Lasting value comes from the software in between the database and the view. In the case of encyclopedias or maps, the software is the most trivial part.
I really think Google Maps will die. It's just unlikely that for the rest of history, no one will improve OpenStreetMaps to the point that it is competitive.
You need a massive amount of capital to create a redundant data set that has a death clock, doing nothing good for the world but extracting some small rent created by antitrust laws. No thanks.
That instinct to double check makes me go “Oh well let’s just use Google.”
I use bing exclusively. Sometimes I don’t find what I want, and switching to google is as simple as swapping out the authority. The query syntax is the same.
If you use Brave, you can easily choose your search engine with `:g` for google. You can also set your own shortcuts for any search box on any website.
I much prefer the Firefox method where you add the search shortcut to a browser bookmark and then if you sync your bookmarks to the mobile app.
I use gg for Google, gi for Google images. dd for duckduckgo and di for ddg images etc
Google also spoils me with multi modal options, although the transit estimates seem to be a complete stab in the dark and there are quirks like invisible buses. The bike timing is also useful, but the routing is usually junk and profoundly unsafe.
Living here has taught me that all these apps generally suck, just google maps seems to suck slightly less.
Does this imply that Linux is <60% as good as Windows because it's not over?
That is the future of Microsoft and the non-future of Windows.
1. Tries to capture all profit from the edges.
2. Extracts value "unreasonably" both to grab what they still can and to create an explanation for the death. This could be high fees, ads, or extraction of market intelligence.
3. Begins embracing the new platform with compatibility layers.
4. Starts making 2 offers on everything. One with their legacy and one with the rising platforms.
5. Treats their nonfounding CEO as significant and someone to listen to.
Plenty of companies make this transition successfully (I chose IBM as the example) and make huge profits from not having to charge uniform prices across the entire market. But the discussion was the windows platform being replaced by Linux, not Microsoft profits.
Yes, absolutely, in the case of desktops, it is <60% as good as Windows or macOS. I say this as a nearly lifelong desktop Linux user. The userspace desktop software gets almost no attention compared to the kernel/systemd which actually matters for business. The major DEs like KDE and Gnome3 are full of exploits and memory leaks. The alternative to using a DE is to use a tiling window manager and spend hours a day re-implementing what would have been one-click operations on Windows/macOS. This is not to mention the lack of non-development-related software targeting desktop Linux.
Will this change in the future? I think it is very likely, but the time horizon is key. There are thousands of possible realities where Microsoft or Apple fails--political problems, economic events, bad management, some black swan startup out of nowhere. All it takes is for one of these to trigger for mindshare to shift to Linux (or BSD or Fuchsia--any free one for that matter) and bring it over the threshold.
(But this is kind of irrelevant to the point about data hoarding business models, since Windows/macOS is pure software.)
Sry, but that is just not true.
These days, everything on linux is either random potentially insecure PPA repos, shell scripts loaded from a server via curl and piped to sh with sudo access, or "snaps" (whatever the fuck they are). That all ontop of wildly outdated packages in the supported repos. No wonder everyone rants and raves about "docker", now we know why things moved into that space.
I know, this is my opinion and it's biased. Yes I may not have done things properly, or there are other ways of doing things, etc etc.
Snaps are actually a great security and packaging advance that decouples package dependencies from a common library set, while maintaining a mechanism to patch and upgrade otherwise dangling library deps. It also starts down the long road to confining software, because what you run shouldn't automatically assume all your privs. Basically iOS style apps for Linux.
People who pipe web content to a privileged shell are on their own at present. Arguably they should be warned, but that assumes taint tracking at every level of the operating system, and no production OS has that. If the software is a dependency shit show then putting it in docker (and then into a VM) is a better compromise.
Windows is already deprecating the installer model for the app store and cloud concept, they just didn't make it stick the first time round.
Snaps are a good idea in theory but do not work in practice.
No more graphical stack.
This happened to me with not only X. It seems to me that installing is tested. Removing is not. It was also badly documented last time i checked.
Happened with discord last time.
Ubuntu needs to more clearly explain whether the app is confined, and force apps to use an API to change the system environment to allow rollback, multiple packages of the same function etc.
The margins are a bit different here.
Can you give any supporting evidence for this?
A maps data set will require constant updating and the quality of the data set will be determined by the amount of work put into it on an ongoing basis. The question is which number is bigger: the monetary value of the time people are willing to donate making contributions to openstreetmap, or the amount of money that Google makes on map ads and can therefore spend improving the data quality.
Sidenote, the FOAM project is doing some interesting work into geospacial data on-the-blockchain.
From reading the analyses at https://www.justinobeirne.com/, plus just generally following the tech industry, I'm convinced Google Maps will never die, at least not in any timeframe relevant to this discussion.
Between autonomous vehicles at Waymo and Google's desire to provide intelligent suggestions to their Android and web users, they need to have as comprehensive a data set as algorithmically possible.
