11 mo. ago • 94%

"Hey Google, find the nearest Burger King" - "Sure, here is one on the other side of the globe!"

I swear that with each update they're adding more and more artificial stupidity

95 comments

That's Magic Earth Navigation & Maps and the results are that app's fault.

You can tell from both the app icon and it's the exact same Burger King logo it uses (Google Maps uses a different one).

104
- OP blames Google for the crap the user installs. Lemmy attitude is always a good shield for large companies because it makes any complaint seem absurd by association.
  
  22
  
  It's sad that I was hoping for Lemmy to be a place to have a better vetting of comments by votes but its frankly worse than Reddit.
  
  Its hive mind is sadly becoming less diverse and just up votes "LOL THIS THING BAD" with no sourcing or anything.
  
  I've found myself sadly going back to Reddit more because the comments are just of higher quality and diversity of opinions.
  
  7
- Yup lmao on my phone I got Malaysia as the first result while the others were nearby.
  
  18
- I’ve had this happen to me on Google maps on iOS before
  
  2
Just in case anyone wants this converted to freedom units, 9.792 km is 744 spindles, and 2,6 km is about 95 shackles. HTH

58
- That would be approximately 48,188,975 and 12,795 bananas respectively, assuming 8 inch average banana length. What fruit are we using for scale over here anyways? I missed some committee meetings.
  
  5
  
  Fruit as the basis for a measurement system? That sounds ridiculous. Use barleycorns like the rest of us!
  
  3
Google Assistant is definitely getting worse and worse all the time. When the Google Homes first released they were actually pretty useful and handy. I was willing to pick a few up and they served a good purpose. They ran CIRCLES around Alexa and all those.

Now many years later, the devices don't hear questions correctly, have to ask them four different times, they can't even pick up my wife's prompt words anymore, don't even give reasonable answers when they do get the question right... It's made hundreds of dollars worth of devices infuriating and useless.

I bought a product that worked. It no longer works because it's been "updated".

35
- The worst part is that they're still way better than Alexa. I hate the Google Home app; I can't use the Alexa app.
  
  10
  
  Yeah, that's still true as well. But it feels like one step ahead. Before it was in a totally different field. It's gotten that much worse.
  
  2
It would have been amusing to see the route trajectory

21
- Everybody's in here complaining but the app just wanted to show its user the rip in space and time it discovered just down the street.
  
  2
- And then you see the route trajectory making you turn into a river to flood your vehicle, or worse, have you turn onto a beach because the route trajectory goes right into the ocean like it thinks you are driving some sort of boat mobile.
  
  1
- Google maps has been getting worse as well. I've been moving off after many years of using it.
  
  -4
  
  What do you use? I tried OSM but found the navigation interface required too many taps on hidden menus to set up and to close. It's easy to re route on the fly on Google and just tap finish when arrived, but that's not the case for OSM.
  
  4
Fault of the crappy app you're using, not Google.

20
- ~~Isn't this just gmaps search?~~
  
  Which is also incidentally running on Android Auto which is also google?
  
  Edit: nvm it's a different nav app lmao
  
  0
Sometimes I really struggle to understand how Google Maps works. I take some time finding the right area I want to search in, center the map in a very specific place, then search for a term or category and then it takes me to a completely different country to show the results.

20
- It was doing this to me yesterday, kind of infuriating.
  
  5
Do you guys like Burger King? I stopped eating there a long time ago and feel no need to go back after the foot lettuce incident…

20
- TIL that incident
  
  LOL how you can post that on 4chan and think they won't do everything to doxx you 😂
  
  11
- I actually enjoy burger King but they are super unhealthy so I rarely go. Maybe once per year
  
  7
- I find Burger King has the best pictures of the worst burgers.
  
  Terrible food, even by the ultra low standards set by McDonald's.
  
