Tim Cook just stepped down as CEO at Apple and one of his last acts was to give us ads on Apple Maps. With all of its flaws, Apple Maps was one of the few places on the internet where we weren’t constantly fed advertising.
Apple will now begin adding advertising to Apple Maps in the United States and Canada, inserting sponsored businesses into our search results for restaurants, stores and other destinations. As an example, I just searched for yogurt in my neigborhood and up came an ad for Aldi’s Supermarket at the top of the list that wasn’t even relevant.
Apple’s approach is a bit different from Google, at least for now. Google Maps has had advertising for years. It puts sponsored businesses at the top of search results, promotes locations on the map itself, and shows businesses while you’re getting directions. Like it’s done with most of its apps, Google has built Maps into an advertising platform, where businesses compete for visibility using Google’s advertising engine.
For now Apple is not going that far. But like most things, it will likely get worse over time. Apple says that only one sponsored result can appear at the top of a search result on Maps. Ads can also appear under suggested places before a user searches. They are marked with a small blue “Ad” designation, but otherwise are designed to look much like ordinary business listings.
While not surprised, I find Apple’s move disappointing because it goes against their promise to keep its products clean, simple to use, and put the customer first. When I use a map, particularly in the car, I’m trying to do something specific such as finding a restaurant, locating a gas station, or traveling to a destination, and I don’t want to be distracted with something that’ doesn’t interest me’s not relevant.
Apple for now has restrictions on what can be advertised. Some home-service businesses, including plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, HVAC companies, and contractors, are excluded. Medical advertising is subject to review. Apple says that information about the ads users see or interact with in Maps isn’t associated with their Apple Account, and that personal information isn’t collected, stored or shared with third parties for this advertising. That’s in contrast to Google’s much broader advertising ecosystem, which has been built around their ability to know much more about us through tracking, reading our email, tracking our website visits, etc. That makes it even more surprising that Apple wants to serve us ads that will be less relevant.
But it’s a safe bet that this is just the beginning of Apple’s efforts to serve us even more ads. Once Apple discovers that businesses will pay for a position at the top of a Maps search, why stop at one business? Why not two? Three? Why not promote locations on the map? Why not advertisements along a driving route? Why not deals and offers based on where you’re going?
That’s precisely how these products evolve. It’s called enshitification, coined by Cory Doctorow and defined here.
Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.
A feature begins as something modest and useful. The company discovers that consumers tolerate it, and more ads creep in until the app is more cluttered, much less useful, and no different from its competition. Eventually, the product becomes a profit center and those that manage it are incentivized to increase profits, with user experience and performance no longer being a top priority.
Apple has something to lose here that Google doesn’t. Maps is part of Apple’s carefully controlled hardware-and-software experience. The company has always emphasized that its products should feel polished, simple and relatively free of commercial clutter. While this may seem like a small step, it’s an early indicator of deterioration of the Apple ecosystem, particularly because the revenue from these ads will be a tiny blip. But like the canary in the coal mine, the initial step is an indication of what’s to come.
For now the best alternative is MapQuest fat $4.99 per month for an ad-free subscription. And there’s another advantage of MapQuest. Unlike Google Maps and Apple Maps that rushed to make the change, MapQuest has refused to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America on their maps.
