Like, “Turn right at the Burger King.”
Which sounds like a cool idea, and probably is in 99% of the cases. I can see wanting to limit the types of companies used as land marks (Burger King is obvious; Smith and Jones Legal Offices on the 14th Floor, probably not), and there’s a danger of companies going out of business. But that sounds like a refinement.
Plus, I now understand better the Maps Contributor questions about “Is this business plainly visible from the street?”
Google Maps uses landmarks to provide natural-sounding directions
Google Maps now uses local landmarks to give you more human-like directions.
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I wondered about that. It happened to me last month. I was very startled, but it was nice. I was also wondering how they made the selection.
Ugh, so long as non-auditory directions don't go wonky.
+Kee Hinckley – The selection screams advertising opportunity to me. Oddly, I don't much object in this case, provided the directions are transparently reliable and don't alter routing to ensure ad client visibility.
+Michael Verona Huh. I hadn't thought about the ad revenue possibilities. "Turn right at THE HOME OF THE WHOPPER, WHERE WE CHAR-BROIL YOUR BURGERS AND YOU CAN HAVE IT YOUR — oh, sorry, you've passed the turn."
+Dave Hill – Haha, right? But even if the instruction is simply, "turn right at Burger King", we're now cognitively primed for that restaurant, and cognitive priming is the core function of advertising. In the worst-likely case, directions take us around the block to the left instead of the right, because left-circling gives Maps an opportunity to plug an advertiser where right circling doesn't – or Maps routes 70% of traffic through the Burger King path because they paid more than the McDonald's on the opposite path; Google can still serve both advertisers, it's just that one paid for the prime-time slot.
ETA: Thanks to Google's comprehensive surveillance and personal data parsing, we can also be routed by demographics; buying power; alignment with, susceptibility to, or habitual spending on specific brands, etc. That last matches the popular philosophy of "I don't mind ads as long as they're for things I like".
In which case my routes will start taking me past every coffee shop in a 10 mile radius…
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Turn right at where the tractor use to be…
I wonder if they'll do "small town" directions, like we use.
"Drive to where the outdoor swimming pool was, turn left where the road used to turn into gravel, and head just past Rumour's old farm".