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Comment by grsmto | Hacker News Reader

I wish they were explaining why they moved away from Mapbox and OSM in general!

I dont see why this was needed - it is a regression in terms of usability and performance (loading performance - cant comment on quality of the maps just yet, but I understand from others that the map data is woeful).

Really disappointed. I used to recommend DDG to everyone, but this feels like a sell-out - without any justification for why they've done it, my mind just leaps to conclusions about marketing and trying to get "cool points".

I strongly suspect this was not a sell-out. I suspect it was more a move to save a good deal of money. Mapbox is very expensive at DDG-scale, and given how lean and efficient they like to run things, I can easily understand this choice. The fact that Apple also cares (loudly) about privacy makes it even easier.

(I don't work for Apple and I run a competitor to Mapbox.)

They could have rolled out their own (privacy-focused) map service. The data is open, the stack is open as well.

And how much do the database server(s) cost, not to mention pushing map tiles out in terms of data costs. DDG isn't exactly flush with cash like google and apple are.

Not much at all. In fact, since the tiles are only generated once, they could stick a CDN in front and never have to worry about anything but data transfer costs afterwards.

That CDN isn't free all the content and traffic overhead has costs, CDN charges you for each request, and every byte sent. On a small (under a million users a day) application it may not be that much... but even ten of millions of users a day, it costs a LOT

Hell, why do you think google invested so much time into image compression tech to save a few bytes here and there.

I doubt it’s much, the whole OSM infrastructure used to be handled as a favour by one of the London universities. I doubt DDG Maps is operating at significantly higher scale, especially once you take into account they just have to serve static data.

OSM data is constantly changing, being improved and expanded.

More or less as paying some service provider to do that for you, but they could have marketed it positively, as Qwant has done just last month (see https://www.qwant.com/maps/ which incidentally is open source as well)

If you're looking for privacy protection, Qwant's partnership with Huawei doesn't sound great https://e.huawei.com/us/publications/global/ict_insights/hw_...

Do you think Apple sells their maps below cost, or that Apple is able (due to its scale?) to get significantly better deals than DDG could get?

Definitely a severe regression in the Netherlands. Apple Maps doesn't even show houses, and has only a fraction of the POI's OpenStreetMap has. It doesn't have directions for bicycles either — and it leaves out a bunch of dedicated cycleways in my area.

And the colours! All features seem to bleed into their low-contrast pastel neighbours.

This doesn't feel like a proper match for DuckDuckGo at all.

Someone mentioned Qwant Maps upthread, I think that’s what I’ll use instead.

Qwant Maps is OpenStreetMap data with custom styling that makes it look more like Google/Apple/Bing Maps.

It's very pastellish.

One of my reasons for not use DDG was maps, another big one is instant airline data on search query results (which isn't fair bc Google owns ITA). This upgrade to maps is awesome, IMO Mapbox felt like I was in the stone ages for map functionality and UI.

>I wish they were explaining why they moved away from Mapbox and OSM in general!

Because it sucks. Isn’t that obvious? There’s no point in having a feature that nobody uses. I switched to DDG a few months ago and this has always been the one weakness. This is really good news IMO. Apple maps has come a long long way since launch, and their data is about on par with Google at this point.

You can argue all day that of course it’s still a commercial company. But I’d rather compromise and hitch my wagon to the folks that are outwardly explicitly drawing out their commitment to privacy, whose incentives I understand and trust.

In many places (e.g. many parts of Germany) Google and Apple maps are far inferior compared to OSM and Mapbox specifically.

I tried finding an address recently on Google Maps, and just couldn’t find it, only to discover that that street was added 4 years ago, so ofc Google (with data from 2011) didn’t have it. OSM had it.

Yes, OSM can give truly excellent results for certain areas. And truly awful results for others.

The same for Apple Maps, except any improvements that go there fall into another closed silo.

This applies to all of the mapping providers. It takes a truly massive ground game to get really good map data for the entire world. Many players are working on this and I'm sure many will continue to work on it. A map that was garbage for your area three months ago might be great today.

I’m also happy to see this move, but I tried to give Apple Maps another chance recently and it’s significantly behind Google. I didn’t even last a day. Especially if you’re trying to find things around your area, which is probably 99% of my usage.

