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Google Maps tests new pop-up ads that give you an unnecessary detour (Update)
(www.androidauthority.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Google continues the enshitification of the apps that made them such a dominant company.
I mean... We probably should have seen it coming.
They're not a "disruptor" in an industry when they give away the product for free at a loss...they're just anti-competitive. We got a free ride at the cost of basically destroying all competition for Google. They got to sit back and chill and now they can reap the benefits of zero competition... eg doing whatever the fuck they want since there's no competitive alternative.
Uber did this too. Remember when you didn't have to tip?
It won't work. It will just lower the barrier to entry. I don't disagree that this is their angle, it's just... Short sighted.
I wish you were right. If I thought there was an actual shot at Google suffering consequences for bullshit like this, I'd short the stock. In reality, they'll somehow be up. They'll launch some stupid new thing and this will be completely forgotten. It's bad enough that every time Maps updates, it resets my customization to avoid tolls. I live in NoVA. These tolls are absolute fucking bullshit and I ain't paying it.
Not finding this to be a problem personally. Having lived in multiple areas with tolls.
I would too, except the hard part isn't predicting whether there will be consequences, it's predicting when.
Zero competition only for so long, I have seen a notable uptick in for example OSM being used even by companies instead of gmaps.
People are lazy creatures of habit, but once the enshittification starts impacting companies reliant on affected services there will be an alternative cooked up.
Possibly leading to the slow enshittification again, but either way. And it is not like google has some patent on web maps either.
If it's free, we're the product.
That's where they messed up.
The product is crowdsourced realtime traffic and editing so searchers can use a mapper that will get them there effectively. They need to understand how it affects ad revenue from search. If the app isn't easy to use, their editor army and distributed telemetry will dry up.
Ah, capitalism. <3