My bar is that safety-relevant information should probably be enabled by default. Wildfire spread certainly qualifies.
Here's two examples:
During the 2020 fire season Google maps was helpful in tracking the fire spread until we eventually received evac orders via notification. Very useful.
Contrast that with the experience before they had a well-developed crisis program. I had the misfortune to be in Nice for Bastille Day 2016. Google didn't promptly warn about the terrorist attack and I had to find out from FB / friends. There was a long period of utter confusion because I had personally disabled FB notifications and no one understood the situation or extent of danger.
> I was traveling across Colorado last summer and the persistent, annoying, inaccurate, irrelevant, and useless wildfire alerts made us switch to Apple maps
In a safety-critical situation if the alerts are "persistent, annoying, inaccurate, irrelevant, and useless" are they really beneficial?
As I clarified in the original response, while they might have been "persistent, annoying, inaccurate, irrelevant and useless" to the OP, I'd personally err on the side of annoying people vs not providing important information to people who need it.
How is providing inaccurate information acceptable in a safety-critical situation? What happens if Google says one valley is impassable due to fire and the one next to it is not but their data is a few hours old and the only way out is the valley they say is on fire?
Task saturation is a thing. If I am trying to navigate an emergency situation I do not need to be inundated with useless information. I need to focus on what matters, like navigating potentially hazardous conditions. Conditions that Google may well have gotten me in to!
As discussed in the original link, they're looking at the data straight from the satellite and continually monitoring their accuracy compared to other data sources. Mitigating incorrect information was explicitly one of the design considerations and a launch requirement. Can you elaborate on specifically what you're critiquing here besides the unreasonable expectation to provide perfect information?
The top level comment provided a single unsubstantiated view of the wildfire data being inaccurate.
As I mentioned up-thread, I was tracking a wildfire in Washington State and was able to determine by monitoring fire radios and watching cameras that the data was pretty accurate.
Here's two examples:
During the 2020 fire season Google maps was helpful in tracking the fire spread until we eventually received evac orders via notification. Very useful.
Contrast that with the experience before they had a well-developed crisis program. I had the misfortune to be in Nice for Bastille Day 2016. Google didn't promptly warn about the terrorist attack and I had to find out from FB / friends. There was a long period of utter confusion because I had personally disabled FB notifications and no one understood the situation or extent of danger.