No surprise the blog post highlights how easy to use this integration is...in Cupertino.

ive been using it for a few months now. its not as good as google maps but definitely doesn't suck. and certainly is better than apple maps.

>ive been using it for a few months now. its not as good as google maps but definitely doesn't suck. and certainly is better than apple maps.

I've also found the mapping aspects to be ok, but the search results are truly abysmal in comparison to Apple Maps. Point-to-point direction finding is of course a solved, commoditized technical problem this point. But the real special sauce is in combining that with real time traffic info and highly relevant local search results, which Apple does far better than any open source offering I've seen.

> Apple maps has come a long long way since launch, and their data is about on par with Google at this point.

Not in Portugal, or most places in Europe where I’ve tried it. They are so far behind it’s not even funny.

Or most of east Asia. It won’t even find what you’re looking for most of the time, let alone give sensible directions.

You're forgetting one detail that I think should be emphasized here: OSM is about free knowledge (as in freedom). You can use, modify and share OSM data however you want. Apple on the other hand is hoarding its information. You can only access it through their products in the ways they intended. They control everything (as always).

I do believe it when Apple says they're respecting their users' privacy, just like I believe it when DDG says that. But I am disappointed when I see how these companies neglect freedom and how so few of their users care about it.

> You can use, modify and share OSM data however you want.

You are still free to do that with OSM. Not sure what that has to do with DDG. Just because they don't want to use OSM, doesn't change any of your rights to using OSM.

> Apple on the other hand is hoarding its information.

You are free to requisition a fleet of mapping vehicles, drones and satellites and gather your own maps information and share it with whomever you want. If Apple is the one paying a ton of money to create their information, I'm not sure why it's surprising that they want to use that information in their products.

You don't have a right to Apple's mapping data any more than you have a right to Colonel Sanders's chicken recipe -- however, nothing is stopping you from making your own chicken recipe and sharing it with whomever you want. You could even start a community around sharing chicken recipes. That some people don't care about chicken recipe secrecy doesn't harm your rights to enjoy chicken with recipes created and shared by you or your friends. Some of us actually just want to buy some fried chicken and not worry about the provenance of the recipe. We have more important priorities (for us) than the openness of a private company's chicken preparation secrets. We just want good tasting chicken. Many of us aren't chicken enthusiasts, spending our time lamenting the secrecy of the Colonel's chicken choices.

What it really sounds like the source of your complaint is that if DDG doesn't continue to use OSM, then perhaps OSM will suffer for it. If that's the real origin of your disdain for this decision, then perhaps OSM isn't as valuable in the marketplace of ideas as people might think it is. However, if this actually doesn't affect OSM (I don't think it does,) then that means that DDG can use whatever they want and the OSM folks can happily share to their heart's content.

Apple has more than enough money. More than they'll ever need. It's actively employing strategies to avoid taxes. I think they can afford to do some public service from time to time, even if it means (in absolute numbers, massive) losses (if you don't count the value of having done something good for the people).

I'm not saying Apple does nothing for the open source scene. In fact, they're maintaining some important projects (like WebKit). But when you have billions of dollars that you don't know what to do with stored in some offshore haven, you could do a bit more.

Apple do support OSM. In one European country, Apple Maps actually uses OSM data solely.

Yeah and that's nice but I think they could do better (than developing their own proprietary maps)

It’s disappointing that DDG isn’t supporting an open infrastructure, but when you think about it their offering is in fact a closed infrastructure similar in principle to Apple’s. It is a closed product, but which promises to protect your privacy. That has value when choosing to use a service in the short term, but it’s not something to build on or to rely on in the long term, after all both companies could make any pivot they want if their incentives change in future. A better model would be contributing to a search engine which is open source, that cannot pivot without being forked.

Agreed, even though it's extremely unlikely companies like Apple or DuckDuckGo will pivot.

Another big argument for supporting free software solutions is to do it for the people who want/need freedom (like whistleblowers or activists).

> Apple maps has come a long long way since launch, and their data is about on par with Google at this point.

Reporting from Washington, DC: nope.

Well, the map quality depends on the region. So I could easily argue that OSM has much better quality than Google Maps, looking at Hamburg, Germany for example.

