Behind the "My Location" Errors In Google Maps 78
waderoush writes "Ever since Google added the 'My Location' feature this week to the desktop and laptop versions of Google Maps, allowing Firefox and Chrome users to see their current location on a map, people have been reporting bizarre location errors — Manhattanites, for example, are being told by Google that they're in Austin, TX. Ted Morgan, the CEO of Boston-based location software provider Skyhook Wireless, talked about the problems in an interview Friday. Skyhook's Wi-Fi-based location-finding technology was passed over when Mozilla adopted Google's own location services toolkit for Firefox 3.5 in April; Morgan says that was unfortunate for Web app developers, because Google's 'crowdsourced' database of Wi-Fi access point locations is far less reliable than Skyhook's."
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Google did this to me a few years ago with a front page redirect (it thought I was in somewhere in South America). Their ip to location DB is 'ok' but has flaws.
Tell them
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?contact_type=ip [google.com]
It takes about a week to a month and they will correct the mapping.
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The odd thing IMO is that I've been using the GeoIP db for years and it is pretty reliable and very easy to use. Why does the browser even need this feature? It's not perfect as some IP addresses aren't correctly mapped but typically they are very close. I use them on my eCommerce sites to give estimates on shipping without asking the user for their location and to present location aware suggested products.
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Well, I'd say that a real gps-based database always beats a crowdsourced one. So he may be right, and the assertion may be rightful. Dunno.
But just because he states "This totally wouldn't happen with ours, ours is awesome!", this does not mean that he *has* to be a liar.
I know, I know. A CEO not being a liar. Good joke and all. I could nearly not believe it myself. :P
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Skyhook's implementation really is inventive (Score:5, Interesting)
The initially war-drove around, mapping APs. Then when users connect to those APs in the database and query the location, they also send back a report on other nearby APs. This allows their database to grow and become more accurate over time, without them having to keep war-driving previously established areas.
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Not ready for prime time, that's for sure.
Re:Skyhook's implementation really is inventive (Score:5, Interesting)
Skyhook's reliance on wireless APs doesn't work so well when the APs move. I took my APs with me when I moved to a new place, but my iPhone (which uses Skyhook's assisted-GPS) thought I was always at my old place for months until I realized what was going on and that I should submit my AP MAC addresses [skyhookwireless.com] to correct their location.
It's possible that it sees an AP near you that's recently been moved.
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It say's you're in texas. because that's where the 'linksys' AP was last seen...
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``The initially war-drove around, mapping APs. Then when users connect to those APs in the database and query the location, they also send back a report on other nearby APs. This allows their database to grow and become more accurate over time, without them having to keep war-driving previously established areas.''
I don't know why you had to go ac on us---just saying, Ted^W.
I've heard of their technology, it was a few years ago when the suggestion that gps chipsets in smartphones was a fantasy; lookee what
Can't find My Location (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been looking in Google Maps for this mythical "My Location" feature and I can't seem to find it. What am I doing wrong? I've got my default location setup, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they referring to.
Bryan
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It's in Google Maps for mobile devices, not in a web browser.
They just added it to laptop/desktop GoogleMaps (Score:2)
Like, RTFA? But it's only there if you're using Firefox 3.5 or Google Chrome, and if you've got the options set correctly (which doesn't seem to work with my copy of Chrome?) and if you can figure out that the not-very-obvious little circle-in-a-square icon on your Google Map is a "My Location" button (waving the mouse over it seems to invoke Tooltips.)
The article doesn't say if Google Maps works differently depending on whether you're on a laptop vs desktop (or how it can tell) - my laptop moves around t
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Right above the zoom buttons, you have a street view icon. Between the street view icon and the scroll buttons, you may see a small circle. Click there.
Unfortunately, Google has horrible user agent sniffing. I'm on Firefox on Linux, and I need to spoof myself as a Windows user to get that button.
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It's just above the zoom in and out slider, a little round circle in a square (with cut off corners). Or just below the hand with the four arrows.
Click that and a bar will appear at the top of firefox and ask if it's ok to share your location.
Hope this helps.
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It's the little circle thing by the panning and zooming and street view controls.
When I click it it takes me to Austin, TX, which is over 1500 miles from where I actually am. And where I actually am isn't even Manhattan, but New Jersey. Google says it's because laneline-based connections are probably going to show erroneous results based on ISP, except that Verizon is based in Viriginia according to whois, not Texas!
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Re:Can't find My Location (Score:4, Funny)
Addendum: Whois on my own IP also indicates a Virginia location. I can't figure out how they're getting Texas!
That's because Texas is where you want to be!
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Thanks everybody. That little icon is so not intuitive. I never even saw it until you guys pointed it out.
Bryan
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Maybe this is your problem?