  5
- Go on…
  
  3
  
  Buurgeer king foot lettuce, the last thing you want in your Burger King burger is someone's foot fungus
  
  19
The Magic Earth app on Android auto does this to me all the time, I'll bring up a saved address that's only a short drive away and it will say it's like 2000km away until I actually start navigation.

18
- Try giving Android Auto the location permission and see if that fixes it.
  
  8
I swear it used to be possible to tell the assistant to navigate to the nearest [franchise] and it would understand it. How has it gotten so much worse over time?

13
- I don't know, but my guess would be people gaming the algorithms. Search results have also gone to shit after everyone SEO-ed them to death, and this is probably the same.
  
  My favorite optimization is this restaurant in NYC called Thai Food Near Me:
  
  20
- I remember that ten years ago you could tell it „Okay Google, bring me to [music festival]“ and it would reply „calculating route to [place where that festival is held]“ without problems. I wouldn’t bet on it still being able to do that.
  
  2
And you may find yourself in another part of the world

13
- And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
  
  10
  
  And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
  
  11
What we really need is c/SoftwareGore

13
- Yeah it exists !softwaregore
  
  Edit: I don't know how to do the magic linking thing but https://lemmy.world/c/softwaregore
  
  10
  
  You got so close!
  
  !softwaregore@lemmy.world
  
  8
  
  !softwaregore@lemmy.world
  
  4
  
  !softwaregore@lemmy.world
  
  2
Maybe you passed by a space tunnel somehow

11
- And then find out you are in Triangulum, the Galaxy known as M33, and wonder how the hell did you end up two million seven hundred thousand light years away.
  
  1
You didn't say nearest to what...

11
- It's a GPS device. Why wouldn't the default be closest to your current location?
  
  7
  
  Because the local one didn't pay as much for placement.
  
  21
  
  That's the joke.
  
  8
Just do what it says. Drive to Malaysia. But chances are you'll pass a few burger kings on the way.

9
Hey were you in Florence near the Piazzale Michelangelo?

7
- WTF???? How did you extract that even if I censored it
  
  I'm surprised 🤯 😂
  
  2
  
  I'm not the person who found it originally, but I understand how they did it. We have three useful data points: you are 2.6 km from Burger King in Italy, that BK is on a street called "Via " and you are 9792 km from Burger King in Malaysia.
  
  The upper BK in Malaysia is not censored, so we have its exact location.
  
  Find a place in Italy that is 9792 km away using the Measure Distance tool on something like Google Maps.
  
  Even though there are potentially multiple valid locations in Italy, we know you're within 2.6 km of another BK. Florence is sensible because there are BKs near the 9792 km mark.
  
  Once we do that, we can find a spot that is both 9792 km from Malaysia BK and 2.6 km from a nearby BK on a street called "Via", effectively finding where the image was taken.
  
  It's not perfect but it works well! This is the principle of how your GPS works. It's called triangulation. We only had distance to two points and one of them doesn't tell us the sub-kilometer distance. If we had distance to three points, we could find your EXACT location, within some error depending on how detailed the distance information was.
  
  18
  
  Yes a bit lucky but just draw the 9xxx km circle around the MY BK and then I saw the circle go straight through Florence (also Bologna was a likely candidate). Then find a BK within 2.6 km with a fairly long street name and draw a circle, it intersects with the other circle in two places. The obvious one was the parking near Piazzale M.
  
  I can also get the GPS coordinates at all times from your phone so it was easy to verify I was right.
  
  3
  
  Can also make guesses as to where you're from as well bc not too many languages spell it Malesia
  
  edit: looks like Finland, for example, spells it like that, plus the Italia lines up as well
  
  1
Integer overflow? Seems kinda unlikely but just throwing possiblities out there...

6
Is that Magic Earth?

6
- Yes
  
  3
Is this the new GM infotainment system?

6
- https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F67%2Ff9%2Fd4%2F67f9d4a81eef77f37884cdae5394d5c7.jpg
  
  0
maybe the others on the way are closed

6
Oh cmon, 9 thousand kilometers is just around the corner there /s

6
I like to see Magic Earth being used in the wild. Didn't think anyone else was using it lol.

5
Permanently Deleted

4
I tried to see what interesting local variants they have in Malaysia and it honestly looks pretty good by American fast food standards:

https://burgerking.com.my/

4
- I would honestly prefer this over the current state of 38 variants of Whopper where they're just rearranging the toppings.
  
