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Comment by guard-of-terra | Hacker News Reader

> And both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is, the first map used by a majority of the global population

Actually, lol, no. OpenStreetMap is. Google Maps will be a contender for some time, but eventually it'll settle.

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Then why does nearly every business use Google Maps and it's API for map features? You have to pay for maps access on a commercial basis, so they'd be stupid to ignore a free (and according to you superior) solution.

My guess is you're a FOSS zealot who can't admit that a commercial rendition of a particular idea is superior, because it would crush your ideologies and beliefs.. (and I say that as someone who has no problem with using good FOSS like VLC or Transmission)

Many businesses use Mapbox (which is based on OSM, but is not free) and many consider that superior choice to GMaps. Others use Bing maps (Facebook, for example). Then there are Here maps, Yandex maps, etc.

GMaps are a quick and comfortable choice, but if your business really depends on communicating with maps, or you want to do something more than display pins or overlay kmls, it is not a best choice.

My boss was complaining that COTS were expensive and gave gnat as an example. I asked him why do we pay for it ? We use support less than once every 5 years and in case of real problems, public forums exist.

He was completely against this idea. For the company, paying for support is like having an insurance, they do not want to drive without insurance.

I suggest trying OSM, at least. It really is a superior solution to both Google Maps and Apple Maps in many respects, especially when it comes to level of detail and how up-to-date it is.

Google Maps is clearly in that race, and I assume leading. Apple Maps clearly isn't unless they plan to at some point either build a product accessible to the majority of the global population or make a version for a platform that cares about that, like the web or Android.

2016 Nielsen for popular apps had Google Maps #4 for all apps. There were no other mapping apps on the list this year. Not even Apple maps so talking about Google maps as the universal solution makes sense, IMO.

This article refers to 2015 Nielsen when Apple maps did make the list. Not sure why it fell of the list.

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