Meta, Microsoft, AWS and TomTom launch Overture Foundation for open map data | Hacker News Reader

Meta, Microsoft, AWS and TomTom launch Overture Foundation for open map data

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Surely someone here knows better than me, but it seems Google's dominance in this space is not due to pure mapping data (although that also seems to be the best in the world) - it's due to the massive amounts of data the join in with the mapping data to provide real-time road closure and traffic information as well as what the "best route" is.

Apple Maps has taken me some really strange routes (I live in a rural area) while Google consistently picks the route you'd expect.

I've been hoping for a Google alternative because their monopoly on mapping that leads to further data collection is terrifying, but I'm bearish on the idea of pure mapping data being it.

> Google consistently picks the route you'd expect.

This definitely isn't my experience. For me, Google consistently picks more dangerous routes even if they offer little to no time savings. The app consistently tries to kill me by doing things like routing me through crazy 5-way intersections when it could just as easily send me one street over for no additional time cost.

Most big cities publish data on their most dangerous intersections, so it's not like it should be an especially hard problem to fix.

Wouldn't it create traffic problems if they start routing everyone through side streets around the main intersections?

Where I live, Google maps like to suggest this one comically evil route that takes you across 3 lanes of traffic, through a "roundabout" then across the 3 lanes of opposing traffic. On a highway. While yes, the "roundabout" does exist, its there for only two reasons: for emergency vehicles to idle in and for routing traffic when the segment of highway beyond is closed.

Published data is a catch-22. Dangerous intersections may look worse than other options simply due to the fact that they're more heavily used. In my area, I have 3 different options to get to the same location:

1. Take the most western-route to a traffic light, make a right, and then another right into the destination.

2. Take a more slightly eastern single-lane back road that puts me right out at the destination with still an immediate right onto the main road before getting there (danger factor in the single-lane aspect)

3. Take the most eastern route, make an unprotected left turn onto the main highway (often having to use the center median lane as a buffer for space), and then make another unprotected left into the destination.

Option 1 would show the most published crash data since it's a traffic-light intersection and is most busy by default, while I'd argue that it's also still the safest.

Yup. Google tries to get me to make a left turn from a stop sign across 4 lanes of main street suburban traffic rather than waiting at the traffic light one block north - a light that that also backs traffic up past the stop sign when the main street traffic flow stops. I wrote them a couple of times a few years back, but I've learned to ignore the directions.

Maybe it’s easier to contact your municipality about this dangerous abomination.

I imagine the algorithm that Google is using to send you to that route is simply that other users before you that have used that route have progressed quicker than others that used the "safe" one.

To your point, Logan Airport in Boston is a pain to drive to, except there is a freeway that goes directly there. However, Google Maps directions starting north of Boston (Bedford area, for example) will drive you through the industrial port area where roads are not well paved, painted, or marked, all to save 1m of travel time. Apple Maps puts you on the freeway as expected (this was my experience pre-pandemic).

On the flip side, Apple Maps has led me to closed roads and routes that don't actually exist, while Google Maps has never done that.

No one solution will be perfect, as they don't have exactly the same goals.

Google maps have led me to a military use only road. I literally didn't know they existed in my country before :P

Yeah, Google naturally does have heaps of data. But it's mobile device data. It's really hard for them to figure out when people are in cars, buses, bikes, etc. Did you ever see the artist that created "red traffic jams" on google maps by using 100 phones in a kiddy trailer?

TOmTom's mentioned it a bit over the years, having something like 600 million connected devices. Every satnav, car with their maps in, reports traffic data back. Majority cars on the road use TT traffic data I think.

As for routing algos, they vary a lot and the map isnt entirely responsible for how effective they are.

There definitely needs to be an alternate to google, you're right there. Data is the start, hopefully with this news, it consolidates the competition, so its everyone vs google. not just google versus an uncoordinated mass

> It's really hard for them to figure out when people are in cars, buses, bikes, etc. Did you ever see the artist that created "red traffic jams" on google maps by using 100 phones in a kiddy trailer?

