I think the look adds something to the map. It's a bit easier to parse and understand than satellite images and adds more information than a standard overhead map.
For those of us who don't read Chinese - what's the story behind this map?
[EDIT: Wording]
Top row's got the logo for the site, the city name (Shanghai), a link to change cities (they've most of the major ones in China), then buttons for McDonald's, hospitals, KFC's, banks, car dealerships, and higher education.
The second row says "E address", measure distances, show bookmarks, correct errors, maximize; then there's a drop down called "frequently used places", and print.
On the far right is a search widget with tabs labelled "Address search", bus search, yellow pages, and "E address".
This is a remarkably useful app that I use frequently when I visit major cities. You can easily plot a subway or bus route with it. There are also photos of many buildings and a few 360 degree panoramas. I used it for apartment hunting once and I was astounded by the resemblance of the isometric drawings to the actual buildings. They must have hired a huge team of designers to make all this pixel art.
This is the real map of Shanghai in 3D. If you noticed the three buttons at the top right of the frame, the first one is for 3D display. Second one is for 2D display. Last one is for satellite pics.
These are so much info that I can parse from the map.
What? Google makes a custom political map for China? A couple of years ago, they used to claim that they don't make custom products for any market and product rollouts are always worldwide.
Note that it's not just a matter of translation. First, they list Taiwan next to Hong Kong and Macau as if it's a peripheral part of China (this is surely China's wish, but the reality is that Taiwan is an independent democracy).
Then, there's a line in the water to the east of Taiwan and extending elsewhere whose sole purpose is to imply regions to be part of China's territory that are not or are controversial. This line isn't used anywhere else in the world, such as say, in the Caribbean, where the boundaries of different islands might not be clear.
I guess Google wants market share in China bad enough that they are willing to proffer multiple versions of truth.
I actually had something specifically in mind. Google Taiwan had to fight to get special options onto the search page that could limit searches to Taiwanese websites ( http://www.google.com.tw/ ). Otherwise, most Mandarin language searches would be overwhelmed by results from China. The strong resistance they encountered at the time was that Google insisted on products being rolled out worldwide in a single version, minus minor variations like translations.
It's also a question of ethics in this case. This is about data that Google is directly providing, not simply a matter of ranking or showing/not showing websites in their results. It's not serving the user a purple background because they like purple. Think about another possible case--would it be right for Google to draw Israel as occupied Palestine in countries where the majority of people might hold that point of view?
Yeah there are clickable ads within the map, a lot of the billboards seem to be clickable, which is really quite clever if they're selling that ad space.
I have lived in Shanghai, and boy do I want to live in this virtual Shanghai (the real one, only for sentimental reasons.)
For me, the best city in China remains Hangzhou, maybe Xiamen :-) the most chill, laid back places in the east of the country (Kunming, Guilin and Hainan Island are all gorgeous)
The navigation system in my car has logos for the brand of gas station it has on the map. A good way to monetize the map as well as help people who have cards/accounts with particular gas companies.
The cheat: hit F-U-N-D-S to get 10,000$ for free. But after you did this a few times too often, the game engine would activate all desasters after another. Is this just me, or does this remember me of someone at Wall Street?
Because it's not interesting...which actually goes for this entire comment thread. It's sad that this is the highest-voted comment thread for this article.
Haha. Your city probably got polluted and was riddled with traffic, followed by intermittent power outages forcing you to replace power lines constantly. Eventually you ran out of money because tenants left your commercial developments, resulting in a crushing defecit.
you guys didn't play the original Sim City did you. I used to leave my Mac Plus on all night to grow the population, I could run the game on a single 800k floppy, wow. Amazing how quickly the senior members of YC will vote someone down. Guess it's your way of keeping YC an elite site, and it boosts your morale knowing you're all better than us small-time users. Yawn, how boring is that?
I think the look adds something to the map. It's a bit easier to parse and understand than satellite images and adds more information than a standard overhead map.
For those of us who don't read Chinese - what's the story behind this map? [EDIT: Wording]