[LINK] RIP Google Maps Contour Feature

[Roger Clarke]

>Roger wrote on Tue, 4 May 2010 21:15:02 +1000
>... Google has just withdrawn the valuable Contours feature. ...
>[Full post below]

At 6:37 -0700 4/5/10, Kim Davies replied:
>I think they just shifted it to another menu.

Kim's right.

You have to go to "More..." and choose the "Terrain" option.
(I'd looked, but I'd missed it, because I was looking for 'Contour').

My general point about Google using 'bait and switch' remains;  but 
the current manifestation of it is far less nasty than I was 
suggesting.

(That's the nearest I've ever had to come to apologising to Google!).

________________________________________________________________________

>Roger wrote on Tue, 4 May 2010 21:15:02 +1000
>
>I'm a fairly frequent user of Google Maps (particularly for walking 
>in Australian, Swiss, Austrian and Italian mountains).
>
>But my time left using Google Maps may be even shorter than my time 
>left doing 1000m walks.  So it looks like I need to go looking for 
>an alternative.
>
>And I'm a realist:  there aren't any at this stage that are anywhere 
>near as good.  (Even though all they're doing is cleverly processing 
>obscure-looking national data and cleverly displaying the results in 
>accessible formats).
>
>
>Why is my time up?
>
>Because Google has just withdrawn the valuable Contours feature.
>
>They've replaced it with Earth, sold as '3D'.
>
>(So we need goggles to go with our Google viewing now??).
>
>But of course that sucks you in ('bait and switch', as the Yanks say).
>
>It requires you to download software which does who-knows-what.
>
>And I'd have to delve deeply into various places to try to work out 
>what the terms and the privacy policies are, and what they mean; 
>and I'd have to monitor them as well;  and I expect that I wouldn't 
>end up liking what I found.  (I've got all the tools I need at my 
>disposal, so I'm well set up to do the analysis;  but this becomes 
>very boring after a while).
>
>As demonstrated by recent posts from multiple sources, Facebook has 
>been, well, almost bare-Faced in the trickery it's prepared to use 
>to exploit its users' data. 
>
>To be fair, Google's practices aren't quite as pernicious as Facebook's.
>
>But there's more than enough evidence to support an extension of 
>Google's own proposition that 'Google knows a lot about you ...' to 
>include '... and Google intends knowing even more'.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University