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Nobody is taking anything from you.
Re:Remind me not to use Firefox 3.5! (Score:5, Informative)
As any sane person would expect, and thirty seconds on Google would confirm, the browser asks permission before sending the location data. Screenshot. [howtogeek.com] No privacy is being taken away.
Lesson of the day: don't make nutty assumptions, and don't post knee-jerk reactions based on them.
Re:Remind me not to use Firefox 3.5! (Score:5, Funny)
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Indeed. I am not upgrading to 3 because of the horrific address bar, and now this! Where has the light, fast, sleek browser gone? Oh yeah, someone's pay at Mozilla is based on increasing the number of users, so chasing those IE users has become paramount. Hence the change in direction from a UNIX-esque philosophy to a hand-holding philosophy (happened between 1 and 2, I think).
Sooner or later there will be a bug in FF or someone else's implementation of this geolocation crap, and the browser could be spewin
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Indeed. I am not upgrading to 3 because of the horrific address bar
I hated it at first, but now I love it. It is indeed different than the old address-bar, but actually... it works really well. I find that I completely rely on it to re-find random sites I know I visited in the past but didn't bother to bookmark.
You really ought to try it for a while before rejecting the entire browser because of it...
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1. Geo-location only works if you explicitly enable it.
2. You can change how the address bar works in Settings/Privacy (or whatever it is called in the english version).
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So tell me, what are the English words for "settings" or "privacy"?
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I know what they are called in English.
I have no idea what they are called in the english Firefox version, because I have a hungarian one installed. It could be Configuration/Secret stuff or something, i don't know.
Google Groups Suffering A Similar Issue (Score:2, Informative)
I think that Google needs to look into its error management systems, as this isn't the only Google system to have trouble lately. Google Groups is having some major issues with the search engine- it's next to impossible to find things right now. Searches that should find information find nothing, and the advanced search is especially broken.
Google Groups search was especially useful in finding helpful information on older usenet posts, so it's unfortunate that this is the case. While I'm not saying the prob
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This has nothing to do with "error management". Geolocation by IP is based off a combination of who leased the IP and where the packets are routed. If you are working through a dedicated T3 in Orange County, you're likely to resolve to Seattle. This is a persistent problem for geolocation services, not specifically Google. I'm not sure the point of the article, when anyone who's used commercial and free lookups, knows this is par.
In other news, they probably heard that Vista is a next generation OS.
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This has nothing to do with "error management". Geolocation by IP is based off a combination of who leased the IP and where the packets are routed. If you are working through a dedicated T3 in Orange County, you're likely to resolve to Seattle. This is a persistent problem for geolocation services, not specifically Google. I'm not sure the point of the article, when anyone who's used commercial and free lookups, knows this is par.
In other news, they probably heard that Vista is a next generation OS.
Thank you Jack9. This is what I was thinking the whole time. Have they been living under a rock. If you really need to find your location, with a still far from perfect but higher consistency GPS is within most peoples reach. This IP location technology at its best is on the level of amusement rather than anything to rely on.
Problem not limited to Chrome and Firefox (Score:3, Funny)
Every now and then my G1 will insist that I am somewhere in Oregon. Usually I am clued in by the weather app giving a clearly erroneous temperature on the front screen. Perhaps my phone is just asking for a trip to someplace cool, since Vegas gets pretty hot in the summer. So far the phone has always come to its senses in a few hours.
who cares... (Score:4, Funny)
get a gps dongle, and install google gears if your using firefox (tho i'm not sure if there is one for 3.5 yet), and get improved accuracy.
question is, when can one get automated routing to the nearest pizza place?
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get a gps dongle, and install google gears if your using firefox (tho i'm not sure if there is one for 3.5 yet), and get improved accuracy.
Google gears is available for the some mac crap, 32 bit linux on x86, and windows x32/64, on Firefox 3.0.10 and older. That's it! I went hunting for explanations, the official excuse is "we don't test on RCs because we would have to make too many builds." Consequently, google is not ready for FF 3.5 even though it was not a secret.
Do yourself a favor, and don't depend on google gears. Even google does not bother to take it seriously.
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And still its built directly into chrome, and used for gps support on google maps with geolocation...
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And still its built directly into chrome, and used for gps support on google maps with geolocation...
Chrome is NEVER going to take over from Firefox as long as it has its current license. Also, as long as it is missing critical features that drove people to Firefox in the first place, like an Ad Blocker that actually works. Failing to support the most important Open-Source browser in an attempt to gain relevance for your own browser is a Microsoftian bitch move.
I hate this 'location-based' crap (Score:5, Insightful)
A while ago I was working in Italy: Google would then redirect me to Google in the Netherlands, and Facebook rather kindly switched automatically to displaying its pages in Dutch. Steam usually gets the location right, but won't then let me use my perfectly valid British credit card to buy games when I'm not in Britain.
