Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
However, that content is done by volunteers just like you, and if you refuse to contribute because something puts you off, then the project dies. Imagine people with the same mindset as you: Oh, I don't bother contributing my design skills because the content sucks. And you don't contribute because design sucks. In the end, no one contributes and the project, as a whole, suffers.
But if the project suffers, you and everyone else, lose to corporate offerings like Google. And that is fine, if you like that. But don't expect them to respect you. I hate to say this, but change has to come from within, not from laws, market forces or anything else.
So, if you want LIBRE maps, and you really care about that, just go on and do it. Gather people, make noise and work hard. There's thousands of highly successful projects to get inspired by.
In what way aren't they bold enough? Their license is too restrictive for many commercial uses, driving big businesses (apple, Google, Microsoft) and their users away.
They don't use crowdsourced data. You're never going to be able to build real-time traffic maps by manual means.. They need to make a platform to anonymously share user data so other volunteers can write automated code to turn it into real-time map features.
Likewise, they might not have the resources for street view, but I bet a few million people submitting their photo library would get a photograph of a substantial number of buildings... Then it's just about code to sort, classify, tag, and arrange the images to be useful.
OSM already impacts the lives of millions of people. Indeed, it genuinely saves lives through its humanitarian work, and has been doing so since the Haiti earthquake.
What you appear to be saying is that it doesn’t provide motorist-centric features like “real-time traffic maps”. As someone who thinks the world would be a whole bunch better if there were fewer cars, I’m good with that.
OpenStreetMap is not trying to make this specific product.
I actually want the ads too although I want them 100x better than they are and I'm sure Google like Amazon will fail for a while at curating the fake stuff. In an ideal world they'd have inventory and menus of every store so I could search for "pizza with avocados open now" or "1/4inch wrench" and it could tell me exactly where I can get them right now.
Answering queries like that has so much revenue potential. Possibly even more than the rest of Google put together. You bet they're trying to get there and have been for years. The reality is it's super hard to collect that data.
They've tried getting shops to upload info about what they sell (the Google Shopping manifest files). They've tried putting Bluetooth trackers in every store (they mailed them out to all big businesses in 2014 and said 'stick one of these in every department of your shop') to track who goes there to know what store might have what products. They've tried putting their own staff in the stores (Google Shopping Express, and the Chromebox staff in electronics stores).
None of it has worked, but they'll keep trying.
I with OSM would come out with a consumer-focused map product. I think that would go a long way towards attracting more contributors, since most people get started to scratch an itch in a product they use.
Most people don't realise that though, so they think their edits correcting roads will only get seen by a handful of open source geeks.
Try it!
The UK ordnance survey[1] is government run and is generally fantastic. They cover every inch of the UK in excruciating detail, provide centimeter precise GPS coordinates for everything and publish invaluable, cheap maps of it all. Why do you assume that the seemingly inept and corrupt US standard is the baseline that everything else will be?
Now though, I feel like the tech giants have overtaken them.
Where is the street view or 3d models? Where are the opening times of every shop? Where is the traffic congestion info? Where is the ability to look up a house number and find where on the street it is?
These are all things I regularly want to know and are location based, so really ought to be part of a mapping service.
That will probably never get done in a OSS manner at the scale of google, and even if it was serving it would probably be enormously expensive.
> 3d models
A lot of 3d models are in OSM, although not as detailed as in proprietary solutions.
> opening times of every shop
This is not something I want in the same database as the location data. The hope is that more sites/services use discovarable technologies lite microdata to make sure that it can be added to the map via separate databases.
> traffic congestion info
Again, real-time info is not really something I want in the same db as the actual street. traffic congestion info is a very different service than location or mapping info.
> look up a house number
This is part of the OSM offering, look into nominatim
I'll go for OSC for future projects. Thanks for sharing.
