The Strange Explanation Of Why Windows Phone Users Lost Access To Google Maps

On Friday, Windows Phone users supposedly found themselves unable to access Google Maps. But Google said it made no sudden change on its end to cause this. What happened? It seems likely many people simple noticed for the first time long-standing redirection that Google had in place for those not using Android or iOS devices.

Apple Vs. Google Maps: Reality Check Time
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Apple Vs. Google Maps: Reality Check Time

Source: searchengineland.com

Google has released its long-awaited map app for the iPhone. The bottom line: it delivers.
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Google has released its long-awaited map app for the iPhone. The bottom line: it delivers.

Source: searchengineland.com

Nokia’s HERE Maps For iOS A Disappointment by Greg Sterling Nokia has many fans around the world who believe that its mapping service is the best one out there. And in selected ways it might be. Nokia offered “offline” maps well before Google. The company is also the go-to mapping provider for third parties, such as Yahoo and Yandex. In addition, Nokia plays an increasingly important role on the back end for Bing Maps both on Windows Phone 8 devices and on the PC. Nokia subsidiary Navteq was once one of the primary data providers for Google Maps until Nokia acquired the company for roughly $8 billion in 2007. All this suggests that Nokia’s splashy new mapping app for iOS, HERE, would be top-notch. While the larger screen versions of Nokia Maps (on the PC and iPad) are better, the iPhone version is quite poor in terms of user interface and overall user experience. I have only been using it for a short time and haven’t used it in enough situations to offer a definitive review. However it’s immediately clear that HERE is no substitute for Google Maps or Apple Maps. Reviews that praise Nokia Maps for iOS are being kind. However, I might not go quite as far as Mike Blumenthal who wrote this morning “Nokia HERE Maps Sucks (Significantly) More Than Apple Maps.” Blumenthal even critiques the underlying map data, which is supposed to be one of the really strong points of the Nokia offering. The bottom line is that users are likely to try and then quickly abandon HERE. Its deficiencies would appear to be symptomatic of Nokia’s larger competitive challenges. Perhaps if Nokia radically improves the UI (among other elements) it will become a worthy competitor to Google Maps or Apple’s product, which continues to get better. As an alternative you might try Telenav’s free Scout mapping app, which offers voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. I’ve found it to be pretty good overall quite a bit easier to use than HERE.
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Nokia’s HERE Maps For iOS A Disappointment

by Greg Sterling

Nokia has many fans around the world who believe that its mapping service is the best one out there. And in selected ways it might be.

Nokia offered “offline” maps well before Google. The company is also the go-to mapping provider for third parties, such as Yahoo and Yandex. In addition, Nokia plays an increasingly important role on the back end for Bing Maps both on Windows Phone 8 devices and on the PC.

Nokia subsidiary Navteq was once one of the primary data providers for Google Maps until Nokia acquired the company for roughly $8 billion in 2007.

All this suggests that Nokia’s splashy new mapping app for iOS, HERE, would be top-notch. While the larger screen versions of Nokia Maps (on the PC and iPad) are better, the iPhone version is quite poor in terms of user interface and overall user experience.

I have only been using it for a short time and haven’t used it in enough situations to offer a definitive review. However it’s immediately clear that HERE is no substitute for Google Maps or Apple Maps.

Reviews that praise Nokia Maps for iOS are being kind. However, I might not go quite as far as Mike Blumenthal who wrote this morning “Nokia HERE Maps Sucks (Significantly) More Than Apple Maps.” Blumenthal even critiques the underlying map data, which is supposed to be one of the really strong points of the Nokia offering.

The bottom line is that users are likely to try and then quickly abandon HERE. Its deficiencies would appear to be symptomatic of Nokia’s larger competitive challenges. Perhaps if Nokia radically improves the UI (among other elements) it will become a worthy competitor to Google Maps or Apple’s product, which continues to get better.

As an alternative you might try Telenav’s free Scout mapping app, which offers voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. I’ve found it to be pretty good overall quite a bit easier to use than HERE.

Source: searchengineland.com

There a new iOS Google app in town, she sounds a lot like Siri.