  6
- That crunchy cheese one was a limited time thing here in the states. I had it once. Though I don't remember if it was actually at BK or another fast food place 🤔
  
  I highly recommend it if you don't want to poop for 3 days.
  
  2
I was reading an Apple Maps “best restaurants” guide and it had a button to get Uber Eats from a restaurant listed as 7,900 miles away.

4
- And? Was it worth it? What did you order?
  
  7
  
  Lillipad Cafe in Sydney, AU. I was going to order a kangaroo burger with deep-fried saltbush, but turns out they're closed :(
  
  3
20 year old me would see that as an opportunity for an epic Harold & Kumar inspired road trip.

4
I’m not sure what it is about car map searches but the suggested locations are always crap. My wife uses CarPlay and I’ll use that or android auto in my car. (So Apple Maps then google maps)

If you type like grocery into either of the maps from the dash then they’ll lose their goddamn minds and recommend some backwoods gas station instead of the local Kroger.

On our phones it’s totally fine but jfc the dash results

3
"Only the best for you, Dave. Now step into the airlock."

1
well 9.792 km is a lot than 2,600 km. are you sure you aren’t in malaysia? /s

1
- In my country, for the numbers, the dot and the comma are inverted in usage
  
  9,600 => 9.600 and 2.6 => 2,6 and 9,600.6 => 9.600,6
  
  Seems a nightmare but any software takes care of it since DOS, except on MacOS as apple in their infinite wisdom switched the dot with a comma in the numpad, so each time I type an IP address it comes out as 192,168,1,1 and makes me really mad
  
  5
  
  yeah the period/comma switch up has caused me some trouble while studying abroad (mostly by apple). the calculator app for example will show a period (to specify decimals), but pressing it will insert a comma (to specify decimals), despite my number formatting settings being set to use periods for decimals.
  
  i probably should’ve added an /s to my comment
  
  1
Same for me literally today. I know what was closest, but didn't want to deal with the "recalculating route", so I decided to ask Google to pick the nearest McDonald's as an extra stop:

19 minutes detour

4 minutes detour

25 minutes detour

2 minutes detour

At this point, I'm convinced Google only cares about presenting what's most profitable to them regardless of any sort of convenience to the consumer.

It's too far gone for it to be even usable.

SORT BY BOTTOM_LINE vs SORT BY BEST
1
- how is this profitable for them
  
  2
  
  This might be a stretch but McD can be franchised. If one franchisee pays top dollar for ad placement and other nearby franchises don't, it would be profitable for them to send you to that franchisee even if it's further.
  
  ...that being said I'm probably reading too much into it. Probably just your usual Google jank.
  
  2
  
  Different locations can have different CPC (cost-per-click) bid configured. Even if you have multiple locations of a business, it's still managed per site. Different areas also have different CPC rates depending on who is around that location (not including your own businesses). For example, a metropolitan CPC rate is higher than a rural one because so many others compete with you.
  
  That 25 minute one is near a bunch of other stores and I'd bet has a higher CPC rate. The 2 minute one is more isolated.
  
  I checked and that all have about the same rating (3.5), so it shouldn't have been ranked by that. In the end, Google isn't picking what's best for the consumer, and enough to encourage me to go 20 minutes extra out of my way. Them being all the same franchise helps clarify it isn't an issue of finding a better search term match since they're all identically labeled the same.
  
  1
- I'm pretty sure they don't profit from sending you to another McDonald's.
  
  0
maybe it's the best burger king in the world and worth figuring out how to drive to Malesia for lmao.

1
I mean…. It’s Google. What do you expect?

-2

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