Osm also takes data from governments and other organisations that publish it, but only if it's already available under a compatible free license. Not sure where you see that tie in with corruption (which additionally is much more frequent in the private sector but maybe that depends on your country, but since there are no big bucks flowing in and all financial records are public and are plausible for what they do (I looked through it), the point is moot anyway).
But when you have been offering something for free for years, people get used to that being the way of things, users are not going to respond well to the increase in advertisement.
Had Google done this from the beginning, people would have been more accepting of it. Generally speaking, if you change a service for the worse, people are generally going to view it less favourably than had it started out how it will now become.
I do find that the service is becoming more and more unusable with all the shitty product placements.
And Garmin units have had natural directions like that for four or five years. But I find it more of a hindrance than anything. I would rather hear "Turn right onto Wellington St" than "Turn right at the Starbucks", especially because the Starbucks is not always obvious.
But more importantly, I prefer a dedicated device because it's way more convenient. It's always there, it doesn't kill my battery, it doesn't rack up roaming fees when I cross the border[0], it has a large screen that's easy to see[1], it has super useful features like "Up ahead" that shows where the next rest stop, service centre, etc. is, and it leaves my phone free for audiobook duties.
My Garmin has been nearly 100% reliable because it never moves and automatically comes on with the ignition. Google Maps is at best 20% reliable because it's not there when I need it.
[0] Yes, google Maps can download maps to work offline, but they constantly expire, leaving me high and dry when I actually need them, and I don't want to download half the continental US just for a road trip. Oh, and POI search is gimped when offline.
[1] My phone does not have a large screen, and Google Maps' map is incredibly difficult to decipher when driving because of super thin low-contrast lines, tiny labels, and a non-zoomable display (when in driving mode).
If flawlessly defined sending one to the closed street and putting one into a two hour long traffic jam because it has no real time data feed, then sure maybe it is flawless. But this is 2019 and not 2009.
Furthermore, it does have a data feed for traffic, through FM radio (using the power cable as an antenna) and/or a Bluetooth connection to a phone. It's not as good as google Maps' traffic updates and it's only for major roads, but it works pretty well.
For much of the world, OpenStreetMap data is considerably more complete than Google Maps. It is true that there is no website based on OSM that is as convenient as maps.google.com, but more and more people are using maps on mobile, where they are relying on apps and not a website, and OSM-based solutions like Maps.Me are good substitutes for Google’s ecosystem.
This is particularly true for many not-so-obscure niches, like hiking trails in and around major US cities. Once you stray from roads and business locations, Google Maps gets shockingly sparse.
Compare coverage for this park in Seattle:
Open Street Map: https://0x0.st/zqAH.png
Google Maps: https://0x0.st/zqAo.png
Google Maps is bare bones, while OpenStreetMap has tons of detail, even including locations for drinking water and park benches! Drinking water in particular is a great feature. You can't see that drinking fountain on Google Maps from either the satellite imagery or the street view imagery, but I can personally attest to it being there, right where OSM says it is.
The official and unofficial transport apps don't tell you the bus will be at platform 16 on a completely different street. Made me miss the bus more than once, the second time I planned time for it but it took me 20 minutes to find the stop. I assumed it was one of the first fourteen stop positions and I just overlooked it, went around again (inside, on the street, other side of the street...), still didn't find it, until I checked OpenStreetMap which just shows it on a map and gives the exact stop position instead of only the stop name.
The latest version of OsmAnd can even do public transport routing. It won't give you timetables that are subject to too frequent changes, but it's still impressive.
I was also impressed with the decades long growth of advertising on TV.
Google's business was to answer query. The rest was philanthropy. If they start to operate like any other crap stock they'll go the way of the loo.
Also, this looks like it's about web sites that carry Google ads (and only those sites that have decided to participate -- none of which look to be sites I use anyway), not Google's own services.
Have you heard of a "loss leader"[1]?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader
Users are unlikely to use Google for maps and say, Bing for their searches. Maps drives traffic to search. Conversely, making maps overly commercial will drive traffic away from search.
