Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
To me, the killer maps app would be the ability to type a consumer product into the maps search bar and have it display on the map all businesses (likely) selling that product. There are still lots of items that are not on Amazon or that I cannot wait two days for.Every time I try this now, I'm amazed by how bad the results are. First, I think that the simplest ML tools would be able to (say) identify which stores are grocery stores by their name, yet Google Maps is unreliable at this. Second, merchants have a big incentive to tell Google what they sell (either typically or, more ambitiously, with an up-to-date inventory API), if only Google would give them a portal to do so.