Google sends anti-regulation propaganda to small businesses using Google Maps

I try to use OSM as much as possible and this is perfect for me to contribute info on the go from now on.

Another great tool for contributing to OSM is MapWithAI. It uses computer vision to identify the shapes of buildings and roads in satellite imagery, so that you can add them to the map with one click. The AI assistance considerably speeds up the process of adding items to the map, saving you from drawing them by hand.

MapWithAI is integrated with a fork of the online OSM editor (RapiD), which can also be used without learning about the technical details of OSM. If your area is missing a lot of buildings or roads in OSM, and you'd like to improve the maps, I encourage you to give it a try:

https://mapwith.ai

When I read your description, I thought that maybe it was an app that prompted you to take a picture of the operating hours sign at a store when you visit, then sends the picture to a queue for someone to do the actual entry. The actual app is entirely different, but my idea might allow even more casual users, like me, to contribute. I don't have time to play an AR game like that, but I could easily snap a few pictures or answer some simple questions when I'm on the go.

I live in east London, and the other day I searched for directions to "Barbican", which is both a tube station and landmark in central London. My transport preference in the app is set to public transport.

Apple Maps gave me driving directions to an island called "Barbican" in the middle of the sea somewhere.

Other than that it works pretty well for me.

OpenRouteService work great for that, but there is no traffic prevision/live information. https://maps.openrouteservice.org/#/

Now, of course, Google probably still has more real time data in this regard, especially since it's possible for them to aggregate it due to a large amount of users and so on.

It would be nice to have more FOSS projects pop up that would deal with providing company listings and reviews on the map like Google does, as well as would provide more real time transport information as well. But hey, at least OSM gives us a really good starting point, the rest is a matter of building it and getting the data!

Missing real-time service updates, but otherwise good.

I had this app for at least a year before Google Maps released similar functionality. I still use it occasionally as the UX is better if you already know what bus stop you want to use.

Source? I've never heard of this. Maps has no relationship to the car's built-in navigation anyway.

Every car I've used with Google Maps has both, but you have to pay a fee to use the built-in navigation app.

If a company of 100 people fires a worker, they lose 1% of productivity. If a worker loses their job, they lose 100% of income. This fundamental asymmetry makes me support unions.

On top of that, the corporation can afford paying to shift people's opinions.

In the US I get the impression they are more controversial, perhaps because they are less common (so it is easier for those against to make mountains out of molehills because the public in general are less aware where the truth ends and the spin starts), perhaps because the US is more openly capitalistic (the old “in America many see themselves as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires, not middle-/working-/poor-class”) and unions are seen as a serious blocker in that frame of mind, perhaps because of the history if the word union by opposing political powers, most likely because of a mix of the above and the amount of shouty misinformation anything attracts from the likes of Fox “news” and similarly crap (but in some cases differently biased) outlets generate on every subject.

But they are definitely a controversial topic elsewhere too.

1) A whole lot of propaganda effort has gone into spreading anti-union sentiment for at least over a century, from the very deep pockets of the richest private actors in the world, like Amazon. Since they managed to capture half the politicians, it has become a culture war issue to the point that being pro and anti union is more a marker of personal identity than a reasoned position.

2) Historically, America's largest unions were often controlled by organized crime, which prevented competition and fixed prices at an artificially high level so mob bosses could get a cut and "consultants" who didn't actually do anything could be put on payroll so someone who owned 20 houses without having a real job could deflect scrutiny from the IRS. Since a lot of what was priced so high because of this was public works construction, it impacted everyone, and gave unions generally a bad reputation.

3) People like me who have never been in a "real" union, but still might have stupid one-off college jobs that nonetheless required you to join a union, have their only exposure come through something ineffective that isn't providing any actual benefits but is taking a cut of your already low pay anyway. For whatever reason, I had to join a union to work at Disneyland, but that didn't prevent me from making $10 an hour, didn't prevent my friend from practically getting her leg burned off and having it blamed on her with no disability assistance, and didn't prevent me from getting laid off when they downsized entertainment.

On the other hand, my dad was a plumber and his union seemed to bring him real benefit. But in a white collar environment like Hacker News, or pretty much anywhere you're likely to hang out on the Internet, anyone who has ever been in a union at all was more likely in something like the Disneyland union.

You realize how disgustingly patronizing you sound?

First, Google (and FB/amzn, which also have dogs in this) are extremely powerful within the media industry. So, their shadow looms very long here.

Second, thinking of these issues as running via media through to an informed public to an attentive political structure is far too naive.

Political mechanisms are rarely about for Vs against. It's about defining the debate, legislation and it's details.

Google have a ton of influence in many sectors. Small businesses are one. News media is another. Enlisting these to achieve their political goals is corporatism.

I think you gravely overestimate the power that local newspapers had.

Not the maps ad revenue, that's a pittance. The search revenue.

And note that a company that was the world's biggest (or nearly so) at the time failed to catch up, and has still failed, despite also dipping deep into an unrelated (near-monopolistic) source of funding. They apparently "only" had 1000 staff.

There aren't lots of competitors, and nobody has a hope in the world of catching up with Google Maps and their illegal use of their monopoly to dominate other markets. Even other companies illegally abusing their own near-monopoly position have failed!

People used to depend on at&t for business and still hate it back when they owned the entire phone system (including the phone on the wall).

Now, it's pretty hard if not impossible to compete with them thanks to the network effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

How could any company that's interested in being "open" compete with a behemoth that has the advantage of countless engineer-years that have been spent developing their solutions, as well as millions of participants that have given them the data, which probably cannot be legally mined and imported and certainly isn't exported?

The answer is that they can't and being upset about this is probably a valid emotional response, even though it could be worded a bit better.

Edit: I can't help but to think of how the industry handles DNS domains, for example, the .lv domain for my country is looked after by the University of Latvia: https://www.nic.lv/en/about-us

I wonder what a similarly distributed registry of companies, for example, run by the governments of each country (which could then be integrated with the company registers) would look like. Of course, whether the quality of engineering or the overall experience would be up to par with Google's is debatable.

That said, the distributed COVID contact tracing approach that we saw was a little bit like this - even if Google and Apple did a lot of work for the underlying library, each country developed their own contact tracing app and eventually all of those could interoperate. There's no actual reason why the FOSS community couldn't build something like that, but for finding companies etc.