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Comment by illuminati1911 | Hacker News Reader

illuminati1911

I use Apple Maps in Shanghai. It's very fast, accurate and shows bicycle/scooter lanes, indoor maps for malls etc. very well.

Google Maps even with VPN (to bypass the censorship) is nearly unusable here by modern map software standards.

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It's not a fair comparison in China, where Apple has decided to provide the Chinese govt with data so they can operate and Google has refused to.

Source? Genuinely surprised to hear Google had the superior privacy policy.

Well, Google doesn't operate services in China so is not giving data to China. If you look carefully in the TOS for your Apple products, you'll see that iCloud data (including like messages) are operated by Apple with the exception of China, where they are operated by a third-party contractor who does the dirty work of complying with Chinese government speech laws/police requests.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...

Interesting. I didn't realize Google did not operate any services in China. I thought the Chinese government filtered certain services that they didn't have the ability to censor.

Well, for instance, there is no Google.cn, there is only Google Hong Kong.

Google Maps will still give you very basic maps in China, but at least in both Beijing and Shanghai the maps are unusable unfortunately.

You're correct that they are blocked by China. The reason they are blocked is because they haven't built a censored version of their search and don't provide China with data from emails, etc. - this is in contrast with Apple's approach. I don't know where it falls on censorship, since Apple isn't in the search business, but my guess is you would notice differences in Siri's behavior (for instance).

They took a stand against the regime trying to control their business there, as well as turning over all user data without question (at least for people operating within their borders)

Apple Maps in China is not powered by their own data. It's data licensed from a third party (Gao De). Chinese law prevents private citizens and corporations from mapping the country unless with a special license.

But yes I agree with you from my own visit in Shanghai that Google Maps is not worth using in China.

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