Source: searchengineland.com

marketingland: Have you played with the new Twitter iPad app? How do you like it? Danny Sullivan shares the good, the bad, and ultimately was pleasantly surprised.
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marketingland:

Have you played with the new Twitter iPad app? How do you like it? Danny Sullivan shares the good, the bad, and ultimately was pleasantly surprised.

marketingland: Yelp: iPhones Offer Greater Location Accuracy Than Androids
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marketingland:

Yelp: iPhones Offer Greater Location Accuracy Than Androids

Google Updates Earth For iOS With More 3D, Adds Default City Location To PC Maps
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Google Updates Earth For iOS With More 3D, Adds Default City Location To PC Maps

Source: searchengineland.com

Piper Jaffray “Street Test” Of Google vs. Siri Misses The Point

by Greg Sterling

No sooner did I hit “publish” on my earlier post, Google’s “Voice Assistant” Not Quite Siri-Smart But Most People Won’t Notice, than people on Twitter started responding that I was out of my mind. A couple of people cited a Piper Jaffray study, published yesterday, comparing the accuracy and breadth of Siri “search results” vs. Google in a “street test” in Minneapolis.

Google Gets a “B+” Siri Gets a “D”

In short Google was graded with a “B+” in terms of accuracy, while Siri got a “D.” It’s really an “apples to oranges” comparison, however. Let’s take a look at the methodology.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster and his minions asked an iPhone (Siri) 1,600 questions, half of which were in a room and half of which were on a noisy street. The same questions were input into Google. However it’s not clear whether this was in Safari, on a Google iPhone app or on an Android device. It’s also not clear whether Google voice search was used.
Fortune summarized many of the findings:
  • Google understands 100% of the questions (not surprisingly, since they are keyed in)
  • Google replies accurately 86% of the time
  • Siri comprehends 83% of queries in noisy conditions, 89% in a quiet room
  • Siri answers accurately 62% of the time on the street and 68% in a quiet room.
According to the test the following are the sources of Siri’s information: 60% of answers come from the default search engine (Google), 20% come from Yelp, 14% from WolframAlpha, 4% from Yahoo (e.g., Weather, Stocks) and 2% from Wikipedia.

Siri Isn’t a Search Engine

The incorrect assumption and fundamental conceptual error that the test makes is that Siri is a search engine and should be judged as such. It’s not. And most people don’t use Siri as a substitute for Google at present.
Most people initiate calls, send texts and emails using Siri. Searching the web is a minority use case on Siri. People use apps or Google on the iPhone to “search” the mobile internet.
However, I would agree with another of Piper Jaffray’s implied assertions: the boundaries between what Siri does and search are starting to break down, especially as Apple adds more structured data to Siri’s knowledge base. It goes the other way too, as Google seeks to emulate the Siri “assistant” capability on Android devices.
Siri can act as a voice front end for Google, simply by directing it to “search the web for X,Y,Z.” And, as mentioned, Siri defaults to Google (or other designated search engine) when it doesn’t have a structured database to draw from.

Google Is a Search Engine

By contrast, Google is a search engine and has a massive corpus of data from which to draw — still mostly in the form of links to third party documents and sites. Apple simply doesn’t have the same data and information to make available to Siri.
Siri’s mission isn’t to “organize all the world’s information.” Rather Siri has a much more narrow range of functions as an “intelligent assistant.” True, one of those functions is to deliver information in certain circumstances. But nobody involved with Siri would likely argue that it’s a substitute for Google in all but a handful of situations.
That’s mainly because Siri has a quite limited range of datasets that it’s working with, which are admittedly being expanded in iOS 6.

Results Are No Surprise

Because Siri can only access limited data silos — although its primary functions don’t involve retrieving information on the web — it should come as no surprise that Siri’s “ass got kicked” by Google.
A more “apples to apples” test would be to: 1) compare the capabilities of Siri/Nuance and Google voice recognition and task completion and/or 2) compare Google and Siri in categories where Siri has access to a structured database.
It still might be that Google would do a better job of retrieving relevant information than Siri, but it would be a more accurate reflection of their relative capabilities. For a discussion of how Google’s new speech-based “assistant” performs vs. Siri, see my earlier article.

Source: searchengineland.com

Google’s “Voice Assistant” Not Quite Siri-Smart But Most People Won’t Notice

Source: searchengineland.com