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Watch Google Map Edits Live

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109 pointsNathanKP21 comments

It's a shame that people contribute data to Google Maps when something like Open Street Maps exists.

If I'm going to spend the time it takes to map something, I'd much rather it go into an open source project rather than just improving the product of a for-profit company.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

I would say it is probably because Google makes it very easy to edit maps and it offers navigation. Open Street Map doesn't allow you to enter two addresses and find a route between them. (At least not as far as I can tell.) Therefore if you are living in an area where you want that ability and your local area is not yet mapped, you will map it in Google, not in Open Street Map.

Additionally if you are a business owner you are going to add your business to the map that has more users and searchers. There is little if any benefit to having your business mapped in Open Street Map, whereas having it on the Google Map could potentially bring some customers to you.

The idea of Open Street Maps is not to make tools for map viewing or journey planning, it's to collect user contributed mapping data for the world. That data can then be used by any project that wants to use it.

This tool (using OSM data) allows you to view routes http://www.openrouteservice.org/

I agree though, there is a bit of a lack of good quality tools using OSM data, it's a shame.

OSM is the data. It is not the example map rendering on openstreetmap.org. Sad but true. I wish there was no map at all but instead a selection of nice looking and more useful maps listed.

For routing give these a try:

http://map.project-osrm.org/

http://open.mapquest.com/

http://maps.cloudmade.com/

http://openrouteservice.org/

Compared to proper editors the Google map maker thing is horrifying. I tried to use it once and gave up because it just did not do what I was trying to do (adding 3 simply streets).

http://openrouteservice.org/

The was the only one that opened upon a map over me :-)

That is bad (especially because I personally like that one the least). Could you share details about your configuration?

>> Open Street Map doesn't allow you to enter two addresses and find a route between them.

That isn't true. CloudMade offers a routing service based on OSM data, and a number of applications use that service to offer driving directions

To be precise, OSM is not public domain data. It is under CC-BY-SA and migrating to ODbL. (The migration will probably be painful.)

You can see how the migration is going at http://odbl.de/ Acceptance is very low in Australia.

Everything that people contribute through Map Maker is available freely for non-commercial purposes (with some restrictions). However, the license is certainly not as permissive as Open Street Map.

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/mapmakerdatadownload/

- US data is not available.

- The last update was 4 months ago.

- It is provided in KML format, which is quite difficult to work with in existing spatial tools beyond Google Earth.

Watch OpenStreetMap Edits Live: http://datenkueche.com/osmlive/

What I learned whilst watching this for 5 minutes, was that a lot of escort agencies use Google Maps and Google Earth to advertise.

I don't know how maps are classified, and whether data about businesses are adverts or just facts about places. But in the UK adverts have to be "legal, decent, honest and truthful, to the benefit of consumers, business and society".

As such, it opened up a whole new world of spam-fighting to me. Google must be scrubbing this dataset as quickly as others add stuff.

I hope they replace the Google earth plugin with WebGL at some point. Kind of annoying having to install a plugin for this.

I think it is incredible to see all the edits going on all around the world, and to see how Google is leveraging its huge reach to get its users to name roads and fill in businesses all over the world, even in remote areas.

And how sad it is that those edits are going to google maps instead of OSM.

That is over-dramatic in my opinion. Google Maps is a good tool: it works well, and is already more complete than OSM is. Therefore I would rather see one extremely complete map than two half complete maps. In my opinion there is nothing sad about a good map getting better.

Think about it. OpenStreetMap is free data. You can make your own maps, your own selection of data, data analysis, your own routing, you can contribute and the changes are live within minutes, you can provide free maps to people, you can use open source software to edit.

From Google you only get whatever they decide they want to give.

Could you give examples what you mean by complete? POIs? In that case Google has a lot of leverage. Street/way-wise OpenStreetMap is vastly superior in many if not most cases at least here in Europe (not to mention countries where there is no monetary interest for Google).

When I say complete I mean the entire system, from satellite imagery, to street view, to navigation directions. Additionally I am referring to the design polish that ties all these pieces together.

From what I have seen OSM is a lot like Android, open source, but fragmented because of it. Google Maps, while closed source, is much more polished and feature rich compared with anything I've seen based on OSM.

To be clear I certainly want OSM to grow to greatness, and it would wonderful if it was just as powerful and feature rich as Google Maps. I agree with you that OSM is a great project, and I like the open source aspect of it. That's not my argument though. My basic argument in the parent comment was that I think it is an over reaction to say it is "sad" to see the edits going to Google.

Whether Google's map is getting better or OSM's map is getting better people who use the systems are benefiting, so there is nothing sad about edits made to either system. And Google Maps has a much larger user base than OSM, hence it is more practical for business owners to tag their businesses in Google Maps, and people to add their streets to Google Maps.

Just ate a sandwich while watching this. It was stimulating.

If you ever have some time to kill when you can't use your hands, this is a cool thing to watch.

Hah, just did the exact same thing with a chocolate cupcake.

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