PRESS RELEASE: MyRoute-app reduces Google Maps services
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While I can understand your position in terms of the massive price increase by Google, I like probably many others have decided to pay for the My Route app Gold solely because of the Functionality you offer through Google. I think you should offer the possibility of an early cancellation since you are taking away a key feature of your service.
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One thing not mentioned yet is the time discrepancies between OSM, GM, HERE and TomTom. When switching a route amongst these maps, waypoints and mileage are effectively unchanged, but the duration can vary significantly, sometimes by hours. I know my daily riding limits, and plan routes by both distance and duration. In my experience GM seemed to have the most accurate timing, so I used that for planning trips and created HERE copies for my Garmin GPS.
So I will greatly miss not having GM route calculation capabilities, but I understand and wholeheartedly support your decision not to renew this feature.
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Will new maps be implemented? For example, https://en.mapy.cz
There is also a tourist map, hotels, camps, restaurants, gas station, museum, cable car, post office, church, ....
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if you now create a route in MRA using the tom tom map and save it as a 1.1gpx file to your hard drive, then delete the route from your route library by accident, you should be able to bring it back by uploading it using the gpx file you had saved on your hard drive including all the poi and waypoints, but all it says is " this route has no waypoints" and if you upload it as a route/track you get loads of waypoints with no street names.
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Personally the only thing I used Google Maps for was Street View.
Went to Cornwall last year and whilst plotting the route to drive the whole way round the Cornish Coast there are a lot of unpaved roads that "stab out" to the most beautifull little scenic coves.
You would miss out on these if you just stayed on the main coastal road.
Street View is perfect for jumping in and actually seeing whether the 2-10 mile "stab out" is worth your time.
Having this functionality all in MRA is really usefull so if Street View disappears then it would be a real shame but in no way a deal breaker, as I would just jump in to Google Maps in another tab to achieve the same goal.The "big boys" are getting greedy and I whole heartedly agree with MRA's decision to show them the middle finger.
Steve. -
@TJ-Higgins the satelite layer from Here is still there, it may (zoomed out) not look so nice but once you zoom in it is ok
I find that Here satellite is not good enough for my needs.
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Spijtig om dit te horen.
Zelf gebruikte ik Google satelliet veel om veldwegen nader te bekijken.
Nu moet ik het stellen met HERE satelliet maar die kwaliteit is toch niet hetzelfde.
Toch serieus teleurgesteld met jullie beslissing. -
Hello everyone, thank you very much for all your support in this. As said, we don't take these decisions lightheartedly.
That said, I've read your feedback (especially in regards to the G-sattelite map layer) and will take this up with management.
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@Bruce-McKinlay There is still here maps and tomtom that contain the same services i think
@Drabslab I was continuing on a route yesterday. Was looking for a petrol station. None of the other maps listed one. turned on POIs still nothing.
Went to google maps and looked at the same place and there it was, went to street view to confirm and it was still valid.
It is a shame as Google are the go to standard and we will just have to work around it -
None of the other cheap maps have the data that Google Maps has. Land Marks, business names, etc.
Hopefully this doesn't affect the Tyre App, but just in case it does I'll not be doing any upgrades to it.
I'll have to export all the routes I've created and just use MRA to import final version to create my HD .gpx files.
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For the moment i don't see any google maps layer option anymore....
I'm creating my routes trough HERE mapping but really like the fact that i can switch between the different layers for how the map is been seen on the screen.
The google maps layer is really useful to see POI'S on the map.
Will the google maps layer be available again ? -
absolutely unfair Google's predatory eagerness
thanks for your work and effort
we will always be by your side!
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Hello everyone, thank you very much for all your support in this. As said, we don't take these decisions lightheartedly.
That said, I've read your feedback (especially in regards to the G-sattelite map layer) and will take this up with management.
@Timo-Martosatiman-MRA
Update from what I said earlier: I was already under the conviction that the sattelite and map layers should've remained. As outlined in the original message this removal is focussed primarily on the Google Maps route-calculation.
Sattelite and regular Google maps view remain available for Gold users! They've been temporarily de-activated due to the development team's exit strategy and are now available again.
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Timo,
Not sure what app your screen shot is from but I don't see any of those options either via the web app, or the phone app.
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I'm Gold and not seeing it either.
Steve.
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Scratch that.
It's the Layers Icon Top Right of the Map.
I'll get my Coat!!Steve.
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Just spotted the Google 'Layer' Steve, and for me it's happy days
The map info and colour is just as before so I reckon many of the users won't miss the Google algorithm wizardry in the background as long as they can see the normal information that Google Maps shows.
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scratch that as well for me.. I see it now..
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Dear Community,
On behalf of the MyRoute-app team, I would like to inform you that after ceasing negotiations with Google, we have decided to reduce the Google Maps service. I will explain the time frame and total impact of this, as well as our availability for questions.
Let's start at the beginning. Just like any other company, MyRoute-app has contracts with various partners who provide all kinds of services. Take a look in the application and you can probably already list some of them. Generally, we do not draw your, our community's, attention to this as contract negotiations, licence fees and life-cycle management is generally of little interest to you, the users. What is relevant in this case is that MyRoute-app concludes multi-year contracts that are renegotiated with suppliers at the end of the period, often in pleasant collaboration and ongoing partnerships.
These negotiations go beyond market negotiations. It's about more than the stress field between a low price for us and a high price for the supplier. This is a mutually fruitful collaboration that stimulates sustainable innovation. Our suppliers benefit if MyRoute-app grows: then our demand for their services also grows. We benefit from our suppliers flourishing: they offer better and more attractive services, so we do not have to develop this ourselves as a custom-made service. With MyRoute-app, quality comes first, which can sometimes cost a little more when the quality justifies it.
