Nuances of Google Maps

I had a bit of an adventure on my new commute this morning.

Basically, I have a long commute with a choice of routes: Take I-95 and pay its associated tolls, or take I-80 to I-287 and pay almost no tolls. The latter is longer by about ten miles and fifteen to thirty minutes - but multiplied out over five days a week, four weeks a month, it saves me about $300 in tolls. So, that's my preferred route.

There are a lot of switches to get through on the way, and while I'm still learning them, I rely on Google Maps to guide me (sidebar: I've tested against other mapping and routing services, and might write them up later - Google's working out the best). I've taken to looking at traffic on my computer at home, and then "send to iPhone" to get the play-by-play up on my dashboard.

A couple of times now, once for work and once for another destination, I've selected the route I want, sent to phone, and then blindly followed instructions before realizing Google is not sending me on the route I wanted.  I finally spent some time figuring out why.

Basically, Google Maps does not send the route. It seems to send your start and end points, and if you've checked a route pref, includes that. The details I tested:

In Chrome at home with no route prefs selected. Choose the non-fastest route and send to phone. On the phone, the fastest route displays.

In Chrome at home, with 'avoid tolls' selected, the route I want is the default. Send to phone, that route route displays.

Just for fun, in Chrome at home, with 'avoid tolls' selected, the route I normally want is the default. Select the 'fastest' route (i.e. with tolls) and send to fold. The default (i.e. avoid tolls) route displays.

Finally, just for fun, I tried toggling the route options in Google Maps on my iPhone. If I send a route that has no prefs selected, the phone's prefs will be in effect. However if I select a pref in Chrome and send that to Google Maps, the original prefs seem to be in effect.

So, it seems that when Chrome sends a route to my phone, it will send along prefs that I selected, and the start and end point, but otherwise I may as well be starting over.

More thorough testing would clear the behavior up more definitively. For now, this explains some of the "Google on crack" trips I've had.

Automation

So the automate ad targeting bothers me. For example, earlier on Facebook I posted something about seeing a man air-rum to a Phil Collins song.

Sure enough, as soon as I had posted, Facebook recommended pages for Phil Collins and Air-drumming.

I thought this was funny so I posted something about Facebook being funny.

Sure enough, Facebook recommended Facebook.

Hands down the best example is targeted advertising. For example, on a lark, I looked up air fares from New York to Ulan Baator, the capital of Mongolia.

Sure enough, for a couple of days I saw ads everywhere I went online for "low fares to Ulan Baator".

What's sad is they don't know when the ads work. I started looking into Zipcar. Sure enough, ads followed. I signed up for Zipcar. I even rented cars and drove them on more than one occasion.

Sadly, I still seed Zipcar ads.