What Ever Happened to MapQuest?

[ZLoth]

From TechSpot:

What Ever Happened to MapQuest?

f you were born after 1990, you will have to imagine this (the rest of us actually lived it)... In the past, if you wanted to drive to an unfamiliar location, you'd need to get a physical map, use a combination of prior knowledge and common sense to determine what would be the easiest way there, either memorize it or write it down.

Today, you can simply type the name of a destination and instantly receive a map showing the quickest route along with turn-by-turn instructions to get there. These advancements, which predated the modern smartphone, were made possible thanks to a service called MapQuest.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

[Life in Paradise]

I still use MapQuest periodically, but not as often as I used to use it.  Just seeing this post, I went over and saw that it is still available.

[Rothman]

MapQuest's decline over the last fifteen years has been one of the most pathetic in industry history.  It used to be great, allowing many more edit points than Google, but then they stopped updating their vector data set to the point where they were missing entire roads and possible routes.

Should have been totally put out of its misery years ago.

[GaryV]

What happened to Mapquest?

Probably the same thing that happened to MySpace. People stopped using it in favor of a perceived better product. And that led to fewer fixes, upgrades and enhancements - making the product even less desirable.

Edit: Substitute in the above paragraph any number of products that have gone downhill, and it still holds true.

[jgb191]

I haven't got to use Mapquest very much; did it show you current traffic conditions and indicate where traffic back-ups were like Google Map does?

[Rothman]

I haven't got to use Mapquest very much; did it show you current traffic conditions and indicate where traffic back-ups were like Google Map does?

You must be a youngin'.

Ah, no. 

Heck, I can't even get directions to work on my phone on their site.

[formulanone]

My kids have district-issued Google Chromebooks as their school laptops. There are a multitude of blocked sites, one of which is Google Maps. I showed them MapQuest, which hadn't been censored and promptly welcomed them to 1999.

[Rothman]

Why would they block Google Maps?

[WillWeaverRVA]

Why would they block Google Maps?

Maybe because of Google Street View? It does seem odd for the school to issue Chromebooks, then block a Google service.

[formulanone]

Why would they block Google Maps?

Maybe because of Google Street View? It does seem odd for the school to issue Chromebooks, then block a Google service.

I couldn't wrap my head around it either; perhaps cheating on geography tests or just a major time-waster/bandwidth consumer.

[ZLoth]

What about https://www.openstreetmap.org/ ?

[hotdogPi]

Interestingly, there was one time that Google Maps was pretty much the only thing I had. I was on UNH's wifi without access to their system, so only their university website was allowed by the system. One of the pages had an embedded Google Maps API (this was before they started charging for it).

[Henry]

I've dabbled in Mapquest every once in a while over the years, but my preferred map remains the one by Rand McNally (the old-fashioned way).