Google Maps is about to get a lot more ads
theverge.com
theverge.com
So yes, love OSM, will probably hardly use Google Maps from now on.
EDIT: Why the downvote? It's honestly the last thing. I don't know of an alternative, and instead of downvoting, give me alternatives! I want them!
* The copyleft license ODbL probably will mean that there never will be a huge adoption. The situation simply is different with a geo database compared to software or one art piece.
* Vandalism very easily goes unnoticed, as there is no review at all for edits. If something that went wrong is found, reverting is very hard to do, often left to some expert group that only does that.
* Tags indicating when things were last checked are hardly in use. So the database contains tons of information that might not be true anymore or might never have been true.
* The data model lacks persistency, the tags of a shop might go from a node to the building area it's in or otherwise effectively loosing the history. It's very hard to find out where something really came from (editor and source).
* The data model also lacks a good way of dealing with areas (especially ones with holes in them), multipolygon relations are a hack barely supported in editors that often lead beginners to feel overwhelmed. On the other hand there are no curves, just straight lines, because bezier lines are supposed to be too confusing for beginners.
* All the data is in one huge database, not split up into layers.
* There are hardly any volunteers in America. It's an import desert.
Complete agree, it was stupid to move to the ODbL.
* vandalism
I've only seen once instance of serious vandalism -- I reported it on their IRC and it was updated within a few hours. And this was a mass attack by 4chan. I don't know if there's a practical way around this system. If people were vetted and had to wait before changes were accepted I think it would hurt contributions.
* Last use
I agree but all maps have the problem of getting outdated. Unless mapping is completely automated (drones+CV+ML? get on it HN) how would you avoid this?
* Inconsistent tagging
Yeah this sucks but you can deal with it at the application level usually
* Multipolygon areas
I haven't used OSM much recently but I know they did a decent overhaul with the site and the editor (the old editor was some flash tool I think). Dealing with complex polygons in software sucks so I understand why this is an issue. They should provide simple guidelines (CCW for the outside polys, CW for the inside polys), reject invalid polygons and provide a suggestion to go on IRC if they are having issues.
* Bezier curves
This is not a good idea. Why would you want to support bezier curves in map data? Its un-needed complexity. I could see support in an editor that then just creates an approximated poly line.
* One huge database
OSM is supposed to be a generic data set for many purposes. Some people might want hiking trails, others might want all the bus stops in a city, others may only want all the highways in a country, etc. Creating a system to extract and serve specific data would not only be complex it would be expensive. You'd need a lot of compute time. There are tools and tutorials for extracting what you need from the data set. There are also localized data sets available for many places (country, province/state etc).
* American volunteers
Yes its really strange that this is the case. Its impressive to see some of the places in Europe (like Germany!) and how rich the OSM data is and how active the community is compared to here. There are local meet ups in cities though where people get together and map stuff. If it interests you, you can always participate.
Maybe you can't, but that means you're always stuck offering an inferior product compared to those closed solutions which companies can pump money into.
Edit: Parent likely meant mapping data using supported smart phones, converting data, and uploading it alongside notes or photos. Their beginners guide [1] covers it.
If you want to help you can just register on openstreetmap.org and begin editing things in your area you know are missing/incorrect. There's also a beginner's guide in the openstreetmap wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide
From OSM:
> You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt our data, as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors. If you alter or build upon our data, you may distribute the result only under the same license.
How is this not an absolute necessity for the long term success of the project? Without it, someone can just slurp up the data, add their own, and then shut OSM out.
In essence, careful respect for the license isn't the main driver for contribution.
I think it would certainly lead to more competitors, people would take the data and do their own value add, but I think it is quite an open question whether they would be able to actually become considerably better databases.
(I'm roughly indifferent to the share back requirement. I don't think it is needed but given how much support there is for it in the community it isn't worth discussing over and over)
Some companies have been interested in using and contributing back to OSM data, but didn't go further, because of the license.
Why do you think a fork that lacks the advantage of a free license can become a threat to the continued existence of a project?
I'm quite shocked. For lack of better explanation this seems like foul play.
Perhaps it comes out differently for you: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=openstreetmap
https://s33.postimg.org/7iaf0z47j/Screenshot_from_2016_05_25...
But copy-pasting the resulting URL into Tor results in a 403 page.
Does anyone have a reasonable suggestion for this behaviour?
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2016/05/19Apple-Opens-Develo...
Does this even make sense for mapping? If there is a single correct result then that is the only thing I want. If there are multiple possible results I want to see them all. This is a problem best suited to complete databases rather than probability based search algorithms. Adverts can only make this even worse than it is now.
Either way it's a red flag that Google software is becoming less and less desirable on the consumer market.