I don't think it's got much to do with the map data being hard to figure at as much as "carrying 100 phones set to a car trip up and down the road in a hand pulled wagon for an hour" being an irrelevant thing to worry about. 100 people aren't going to be driving on top of each other with the directions accidentally set to walk very often and outside of that kind of use case the data is going to be extraordinarily accurate.

Adding an anecdatum here to match a sibling -- Google maps has become a bit of a joke in my family. It consistently does everything it can to avoid putting us on major highways despite not having that option checked. It has taken us on crazy back-country roads constant going 25mph in deer season in pitch black to save us 1 minute rather than putting us on the highway. If we get back on the highway, it just tries to route us back onto the country road as soon as physically possible.

Apple Maps may have less data and thus not always be up to date, but in the 6 months we've been using it since I got a new iPhone, it has never once steered us on a path we didn't expect. Every time we get in the car we can choose to use my phone or my wife's and we always pick mine for that reason.

Google made a change a while back to offer the most energy efficient ("greenest") route. Maybe a frontage road at 40mph burns less fuel than 75mph on the interstate?

in my experience they both take dumb routes. I still long for options like avoiding left hand turns (especially unprotected turns), very short merges (frequently end up with silly routes that have you cross four lanes of heavy traffic). The other issue I have is everyone seems to over-optimize the travel time. I don't care if taking a different route could save me two minutes. If it's nothing but stop lights thats not helpful. Tesla has a neat feature where you can tell it how many minutes an alternative route needs to save before it suggests it. Obviously if a route is going to save me 20 minutes then sure, thats probably worth it.

The other thing that I've been thinking about is how dangerous these directions can be in areas that get bad weather. I've had both Apple and Google try to direct me to take a very steep hill when it's icy out instead of taking the treated highway that would add five minutes to the drive. They need better understanding of road surfaces and weather.

have you ever tried Yandex Navigator, I've just started using it I am surprised how much is it accurate!

Apple Maps in the areas I've lived in has been just as good (and bad) in routing and real time info. That wasn't always true but in the last few years it certainly is. With Google Maps declining into ad placements (for things I'll never go to at that) and Apple Maps continuing to get better the choice has been pretty easy lately.

is not due to pure mapping data

Two big factors were that Google made itself an early mover in this space, and it made the product available for free.

In the world before Google Maps, maps were frightfully expensive, or tremendously outdated.

I worked for a company that subscribed to a digital mapping service. We paid large sums of money each year for the right to use the maps. In addition to having a dedicated terminal, we even had a full-time staffer whose job was to touch up the generated maps for our purposes.

Then Google bought Keyhole, and made all of its treasures available to the public for free.

It's like someone opened a bakery and gave away bread for free until all the other bakeries went out of business. A business model that drug dealers sometimes use.

Then the remaining Google bakery decided that the way it would make money from its bread monopoly is to collect personal data on everyone who eats bread, while pretending that the bread is available at no cost.

Business Profiles on Google Maps drives the monopoly.

If you want your business found on Google Maps, you need to provide the address, hours, etc. This is one of the first things you do when you open a business, even if you don't have a website.

Not many people bother to add the same to OpenStreetMap and that's why everyone uses Google over OSM to search for businesses.

Well, when I registered an LLC in the US, Google mailed me a postcard to confirm my address, and third-party providers begin calling to help "claim my Google listing". So they've really created an ecosystem that you immediately become part of rather than something you have to seek out. Edit: I also completely agree that this is what drives the monopoly.

Sounds like there is hope: if Google can find you, so can the Overture Foundation.

The big thing I'd ask on that is "How much time did the really strange routes cost you?" Because in the real world, a route being "strange" is often somewhat irrelevant if your goal is to get from point A to point B.

Apple Maps is so much closer to feature/quality parity to Google Maps than most people realize because of the negative publicity surrounding its launch.