I don't know, I see very little tying the two together. I currently use DDG exclusively for search except for localized searching and maps, for which I use Google. There isn't really much friction to switch between the two. Especially since most of my map usage is on mobile, where it is a separate app.
So you're way out in the long tail.
I would argue that maps is probably already monetized, as it probably improves ad targeting in all of their other apps.
You mean, I can buy a subscription and not rent the service with my search history ?
Where's the sign-up button ?
They all have different monetization strategies, and all provide good enough turn by turn directions. I regularly use Here WeGo for its offline support. Sygic is probably still fine.
I think Sygic moved to a freemium model, and I get the impression Here is subsidized by luxury car manufacturers.
Yelp crushes google maps on search.
I really don’t understand why google maps is so popular. Like search, maps is a capital intensive, commodity product with near-zero switching cost. I guess the same can be said of Coke and Pepsi, and they’re chugging along just fine. It’s a good thing I don’t work in brand management!
> I really don’t understand why google maps is so popular.
Because it's bundled on billions of devices ? And it's a product that was/is working really well for the vast majority ?
Not even in the same ball park. Yelp's search for example does not understand that there's a RIVER between Brooklyn and Manhattan. So when I'm in Greenpoint it says there's something right there, in Manhattan when I want something local.
And for newer people, bundling is hugely impactful. Doing nothing is almost always the most popular choice
The point of this is that the direction Google has been taking lately has been very much the arbitrary choice and direction chosen by Larry and Sergey, and consequently highly reflective of their own personal ideologies and worldviews.
I was developing with ESRI ArcGIS at the time, ESRI was a multi-billion dollar GEO company who had no product that even came close to the instant utility Google Maps launched with.
The only other product that had a similar "Wow" factor around the same time was Keyhole which we were using before Google acquired them and used it to launch "Google Earth".
If anything Google Maps spawned competition in the last decade, the existing competitors like ESRI are still developing their GEO products for Internal/Enterprise use, but now there are a number of competing consumer mapping services that provide the same utility and functionality of Google Maps from large technology companies that didn't have GEO as part of their competency like: Apple Maps, Bing Maps and Tencent Maps.
Was a real eye-opener of "so that's how you make Maps fast" at the time, just pre-render the entire world at multiple static zoom levels. Which wasn't an option (disk cost) for anyone developing their own in-house mapping Services at the time. For my next GEO project I did the next best thing and used their Google Maps API to change it to make map tile requests to our ArcGIS App which dynamically cached map tiles on the fly, so whilst it didn't pre-render all tiles, it provided a nice "Google Maps"-like UX for popular areas of our region.
Mapquest back then had the clunky “click the big arrow” to move the map and reload the page navigation...
There were multiple competing products when Google Maps was released, so they had competition. Google's product was simply better at than most alternatives at the time.
Feel free to believe Google Maps had competition (they didn't), nothing else at the time provided the same instant utility of Google Maps which basically ushered in the new category of "real-time search-based Consumer Maps" of which there are plenty now.
Anything that existed previously would've needed a rewrite to achieve the same instant utility of Google Maps. Nothing without it could've become mainstream. The competition like ESRI still doesn't have it, but they're still focused on Internal/Enterprise Usage, they let you build GEO Maps but they don't let you build consumer maps that compete with Google Maps.
You're agreeing with me here by admitting that there was existing competition. The rest of your remarks are about how much better Google's offering was to the competition, which is a point I've already agreed with.
There were existing GEO companies that provided Mapping Services (I was developing GEO Apps with one of them at the time), but there was nothing like the consumer focused Google's Maps preceding it, with its worldwide pre-rendered imagery at multiple zoom-levels coupled with a global search that displayed annotated Markup results delivered over an Ajax Web interface that allowed seamless panning/zooming of the Earth scaled to millions of users.
It wasn't a fluke that Google Maps gained instant popularity with mainstream Internet users over everything else, there was nothing else like it.