I needed a bigger kick in the butt to try something else.
Honestly, what a sell out. What was once neutral territory for businesses is now available for bidding.
Does Google need this revenue? What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving?
I see the full keynote is here [1]
Luckily, most of my map needs are met by a local competitor (mapy.cz). They are not perfect, but are still much superior, at least for what I want from maps.
Coincidentally, their Android app (which supports offline maps) got really slow few months back. I wish I could easily downgrade to an older version (as I did with online Google maps before I gave up).
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequenc...
Noooooooooooooooo =(. Sounds like a good chance for competitors to jump in.
Thanks for sharing this though, I didn't know that =)
At least in Germany Open Streetmaps has vastly better maps than Google Maps. On a global scale Google or Bing maps are very consistent while OSM depends on the local community, but they are well worth checking out.
For satellite images Google Earth is hard to beat, but Bing has good images as well
* Standardization of the model for mapping on multiple levels, and with 3D, and integration of that with the editors.
* Finding standardized ways to test, approve and automate maintenance of data consistency. There seems to be a lot of ad-hoc script editing, like someone writing a script to make a one-off edit of the global dataset to do a spelling correction. If that's going to happen, it should have pre-approval, and probably be integrated into an official, periodic checking and consistency process. Along the same lines, I'm not convinced small malicious or mistaken data edits will be picked up as quickly as they should be. I think most of the tools and structures are there to build the map, but not necessarily to maintain it.
* Doing more to link the OpenStreetMap.org site to the projects using the data. i.e. more clearly positioning the site as a data repository, and place to find ways to consume the data, and less as a toe-to-toe competitor to Google Maps.
* Pushing forward in links with wikipedia, preferably forming a connection with the structured/geographical data on wikipedia (if it's possible to find a license which is compatible with both projects, and wouldn't lock in either party). Having more eyes on the data should help to prevent bit rot.
* Finding hardware to automate data collection for Mapillary (the Streetview equivalent).
* Improvement of search/geocoding algorithms - to try to fill in patchy street data information (i.e. detecting sequences in house numbering). Then using those algorithms both to improve the geocoding capability, and to prioritize where data most needs to be collected - a handful of house numbers are vital for a major 5km road through the centre of a city, but they are far less important for a 30m cul-de-sac.
* Finding ways to have more area based mapping for pavements, cycleways, shared space roads, pedestrian crossings, public squares etc, as an additional, progressive enhancement to the line and dot model for footways, highways, etc. Something which can be used to provide additional information in city areas where that sort of low-level mapping is useful/necessary, but isn't necessary elsewhere (clearly the whole world will never be mapped in the detail that you'd like to map central London, or one particular central railway station)
In general, trying to develop policies to encourage the database to be maintained, and data collection to be managed, in a way which makes it easy to consume the data in a structured way.
Glad to be corrected if I'm wrong, or ignorant of progress.
Do you mean getting Wikipedia to use OSM more? The basic scheme of tagging wikipedia and wikidata links on OSM objects seems pretty complete on the OSM side (there's just lots of things that could have tags that don't).
Area mapping for highways is well enough sketched out, but I think there isn't a natural way to derive a graph, so it ends up being visual detail and a low priority (I don't care about having it in my area so will spend ~0 time on it).
The search on OSM.org (nominatim) is slightly pedantic, approximately for the reason in your last point. Pelias and Photon both bring stronger search to OSM data.
> Automated fixing of them is generally pushed back against socially though. I think for good reasons. One is that a data user can do the automated fixes if they want to, so it's better to put human eyes on all the issues so that the ambiguous ones get fixed correctly. This is perhaps a conservative pov, the less ambiguous cases can probably be safely resolved with automation.
I just think that sporadic, automatic editing of the global dataset, without much (or any) pre-approval, doesn't make sense. Better that there was more effort put into coming to formal decisions, and that those decisions, when adopted, become official and consistently applied. To take a trivial example, if someone's going to collapse MacDonalds, Mcdonald's, McDonald's, "MacDonald's Restaurant" and 15 other permutations down to one spelling worldwide, that shouldn't be a decision to be made by one individual, posibly reversed if they really get out of line or end up making some bad mistake, and applied only once or sporadically, it would be better IMO to be debated up-front, approved or rejected as a formal policy, and maintained.
On wikipedia, I mean finding ways to couple their structure/geographical data with OSM, for instance if you have a building article on wikipedia, with structured data about construction date, architect, location, possibly 3D model, and similar and overlapping information about construction date, outline, entrances, etc on OpenStreetMap. Probably you'll never have an automatic coupling, but you could for instance have joint efforts to set shared conventions for the structure of the data, and constitency tools to point out where data is available in one but not the other, or disagrees between the two.