I know that the quality is not everywhere as good as there, but the quality varies for the other Map products too. So if it 'sucks' or the other thing 'sucks' greatly depends on where you currently are.

> Apple maps has come a long long way since launch, and their data is about on par with Google at this point.

In California maybe.

Everywhere else? Not even close.

In my experience, Apple maps are on a par with Google Maps in London. Google never get my address location right, despite numerous reports to them. Apple does.

i'm in north Texas and into Oklahoma a lot, and Apple Maps has been fantastic here. I haven't had Google Maps installed on my iPhone in years.

I believe Apple at least augments their data with OSM data; however, I suspect the primary driver of this decision was price.

Edit: request are succeeding for me now.

Apple employee spoke at a recent OSM conference. Yes, they use OSM data as well. In some countries more than others. Apple also has a fulltime staff working on OSM. https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/issues, https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/

Apple can only use OSM data pre license change which is very old now, those links are to contributions Apple is making to OSM (similar to the big Microsoft contributions) which are probably there as a way of trying to prevent a Google monopoly, but not indications that Apple is using the data.

That’s not true. Apple is using and contributing current, ODbL-licensed OSM data.

How does that work? Do you mean using it behind the scenes? I thought ODbL prevented combinations unless the combined dataset could be released.

It's not as broad as "combinations". In many circumstances that doesn't apply. The OSMF website has guidelines on what needs to be released and what doesn't.

Living in Germany, I've found that OSM embeds in websites are more common for me now while browsing, and to be blunt: they're ugly.

The maps themselves are just difficult to visually parse, and unpleasant to look at compared to Google Maps and Apple Maps (which look comparably attractive at a glance). I dunno if that's solvable using a third party OSM service provider or not, but to me it seems like a good enough reason to switch.

Exactly. Reaching a critical mass of users is also about UI/UX and it's a bummer they seem to ignore that.

As someone used to osm, you can show me my home town on Google maps and I won't recognize it anymore. There is so little detail on the map, it might as well be blank. Osm is fine, it's you who has only trained yourself in using Google maps.

No, OSM simply has bad UX.

Your anecdote is completely irrelevant, I'm not sure why you bothered to bring it up, since you're talking about data, while I'm talking about design.

If it was just me being too used to Google Maps, why don't I feel the same way about Apple Maps?

> No, OSM simply has bad UX.

It's not very convincing if I just argued the opposite and you don't bother giving a single counter argument. What's more is that it makes me feel there is no point talking about it if logical arguments don't convince you for no apparent reason.

> Your anecdote is completely irrelevant, I'm not sure why you bothered to bring it up, since you're talking about data, while I'm talking about design.

I am talking about design. If you zoom in on Google maps, the data is mostly there (osm also has more data, sure, but that's not universally true on the planet (though on average, per square kilometer, osm easily beats Google, but that's a blog post I'm saving for another day)). Google just hides all the data except a few random roads and random shops or something. You literally have to zoom in until your screen covers the area of two buildings before it shows you what's in the building. Somehow I'm supposed to have an overview of a city from the sparsely populated view. OSM (though you can have any style you like, I'm going for what I see most frequently) just dumps all the data it had on your screen at almost any zoom level (below province sized zoom) and you can see details like building outlines and shop icons from quite far up.

> If it was just me being too used to Google Maps, why don't I feel the same way about Apple Maps?

Maybe Apple maps is very similar to Google maps? If that holds, I should not be able to use apple maps (just like I can't use Google maps very well), but last time I tried to open it in a browser it told me to buy an apple device first so I can't compare. I don't know the answer to your question.

> I dunno if that's solvable using a third party OSM service provider or not,

Approximately everyone is using a third-party OSM service, since the OSM project does not provide map tiles for general use.

I also strongly disagree on your other criticism of the most common style, but that's a matter of taste. To me, they look more like a proper city map is supposed to look, and provide more detail that's useful for me to orient myself. If I were typically doing long car drives, I might prefer Google, but I don't.

Probably because OSM didn't fulfill the promise it was created with?

Implementation of OSM stuff is horrible and usability as well. I LOVE free software and my privacy is very important to me - so I switched everything to self-hosted and encrypted solutions. Except maps. I still use google maps for a lot of navigating just because other solutions are really inconvenient to work with.

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