If by "DB search" you mean the old-school engines like Lycos, etc., then yes, it is like saying that. And yes, I think those did count as existing competition for Google search.
I suspect that we mean different things by "competition" here...
And then the data wasn't there for years and years also. And Google has lots more POI data in much of the world.
(I say this as a contributor to OSM...)
The shouldn't. They should be forced to close, and Maps and Search should be provided by a non-profit, internationally controlled (UN etc), organization, not a for-profit company.
That's my opinion of what would be best. Some services (like "indexing the world's knowledge") are too important to be left to private interests and be monetized via ads...
In fact, before the web era, they also made the best maps (e.g. the British military maps).
Government vs private is not mutually exclusive. Like another commenter said, the US Geological Survey already has mapping data available. Adding in traffic from local agencies and weather from the National Weather Service is relatively simple so we can definitely have a neutral public maps service. None of that requires forcing Google Maps to close though.
"You are passing a rare gem, take exit 20..."
Well, it was a rare gem, until exploited for a buck. No way I want to go now. All sorts of ugly can happen here.
The only solution is more competition, not less. Trying to limit who can do what has only ever led to worse outcomes. There's nothing stopping a non-profit group from creating maps today if they wanted to.
> There's nothing stopping a non-profit group from creating maps today if they wanted to.
Apple and Google probably feel very differently. We've already seen them fight it out, wait till they join together to start keeping their boots on the up and comers.
In the end I don't give a rat's ass about their profit line and I put advancement of Earth and its people as my top priority.
>> I put advancement of Earth and its people as my top priority.
Great. Are you working on a mapping service?
> Great. Are you working on a mapping service?
That's fallacious. I don't have a giant pile of money sitting around. But I support initiatives like OpenStreetMap even if I see room for improvement.
I'm not sure who you're arguing with because we all want more options, and we already have several from Apple, Microsoft and others. I definitely don't want my taxes being spent on another poorly executed govt project though.
>> I don't have a giant pile of money sitting around.
Maybe you should care about profit then because that's why Google Maps exists.
But I don't want ads in my map software any more than I want ads in my travel atlases.
The idea that a non-profit could compete in the current economic and cultural climate is laughable. Some social change is required, and government for all its flaws is the logical place for such change to actually gain some teeth.
The free market is exactly what allows anyone to compete, and Apple and Microsoft already do so, along with dozens of industrial providers.
I don't believe "authoritarian" applies to companies. If anything corporatism is authoritarian.
Except if you think e.g. forbidding them from using child labor or from not hiring women/blacks etc. are authoritarian too, then you already agree that a society can impose some laws (onto companies), and them to not be authoritarian.
If you agree to the above, then now the main difference is that you think the above examples are "fair" and "ok", whereas the other proposal is not. But that's a matter of opinion, not some objective truth.
The only power they (we) have to enforce such policies is to stick a gun in someone's back. It's true that some matters call for the initiation of violence to maintain a greater societal good. You've cited some worthwhile examples but this isn't one of them.
If you agree to the above, then now the main difference is that you think the above examples are "fair" and "ok", whereas the other proposal is not. But that's a matter of opinion, not some objective truth.
Our Constitution lies somewhere in the middle between opinion and objective truth. It carries more weight than the former (those guns again) and less than the latter. It arguably doesn't provide the legal tools needed to force Internet search engines and map providers to work on a nonprofit basis.
There are other countries whose founding documents don't include similar constraints. Fortunately, nobody will shoot you for trying to leave this one.
If there are valid regulations to follow then sure but that's not what the parent comment seems to be suggesting.
There's no "free-market capitalist society". Just a really-existing capitalist society (like "really-existing socialism" which touted one set of values, but practiced another), that sells to people the lie that markets are (and can be) free, when they aren't in most ways that matters.
None of that has to do with Google being "forced to close" its Maps just because you don't like ads.
As maps go, its pretty nice - much more reminiscent of printed maps. But, its of no use for more practical tasks like providing directions, or finding restaurants.