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0 pointsBud9y ago0 comments

Search is of course entirely useless, worse than useless, if you don't know in advance what you are looking for. Needless to say, search is not an adequate substitute for intelligent design and proper levels of detail on maps.

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ZeroGravitas9y ago

Can you explain your use case here? Normal Google search is great for finding the name of films you can't remember by typing vague descriptions of the plot. Maps has similar functionality, like "local coffeeshops" or "<business> in <city>".

maxerickson9y ago

How do you search for "an interesting area in Woonsocket". Like say you want to go to a park and then walk past some shops.

eru9y ago

https://www.google.com/maps/search/an+interesting+area+in+Wo...

Doesn't seem too bad.

larrybud9y ago

My technique: When I'm in an unfamiliar city, I search for restaurants and then looks for clusters. When you see a cluster of restaurants, this tends to be a downtown and is usually somewhere 'interesting'.

crispyambulance9y ago

If you don't actually know what you're even looking for, NO MAP whatsoever will be able to help you-- perhaps just take a walk?

Of course, you DO have SOME idea of what you're looking for and that's where Google maps can help infinitely better than any paper map.

lucb1e9y ago

> If you don't actually know what you're even looking for, NO MAP whatsoever will be able to help you.

I use OpenStreetMap for this use case so I can only answer for them, and they seem to do a great job at it. If I am looking for the general shopping area, or office areas, or anything like that, I can zoom and pan through a city and find it very quickly. That Google doesn't show labels anymore makes it completely useless (and I've run into that a few times).

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