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Comment by tmcw | Hacker News Reader

Supply is expensive, and running a 'maps offering' is more of a data-collection and data-maintenance challenge than a logistical challenge. Of course AWS probably will offer such a service eventually, simply to complete their Gotta Catch Them All product strategy, but for now they've seemed to focus on things where their value is in software and infrastructure, not in having a 500 person staff of people with the background and skills to validate and compile geospatial data.

To the inevitable takes on this, no, it's not just a matter of downloading OpenStreetMap or any other data source.

disclosure: former Mapbox person.

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> To the inevitable takes on this, no, it's not just a matter of downloading OpenStreetMap or any other data source.

With services like openmaptiles.com, why not?

This is the nth time answering this, but, well: Updates. Doing them efficiently. Vandalism detection. Geocoding and directions. Devops: this is not a trivial computing challenge. The list goes on.

Been eyeing Mapbox myself. How do you think OSM/Mapbox can deal with the constant burden of meta-data gathering?

From some basic OSM v Google tests, OSM coverage was much lower for things like place names or speed limits.

As you say, the infrastructure requirements for this seem massive, though perhaps getting better as GIS info become easier to gather.

> From some basic OSM v Google tests, OSM coverage was much lower for things like place names or speed limits.

In which region did you test? The local mapping community can make a night and day difference.

In Africa there are places almost in unmapped on Google that are extensively mapped on OSM (Google doesn't give a damn if there isn't money to be made). In western Europe it's pretty good, especially in the Netherlands and Germany (that I know of at least, perhaps other countries too). America, from what I've seen (I've never been there so never needed to use it) it can be either reasonably comprehensive or a total mess depending on the city or state or something.

> it can be either reasonably comprehensive or a total mess depending on the city or state or something.

I'm currently evaluating US coverage and this has been my experience, though even cases with better coverage it still fell short of Google Maps.

It's a tough problem in the sense that people have generally gotten used to the excellent coverage of Google Maps, so anything deviating in even a minor way is seen as noticeably inferior.

I'd love to know if others are running into similar issues in the US.

If you mean business locations and the like, OSM is more or less empty in the US. Cities and towns and similar should be okay.

What it amounts to is that there aren't any openly licensed business geodatabases and there aren't really that many people working on OSM in the US, especially commercial POIs (where people buy data from Yelp or Foursquare or Factual or whatever instead).

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