I don't really see the need for shared conventions with the Wikipedia stuff, as long as each project ends up settling on a convention it shouldn't be a big deal to reconcile just those 2 conventions. Wikipedia/Wikidata are anyway probably the better place to put endless trivia.
Excellent point about the suggestions through the web editor, though, perhaps that will be enough. As a matter of interest, do you have any idea who decides what items are in the editor (for instance, if tags are disputed or inconsistent)? And are the suggestions done by popularity, or are they manually decided?
On shared conventions, it's just, do you have separate start and end construction dates, or combined, do you write that 1930-34 or 1930:1934, how do you handle approximate dates, are you going to write C19, 19th C, 19th century or 19C, and so on.
In general I just think you need more active decision making, and a process towards consistency in the data. It's really tough to consume data from a geographical database where everything is up in the air.
The preset system in iD is driven by the data here:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/tree/master/data
In particular, the suggestions are built here:
https://github.com/osmlab/name-suggestion-index
The process looks at popularity and then tries to do some standardization from there, suggesting a most popular form when less popular forms are encountered. There's a shorter list of committers, but I would say it's overall reasonably open to contributions.
My point with the Wikipedia is who cares. If you know Wikipedia does 1930-34 and OSM does 1930:1934, the details of converting one to the other will tend to be a lot simpler than any interesting thing you are trying to do with the combined data. It's a bunch of annoying cat herding to get a little bit of hypothetical convenience (hypothetical because what interesting thing is presently held back by the different forms?).
Yes, of course.
> What is the problem with the existing maps that they are solving?
It's not generating enough revenue.
When in 1999, before the first collapse, the competitors to Google were inundating users with in-result ads, crazy load times and odd results. This was pushed by the stock's need to show constant revenue growth.
Google now is adding more ads, configuring the ads in-line to increase clicks (yes, they are 65% relevant), integrating an obtuse implementation within Maps, and so forth.
DuckDuckGo becomes more viable each day as an alternative.
For that matter, didn’t it take Steve Jobs to connect the dots for them so that they’d even consider putting their maps on mobile phones? They’re lucky they’re even in this business.
huh?
[1] Or businesses, e.g. Opera has an integrated adblocker now, and Firefox blocks tracking while in privacy mode (and they plan to expand this to the normal mode, IIRC).
You see this in the FOSS world as well. I think there was a presentation posted recently by a former project lead that had his project co-opted and forked because he refused to release a new update until he deemed it "ready".
Problem is I've not found a solution that is as smooth or useful on Android?
One time a few years ago a (younger) friend laughed at me for writing down directions on a piece of paper. But the piece of paper didn't have to be mounted, I didn't have to turn on a screen to use it, navigate to the right app, worry about the screen going off after not using it for a minute, etc. The piece of paper was the most usable option by far.
They have a reasonably open license (https://www.mapillary.com/legal.html) and allow OSM to extract information from the photos.
Telenav is rolling out something similar.
They don't really come close to StreetView as far as coverage.
It sounds like leadership is out of ideas if their only ones are to increase the size and frequency of ads on existing apps. That's a bit sad considering the talent they have there.
Ads have always been Google's major source of revenue. Now, their to answer to dwindling revenue is to add larger ads to existing apps [1]
Bigger and more ads is not very innovative for a tech company.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-increase-size-frequenc...
Google Maps has had ads for quite some time, (AFAIK) all that's new here is option to use custom logos instead of the old purple pin: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3246303?hl=en
Disclaimer: Used to work on Google Maps, but I don't anymore, and I know no more about this launch than what the blog post says.
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.adaway
It blocks at the Hosts file level.
OK, joking aside, here's my issue with intrusive advertising: sure, they justify the advertising by saying it's to pay for the service, even if you'd be willing to pay for a subscription service that would remove the ads. But instead, you get ads for Golden Corral while you're really looking for the "Oreo Madness" now at TGI Friday's! Today's special includes hot wings with a creamy Ranch dressing, an ultra hot spicy sauce, and fresh celery sticks! Choose from one of our new Bacon Burgers, like the All-American Jack Daniel's Burger. Thirsty? Try our handcrafted cocktails like fresh Peach Sangria!
If I could configure it for my personal favorite places like Panera, then sure, that'd be a useful feature. But I don't want to be spammed about a bunch of crappy businesses that I have no interest in visiting. And I have zero faith that a company that makes money by advertising would allow me to configure their app to only show places I'm interested in, rather than places who pay to put their logo on my map screen.
https://maps.googleblog.com/2010/09/more-easily-find-some-of...
Why can't I just pay to opt out of all this crap I don't want, and instead incentivize the businesses they actually get right?