Comment by rplnt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rplnt | Hacker News Reader

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> Many people don't realize why Google maps are so much better than anything out there.

Absolutely not true. I don't use Google Maps in Czech Republic at all as there is a solid local map provider[1] - (they offer whole world through OSM, so I use that on phone as well[2], but it's not that great). They lost some edge with Google going full-textured 3D few years back (actually the Czech map had it sooner, just not as useful). But other than that much cleaner rendering, equally good aerial or street view, better routing, POIs, richer layers ...

(edit: and two huge UX advantages over GM: no stupid random rotation - North is UP, and a very quick and precise zoom by holding control)

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar stories in other countries.

1. https://en.mapy.cz/

2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.mapy or recently released as https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.seznam.wind... (haven't tried it)

To me it seems to have a much less detailed view compared to google maps in all the places that I quickly tried. How can you proclaim that google maps is not much better than everything out there bringing this low detailed map as an example?

What do you mean less detailed? Any examples?

I checked both London and a small city in Italy and there is simply no comparison looking at the building details.

I explicitly said it's for one specific country...

Then it's true that google maps is much better. I don't really care about having only one country better when all the rest of the planet is less detailed...

It's used mostly in and for Czechia. Why would someone in Czechia care about the rest of the globe when he'll mostly use it to find stuff in Czechia?

I'd guess that 80% of my Google Maps use is within one country, and that 99% is within three countries. I'd definitely download separate maps for each country to get better directions and maps.

That's some really neat rendering, I can't remember seeing a better representation of the OSM data.

The tourist layer (default on mobile) is great with all the data OSM has on bicycle paths.

Exactly, especially public transport in Prague is so much better looking in mapy.cz I almost stopped using google maps.

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