I use unlogged Google Maps in a PWA (only Big Evil service I can’t replace).
The last couple of days, I’ve been hit with an unsurmountable “consent page”, asking me to accept/reject all cookies or log in.
Log-in link works, but accept/reject cookies buttons don’t.
This happens in Brave (with all combinations of track & fp blocking), Vanadium, Mull and in different profiles and with VPN servers in different countries. What I hadn’t tried was turning off VPN, disabling DNS blocking or in a desktop browser.
As miayeriously as it appeared, the problem just went away. But I have no reasons to believe it won’t happen again.
So, I appreciate tips from anyone who has experienced similar issues. How have you dealt with it? Is there a workaround?
I understand this isn’t your question, but, why can you not replace it? You have many options to choose from: OpenStreetMap (on web, or Qwant Maps on web, Organic Maps on mobile, or OSMAnd on mobile, or MagicEarth, etc.), HERE Maps, etc.
But Google Maps has Streetview, the most extensive list of shops and businesses, including opening times and lots of reviews, and the search function is very forgiving. If you want to find out stuff like “is there a Chinese restaurant nearby? and if so, is it good?”, Google Maps can’t be beaten. And Streetview is super useful for situations like “I want to see if parking in that street is free / paid / resident-only” or “is this a dodgy or nice area”.
That being said, I use HERE WeGo for navigation with traffic info, as well as looking up public transport. I only use the Google Maps PWA for looking up places and Streetview. The OpenStreetMap-based apps unfortunately all seem to lack live traffic info which makes them useless for navigation for me.
I also occasionally use the PWA Google Maps (not logged in) but I did not encounter that problem with the consent page. Maybe it was temporary and I didn’t use Gmaps in that time frame. I mainly use Organic Maps but as already stated, Gmaps has Streetview and also more up to date data on shops, restaurants and whatever, so yeah no alternative for that.
I also use gmaps for the reasons already said in this thread.
I was looking to magic earth and it has some similarity with google maps, for instance updates with live traffic.
Maybe magic earth + Gmaps (for info shops and other stuff, but not navigation) via web it could be a good trade off.
For my google map it is very necessary due to the number of sites you can find and it does not appear in the other search engines on f-droid, but recently the best option I have found is to use gmaps wv of f droid and for car navigation when I have Once the destination location is located, hit share and it gives me all the navigation options of the other free applications, that way you only need to touch two buttons and you hardly waste any time
I used GMaps WV before but it annoyed me a bit because I got that cookie banner all the time (I clicked on Reject All of course). Maybe it deletes all the cookies after a while, unlike the PWA. Another annoyance was that I couldn’t click on an URL (e.g. a shop’s websites).
Now I use the Google Maps PWA in Firefox + uBlock Origin and it works basically the same as GMaps WV but without these two annoyances.
I am just running the google maps app when i need live traffic. I keep it in incognito and often clear the app data. Not that I think it helps much, but better than not doing so I guess. The web app solutions didn’t work well for me personally.