This is one of the most user-unfriendly ideas to infest the web over the last few years.
Re:I hate this 'location-based' crap (Score:4, Informative)
Language switching based on guessed location is evil. That's what the accept-language HTTP header is for!
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A lot of it has to do with "rights" based on country. A company might have the right to distribute a game in Britain, but not in Sweden. As such, they would have to have a way to ensure that the game is only distributed to people in Britain.
It would be much more in the spirit of the Internet if there were more "global" rights for distribution, but I think many people can recognize how this would be a double-edged sword.
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A while ago I was in Germany, and Google insisted that I read the German version of Google, even though my browser said that it only understood English (as I configured it). It's fine when they use GeoIP to present a localized version of a page, but not when the Accept-Language request headers requests otherwise.
I suspect that the problem is that a lot of people have misconfigured (or buggy) browsers that foul up the Accept-Language header, always claiming to prefer English. That puts Google in a bit of a bind; they're damned whatever they try, so they try to satisfy the majority and minimize the level of grief. FWIW, when I use Google in Germany, it still comes up in English. (Well, I think it does, but I've not checked for a bit and my configuration might have other differences too.)
Re:I hate this 'location-based' crap (Score:4, Interesting)
I get that in Spain, but that's okay, since you can change the Google preferences to English easily enough.
However, what I don't get is the non-advertised, hidden, mandatory biasing of search results based on the Google UI language. Results vary depending on what language is picked for the Google UI (and no, this isn't the "show only results in such and such language" feature, as it still shows results in multiple languages - it's just biased in preference of the UI language). Why isn't there a checkbox to turn it off, and why is it hardcoded to use the UI language? Very often, if I'm using Google in spanish I find that the most relevant results for obvious queries (say, some well-known open source software) are in 4th or worse place, and the first few spots are occupied by some random sites about it that happen to be in Spanish. I get the idea and why some people might like it, but I don't see why they will not explain it or offer an option to turn it off.
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Not an Intractable Problem--It's Just a Bug (Score:1)
As a software developer myself, while still professional embarrassed at any bug that escapes into the wild, I know how today's modern software ecosystem has evolved: iteratively. This obvious defect--pinning the snobby effetes of Manhattan in the alcohol-immersed college town of Austin, Texas--seems almost fitting. Maybe Google My Location is on to something. As I write this, I think I'm in Manhattan but wait--all the license plates are white, with a red star. What's all that green stuff on the ground where
We're well into the jet age.... (Score:1, Interesting)
...it's way past time to be making assumptions about a person based on where you think that person may be.
Just because I'm in Germany doesn't mean I want the German language version of anything. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Apart from helping me figure out where to go, I don't see the value of geolocation on the web. All the touted benefits of geolocation other than finding directions seem either naive or sinister to me.
My location is strangely getting worse (Score:2)
It used to be very good. When I was at work (in downtown LA) it would not only identify the building I was in correctly, but it would also identify which side of the building I was in). When I was home it gave my location as being less than a block away from my real location.
But bizarrely, it is getting worse. Nowadays, it is not unusual for it to be way off. Right now I tried my location on my cell phone and my true location is just outside of the blue circle "my location" gives out.
So that is rather unusu
How are they gathering data? (Score:2)
The article says Google is crowdsourcing their data, but if so, where's the input? When I click on "My Location", I just get a message that "Your location could not be determined" - I don't see any followup on "so where are you, so we can add this location/wifi-signal pair to our database".
For what it's worth, Loki gets my home location exactly right, while Google doesn't even venture a guess.
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I must be missing something. I went to the Loki website and told it to find me - to do so, the site wants to download and install stuff (lokiplugin93586120938561098512093.exe), using a Java applet whose certificate has expired, and which runs outside the sandbox.
And this is supposed to "just work" on public websites? Are they seriously expecting people visiting random websites to download and install (with admin rights, no less) unexpected software, because that site is offering local advertising?
Seriously.
Africa (Score:2)
In parts of Africa, GPS coordinates in Google Earth are off by hundreds of miles.
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Depending on country, you may be running into filtering. In the UAE, I used to get very different mapping results for the same coordinate if I used a local proxy, but the US-based proxy would be spot on.
Try using Navizon (also crowdsourced but accurate) (Score:2, Interesting)
The difference is that while it is unclear what method Google use, Navizon clearly states they will PAY users who have GPS installed in their phones, to roam around and collect Cell ID, APs, etc. and submit it to them. At the SAME time you get maps to see where you are, Buddies to see where your friends are, etc.
So in this instance
I want to help make it better (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the link to the "Your guess at my location was wrong: I am actually at" page?
Its okay (Score:2, Funny)