In February 2020, negotiations started for a follow-up contract with Google. To our surprise, the prices offered here were ten times higher than the previous prices. It should be noted that those prices had already been unilaterally increased by Google as early as 2018. The 2018 price hike was not only difficult for MyRoute-app as many smaller companies also run their business on Google's infrastructure. The internet is full of stories about small entrepreneurs who, thanks to this price hike, saw their costs rise from, for example, €10,000 to €200,000 per period. Fortunately, MyRoute-app was able to deal with this in an agile manner and at the time expanded Google Maps as a standard map service with an emergency measure and switched to the free open source alternative OpenStreetMap. In the end, many companies died in a growing economy due to nothing else but the fact that Google shot up its prices back then.
So, we refused to accept the new Google prices. We tried to achieve new prices with Google that were workable but to no avail at the bottom of the line. Google's attitude towards our proposals was rigid; counter proposals and questions for clarity were met with radio silence. We have done our best to think from the perspective of our supplier, as we often do. We understand that large companies like to work with scales and standard processes. We understand that justified price rises are possible. We understand that a company wants to grow. However, this does not detract from the fact that Google simply was not open to negotiating with MyRoute-app. That can easily happen, after all, we were already customers. We had already become customers since 2014 under a reasonable graduated scale, with a supplier who worked together with us and increased the price indexed as befits a growing economy. However, recent price hikes are unworkable and unjustified.
Google's services will not be 20 times better in 2018. It has not improved tenfold in 2020 and as far as we can tell, life has not become 30 times more expensive and wages have not increased thirty-fold. In the short term, MyRoute-app will therefore bid farewell to various Google services. This will disable the maps functionality for GOLD users. Furthermore, routes once created via Google Maps will all be converted to the Here map. The Google Maps map remains available as an additional map layer. We believe that this reduction of Google functionality will not have a major impact on the overall offering. For proper exportation to the known GPS devices, we advise that you use Here (Garmin) and TomTom maps, in any case the map material is the same. The map with all Google information will remain available, we are only forced to distance ourselves from the Google route calculation.
Finally, I would like to end with the message that things can be done differently. As I mentioned earlier, MyRoute-app has contracts with several partners. As such, we have recently renewed the life cycle of these contracts with all critical partners in a sustainable and collaborative way. We are proud of the partners with whom we have been able to develop MyRoute-app to the maturity level we now stand at and once again express our confidence in building a bright future for all travellers.
Thanks for reading.
On behalf of the MyRoute-app team,
Your Community Manager,
Timo Martosatiman
@Timo-Martosatiman-MRA said in PRESS RELEASE: MyRoute-app reduces Google Maps services:
The Google Maps map remains available as an additional map laye
Maybe not the right place to ask but...
So I went to check out the new functionality (or lack thereof). Initially I got the Here map visually, no option for Google maps. Was initially disappointed. But then I came back to re-read what was still avail (layers). I set my layer back to Google maps and all looked fine again.
Now I will say that I'm prepping my routes for a Garmin GPS anyway, so that's Here maps on the device and in my experience has the best chance of the GPS actually using the route correctly. I was doing routeing compares and adding waypoints to force the default routing to do the same as what Here would have done. I also see that streetview is still functional, I assume that means that is continuing to be available??
Now with the changes as of today (5/21/20) , with Here selected in the first place as the default, and manually turning on Google as the layer, I still get to see Google maps graphics, but I get Here routing overlaid on that. Is that right?
As I understand it, assuming above is correct, the only downside in my case is I have to manually pick the Google layer. It would be nice to be able to set that. I do prefer the Google maps visually vs Here's. Glad I can still see them manually setting at least.
I do find in rural areas map differences where a road does or does not end in the same place, more often with Google being right so that sucks, but not the end of the world, as sometimes it's the other way around.
Note that the Google layer still reflects the default for Gold users (me), I assume that's just a graphic miss on your part since it did not default to that layer.
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@Timo-Martosatiman-MRA said in PRESS RELEASE: MyRoute-app reduces Google Maps services:
The Google Maps map remains available as an additional map laye
Maybe not the right place to ask but...
So I went to check out the new functionality (or lack thereof). Initially I got the Here map visually, no option for Google maps. Was initially disappointed. But then I came back to re-read what was still avail (layers). I set my layer back to Google maps and all looked fine again.
Now I will say that I'm prepping my routes for a Garmin GPS anyway, so that's Here maps on the device and in my experience has the best chance of the GPS actually using the route correctly. I was doing routeing compares and adding waypoints to force the default routing to do the same as what Here would have done. I also see that streetview is still functional, I assume that means that is continuing to be available??
Now with the changes as of today (5/21/20) , with Here selected in the first place as the default, and manually turning on Google as the layer, I still get to see Google maps graphics, but I get Here routing overlaid on that. Is that right?
As I understand it, assuming above is correct, the only downside in my case is I have to manually pick the Google layer. It would be nice to be able to set that. I do prefer the Google maps visually vs Here's. Glad I can still see them manually setting at least.
I do find in rural areas map differences where a road does or does not end in the same place, more often with Google being right so that sucks, but not the end of the world, as sometimes it's the other way around.
Note that the Google layer still reflects the default for Gold users (me), I assume that's just a graphic miss on your part since it did not default to that layer.
@Scott-Horton Hi scott, all your assumptions are correct. What you currently see is what you get, including the map layers. Since it wasn't on our roadmap to remove Google as a routing service, we'll have to look at for example activating a map layer automatically/per default.
Regardless, you are completely right to assume that you can create a completely Garmin compatible route (using the HERE routing map) whilst visually being presented with the Google sattelite map.
Kind regards,
Timo
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