any kind of info you want at
Speaker 1: any time you want, any place you want, which has
Speaker 1: its benefits and its drawbacks. But I wanted to also
Speaker 1: kind of touch back. We talked about this briefly, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little bit about what happened
Speaker 1: with Apple, right 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, yes,
Speaker 1: they are the one that's called the app store, but yes,
Speaker 1: Google Maps. Google and Apple had had sort of a
Speaker 1: a weird relationship, a love hate relationship. There was a
Speaker 1: time when Eric Schmidt, who was at that time the
Speaker 1: CEO of Google. He was also sitting on the board
Speaker 1: of directors of Apple, and then eventually he resigned his
Speaker 1: position as a member of the board of directors UH
Speaker 1: and he cited that it was because he felt there
Speaker 1: was going to be an increasing conflict of interests between
Speaker 1: the two companies. And and in fact, there were several
Speaker 1: reports that Steve Jobs was more than a little put
Speaker 1: out when Android hit the market because he said that
Speaker 1: he felt that Android was copying Apple. Whether or not
Speaker 1: you think that makes him somewhat hypocritical with his sighting
Speaker 1: of Picasso saying that good artists borrow great artist Steele. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's beside the point. Anyway, the die had been cast.
Speaker 1: There was this contentious relationship between Apple and Google, and
Speaker 1: then Apple released its Apple Maps app that that introduced
Speaker 1: turn by turn navigation, which was a huge deal. That
Speaker 1: was something that Apple users have been asking for on
Speaker 1: the iPhone and had not gotten. They had still not gotten. Well, no, no,
Speaker 1: because Apple Apple Maps does have it, but Apple Maps
Speaker 1: was buggy. That was the problem. But that was the
Speaker 1: thing was that they were asking for it for ages
Speaker 1: um like. And once Google Maps came out for Android
Speaker 1: and once it incorporated navigation. Uh I had a lot
Speaker 1: of friends who had iPhones, who were very much irritated
Speaker 1: by this because they said, well, you know, Apple leads
Speaker 1: the way in the smartphone experience. They defined the smartphone
Speaker 1: experience for the consumer in the United States at least
Speaker 1: several other parts of the world as well. Why are
Speaker 1: they trailing behind Google? And part of the reason was that,
Speaker 1: you know, Google didn't really want to work with Apple
Speaker 1: so much, and Apple didn't really want to work with
Speaker 1: Google so much. There was enough tension there that, uh,
Speaker 1: that they were were increasingly becoming competitors in the market.
Speaker 1: And Google was like, I don't want to give you
Speaker 1: my toys. I think I'm going to keep those toys right,
Speaker 1: and that way that differentiates my toys from your toys,
Speaker 1: and that way people will buy my toys and not
Speaker 1: your toys, and uh. And Apple was like, well, fine,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make our own stuff. And when which is
Speaker 1: a perfectly valid response, I'm making it sound like they
Speaker 1: were being petulant children. That's not that's not the case.