I suppose it's possible that OSM could become good enough that Google would only need to supply a proprietary layer on top of it for their own needs, but given that they can collect better intelligence about roads and buildings than anyone else through their unwitting spies, I doubt they'd want to give up control over the full stack.
I don't know about you, but I haven't bothered to look at any of the various "yellow pages" sites (to find a phone number or address), nor at Yelp (to find business reviews) in many years. And to make matters worse, I'm actually one of the volunteers feeding free labor / data to Maps, because I post reviews and make edits to business information. What can I say? They're really good at what they do.
* Massive staff and fleet of vehicles on the ground with multiple sensors mapping the entire planet. Capital costs here are enormous * Massive network and bandwidth with caches in just about every major IX to deliver ultra high performance maps * Major established contracts with satellite mapping vendors to get the best data as early as possible * Major brand recognition with many users using the app and knowing it to be the best of the best
I would never want to compete here, but a major institutional player could
OpenStreetmap data is quite good. I can run a local instance with all the data and the tile server and a web server in a docker image in maybe ~10 min. Source: did this a few years ago during a particularly boring meeting.
The full planet takes "a while", even on a huge computer:
https://planet.openstreetmap.org/
8 GB gets you a large region still, depending on how much mapping has been done:
OpenStreetMap is going from strength to strength. Maps startups no longer need to duplicate Google's on-the-ground mapping efforts. Now, they can make use of open data.
Mapbox is perhaps the most well-known, but there are many commercial services based on OSM data: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Commercial_OSM_Software_...
It counts as "Good Enough", but man, it's disappointing to see how inferior Pokemon Go maps are these days. Roads that don't exist, buildings in random places with roads going through them, and map data that seems manipulated for game advantage (by players contributing to OSM for gameplay reasons, not for accuracy reason) ... and this is in the midtown area of a top 10 US city.
This is unfortunate and surprising. In my experience (mostly UK/Europe) the quality of street data in OSM matches, and in some cases exceeds that of Google Maps. (Points-of-interest data does not, however).
If you do notice errors and omissions, fixes can be made in seconds by getting an OSM account and clicking the "edit" button on OpenStreetMap.org. In recent years the development of the "ID" editor has significantly lowered the barriers to entry of editing OSM.
> "map data that seems manipulated for game advantage"
Perhaps OSM needs some sort of Wikipedia-style spam detection/prevention if this is happening on a wide scale.
This is the same argument that keeps every year from being the year of Linux on the desktop.
"My computer crashed!" "Oh, just become a Linux kernel developer and fix it yourself."
The OSM licence requires that people using OSM data attribute OSM, i.e. that their users are aware that the data comes from OSM. In theory this means that the final user should know that OSM is where they should go to fix data issues.
But, alas, it's often not followed that well...
Really, it’s not even an age thing. I work in tech. I visit HN on the regular. OSM, Google, and Apple all have inaccurate data about my daily commute to work. They all say a path that exists doesn’t. Have I don’t anything about it? Absolutely not.
The same happens with an OS. Most people don't want a free labor-intensive solution. They want something that just works, runs their software and stays out of the way. People don't want to think about what OS they use.
Contrast to Google Maps, where the process of getting a change made can take weeks or months - if the fixes ever show up at all.
There really is a lot of power in having a map of the world that we can all "just edit".
For driving directions GMaps is much better. I presume that’s where the majority of their userbase is.
I had to make a trip during rush hour. I was already going to be cutting it close on timing as this is a 12 minute drive that can take 15-20 minutes at rush hour. I plugged in my destination and GMaps routed me a way I would rarely take but didn't seem too odd. One block past my last alternate route, I saw the lights ahead. There was a 4 car crash with at least 5 emergency vehicles on scene about 1/2 mile ahead. GMaps had no clue and I had no choice but to inch through about 10 light cycles to reach the turn Gmaps wanted me to take.
The 15 minute trip took me 35 minutes. Thanks for nothing.
Did you mark the accident yourself when you saw it?
This seems unreasonable.
If it weren't already aware of the accident so it could warn you, you could have let Waze know about it and, at the least, helped out many others who were coming after you.
Rather, GMaps used to be the default choice if you wanted to build an app on top of a map (in this case, looking at the effects of nuclear bomb detonations). The blog post explains why GMaps is no longer a reasonable choice, which (as the parent notes) opens up room for competitors.
that's not true though. I know from doing HOTOSM that there are quite a lot places where there is only a road or two going through it only google maps but there is actually a city/town there. there are some counties where Google Street view cars have never even visited.
Source: I was using mapping tools before Google Maps came to market.
So when a book store giving away books for free puts another book store out of business, that second book store didn't have a great product?
Unless the end-game for the 2nd store is to price out every single book store, then obtain a monopoly. But then anti-monopoly laws should come into place.
But if the end-game for the 2nd store is to subsidize their cost via a different business - then it's the same as a newspaper using classifieds to subsidize their subscription business. You can't then argue that another newspaper that charge for subscriptions goes out of business is unfair.