Speaker 1: It's it made perfect business sense. What what maybe he
Speaker 1: didn't make as much sense was that they released the
Speaker 1: Maps app for iPhone, possibly too early. Yes, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who felt that the application was
Speaker 1: not as polished as it needed to be, and that
Speaker 1: it did, in fact have lots of bugs in it. Now,
Speaker 1: Apple got its map data from primarily from tom Tom,
Speaker 1: which has great data, which is pretty okay. Yeah they do,
Speaker 1: they do, all right. Yeah, they they've they've got they
Speaker 1: know their stuff and you know, and we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: Google gets their map data from sources and then has
Speaker 1: to merge it all together. And Apple got it from
Speaker 1: more than just Tom Tom, but Tom Tom was the
Speaker 1: primary source of the map data for Apple. So something
Speaker 1: was going on between the data that they were receiving
Speaker 1: and the implementation of the application itself that made it
Speaker 1: less accurate. There's something wiggy in that algorithm that we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier that actually pulls the the important
Speaker 1: information out and presents it to you. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: might not notice that there is a river in the
Speaker 1: way of your route because Apple failed to pay attention
Speaker 1: to that. Or there was a pretty well reported incident
Speaker 1: where the Government of Australia said don't use Apple Maps
Speaker 1: because it's it's taking this one route that should go
Speaker 1: a fairly simple way and putting people through Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a desert. It was essentially it was essentially routing
Speaker 1: people through a huge desert that was a part of
Speaker 1: an enormous park in Australia, and the fear was that
Speaker 1: people would be using the application to try and go someplace,
Speaker 1: they would get rerouted through the desert, lose signal, lose
Speaker 1: signal and not have enough gas to get out and
Speaker 1: in and then accidental walkabouts are not really Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in Australia at the time of the story, it was
Speaker 1: just 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, um. But yeah, anyway, so this was this
Speaker 1: was a big issue, and so it was a double whammy,
Speaker 1: right because they kicked Google out of the store. The
Speaker 1: Apple app was not fully baked. In fact, famously, the
Speaker 1: guy who was in charge of the whole iOS thing
Speaker 1: was asked to leave Apple, became a consultant and then
Speaker 1: was kind of pushed out. Yeah, and I mean it
Speaker 1: was it was a huge hubbub. I I had so
Speaker 1: much about hubbub coming through coming through my internet perceptors
Speaker 1: that I just did not even update my phone. I
Speaker 1: I use an iPhone and I did not upgrade. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to mess with Apple Maps. I chose to
Speaker 1: ignore the entire situation and and a lot of people
Speaker 1: did that. And about three months later, so it was
Speaker 1: late December of two thousand and twelve, mid to late December,
Speaker 1: in mid December, when Google Maps reappeared in the App Store,
Speaker 1: complete with turn by turn navigation and uh, and Google
Speaker 1: took the opportunity to kind of twist the knife a
Speaker 1: little bit and talk about how great their map data was.
Speaker 1: Keeping in mind again the Apple data wasn't necessarily what
Speaker 1: was wrong. It was something else between the data and
Speaker 1: the implementation. But at any rate, Google definitely took a
Speaker 1: little bit of time to kind of say, look, how
Speaker 1: awesome we are. Yeah, well they they also mean it
Speaker 1: became the most popular download within hours on the app Store.
Speaker 1: You know, clearly people had been clear wearing for it,
Speaker 1: and and that um also I might have I might
Speaker 1: have missed this one on my timeline. But but in
Speaker 1: December of two twelve, Google Maps hit one billion monthly
Speaker 1: active users. That's a lot of people trying to find
Speaker 1: their way to the same restaurants I'm going to, so
Speaker 1: why I can never get in? I just need to
Speaker 1: be a little more famous people, just a little more famous.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite famous enough to get a good table
Speaker 1: at a restaurant. So if you guys can help me
Speaker 1: with that, that'd be awesome. If you can clout me
Speaker 1: up in good table and restaurant, I would really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I 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 clus look at me,
Speaker 1: Look how important I am. Yeah. Yeah, McDonald's does not
Speaker 1: take that seriously. Now do it? 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: their catchphrase from earlier? I have zero I'm like a goldfish,
Speaker 1: reassuring and yet terrifying. Something like that? Were you sharing
Speaker 1: and yet terrified? I don't have my business cards, so
Speaker 1: I can't tell you for sure. Um according to uh
Speaker 1: to Michael Jones, who is one of the employees at Google,
Speaker 1: the chief technology advocate, I think is 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 been, it might start telling you like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: scene from your favorite movie was filmed in that lot
Speaker 1: over there. Maybe you want to go check that out.
Speaker 1: Or oh hey, you really like Vietnamese food, and the
Speaker 1: highest rated Vietnamese restaurant within a five mile radius is
Speaker 1: right over there on the other side of the block,
Speaker 1: so you might want to go check that that out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool, I mean. But the idea here is
Speaker 1: that Google is not just using your previous use of
Speaker 1: Google Maps to determine this. They're using everything like your
Speaker 1: actual search history, your search history, your Google Plus account,
Speaker 1: all of that integrated information that starts getting just a
Speaker 1: little bit stockery. Yeah, and you wonder to what extent
Speaker 1: could this go to? And I made some very goofy
Speaker 1: ridiculous examples to Lauren before the show, which I'm not
Speaker 1: going to repeat because really it's just they got silly.
Speaker 1: But the point being that if if you like, let's
Speaker 1: say that you have a job and you you've logged
Speaker 1: into a job version of your Gmail um and your
Speaker 1: job is with the c d C sare, so you
Speaker 1: might do a lot of different searches on very specific
Speaker 1: types 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 free clinic? I mean, it's 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 gets personalized. It's supposed to
Speaker 1: be anonymous, so Google is not supposed to actually know
Speaker 1: that it 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 when 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. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And uh, I've been using field Trip, which is a
Speaker 1: Google app. I talked about it with Chris in a
Speaker 1: previous episode a few episodes ago, where it's it's a
Speaker 1: location based service that looks at where you are based
Speaker 1: upon you know. Occasionally it's pining your your device to
Speaker 1: see where you are based upon your either cellular triangulation
Speaker 1: or GPS or whatever. And then it says, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick look in this area and see if there's
Speaker 1: anything the area that would interest him. And you kind
Speaker 1: of or her and you you kind of let the
Speaker 1: 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 too 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
Speaker 1: and anyway, it's a parish by the way, anyway, the
Speaker 1: p A R I s H free plug uh the
Speaker 1: any anyway. The The app does this by by checking
Speaker 1: its database and and referencing against your physical location and
Speaker 1: occasionally giving you stuff. And you can even tell it
Speaker 1: how frequently you went up to how often I want
Speaker 1: them all the bloody time, or do or only when
Speaker 1: I opened the app or sometime in between. I've got
Speaker 1: it in the in between because I don't want to
Speaker 1: get I don't want my phone vibrating every five seconds
Speaker 1: thinking 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, but I know there
Speaker 1: are 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 it's just 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: you 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 vendelose I'm a ndelo 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 in.
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 ever knowing that that
Speaker 1: was a thing. And if I have my life where
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, it also means that you're it also
Speaker 1: means you you're less adventurous and all. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean the process of discovery is really terrific. And
Speaker 1: also I mean, what will it Will it de authenticate
Speaker 1: the process of discovery? Will you never again have the
Speaker 1: 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: ill just so, like, you know, Lauren never comes out
Speaker 1: of her shell, and just down the street is a
Speaker 1: tap dancing and jazz dancing uh school. We're going to
Speaker 1: convince her to go in there and take classes, and
Speaker 1: then she's gonna have a recital and everyone's gonna go
Speaker 1: It's not recital, is it? Whatever? The dance equivalent is
Speaker 1: absolutely no clue. Anyway, we'll see. That's that's why it
Speaker 1: would pop up for you, because it would say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, what Lauren needs, She needs to get out more,
Speaker 1: she needs to needs to to shed this shy exterior
Speaker 1: and and just let her inner choreographer shine. I think
Speaker 1: I think that if Google can talk, that is in
Speaker 1: fact what it would say about me. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: Google would never stop slapping me. Just grow up, grow
Speaker 1: up Strickland. Pretty much, what do we get all the time?
Speaker 1: That's that's what if if it weren't for a for
Speaker 1: a employee handbook laws here, it has to works. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that would happen in the office. I've not slapped here.
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's happened, Josh. Josh alternately praises me and
Speaker 1: hits me. It's it's nice, kid, I kid, kid, our stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know. Fans they are great people. They are
Speaker 1: he'll hit me if I don't say that. Alright, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that wraps up this discussion. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: seen sort of the past, We've seen how it works.
Speaker 1: In the future. I'm I'm really excited to see the
Speaker 1: development of Google Maps and and you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll see a lot of discussion and healthy debate in
Speaker 1: the future as these other features roll out and are
Speaker 1: integrated and uh and maybe maybe two or three generations
Speaker 1: from now, people will just be like, Hey, that's just
Speaker 1: the way things are. We're in this transitional period where
Speaker 1: it's really kind of weird. So but that's okay, it's exciting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so change it's fun, fun and scary. Ye, fun and scary.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be my new title. I'm gonna business card.
Speaker 1: So while I go and get the printed up I
Speaker 1: just want to remind everybody. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can do so by sending
Speaker 1: us an email our addresses tech stuff at discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. You
Speaker 1: can find us with the handle text stuff, hs W
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
Speaker 1: it house to works dot com