A whole lot of people on iPhones just don't use Apple Maps for that reason but I think it's easily the preferable choice of the two.

I think the overall design of the UI is smoother, simpler, and better. One example where Google is behind: you can't add the Transit overlay and use 3D at the same time. Google's 3D building view is cluttered and can't be seen zoomed out as much as in Apple Maps.

When you zoom and scroll around in Apple Maps, it consistently has higher framerates and less stutters than Google.

I also love the quality and performance of Look Around, despite it not being as comprehensive as Street View.

I use osmand and have no issues with it. Haven't needed Google maps in some years so some of it might be people just don't know about the alternatives.

> Google's dominance in this space is not due to pure mapping data (although that also seems to be the best in the world)

That depends on type of data and area, in many cases OSM data is superior or as good (or as bad) as Goggle data.

For POIs and car-centric info in rich countries Google clearly dominates, for hiking and cycling data OSM is much better and so on.

> The founding companies are planning to engage in collaborative map-building programs, meshing data from myriad open data sources and knocking it into a format that’s consistent, standardized, and fit for use in production systems and applications. This will include channeling data from long-established projects such as OpenStreetMap, in addition to open data provided by municipalities.

Interested to see if OpenStreetMap could benefit from this as well.

I don't understand why they don't just open source an engine that uses OpenStreetMap .. Why do we need a new project and new foundation? .. It just seems like a new wall around it so that AWS et. al. can lock people into EC2 and data charges.

Probably don't want that hideous mandated banner.

Banner? OSM just requires simple attribution like every other major map data supplier does.

> Why do we need a new project and new foundation?

My best guess: control, and not having to contribute back mapping data to OSM.

From their FAQ:

> Overture is a data-centric map project, not a community of individual map editors. Therefore, Overture is intended to be complementary to OSM. We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets. Overture data will be available for use by the OpenStreetMap community under compatible open data licenses. Overture members are encouraged to contribute to OSM directly.

It sounds to me like this Foundation wants to be less of an "open Wiki" for data and more of a QA/QC "task force" for OSM data: both contributing known good data back to OSM and trying to curate the best of OSM data back out.

Also, it sounds like there's an AR/3D spatial data focus here that goes beyond what OSM currently maps.

Though everything is still vaguely worded and lacking examples, so who knows.

If you just want the latest data in a usable GIS format and not to just view it. OSM can be a huge pain to get what you want, especially if you are not intimately familiar with it and the tools around it. I took part of their messaging to be about being focused on usable data. Here is a nice clean road network in a standard format for each country and the world. Or things like that.

> ... the program is driven by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Facebook’s parent company Meta, Microsoft, and Dutch mapping company TomTom ... Google is a notable omission from the Overture Maps Foundation’s founding members...

> Moreover, with the iPhone arriving around the same time, a combination that brought maps and navigation into the pockets of millions of people globally, this had a monumental impact on incumbents such as TomTom ...

> In the intervening years, TomTom has tried to evolve, striking map and data partnerships with the likes of Uber and Microsoft ...

- - -

Super weird this article keeps carrying on about TomTom and listing half of FAANG, even mentioning impact of iPhone, yet not mentioning Apple using TomTom worldwide from 2012 till 2020.

Apple Maps was essentially pure TomTom at the start, and still relying on TomTom for USA up until 2 years ago when US went Apple native, and (as far as I know, I haven't driven outside US since pandemic) is still using TomTom internationally.

Article about dropping TomTom in domestic US in 2020:

“…less a rollout of fresh features than an important step toward the company's own mapping independence”

https://archive.vn/tGmQc

A 2012 discussion of TomTom the day after Maps launched:

“Does Apple Maps sound the death knell for TomTom? Probably not, although it might mean less people want to buy TomTom for iPhone. TomTom will surely have factored any negatives into the positives of its licensing agreement: this is how business works.”

https://www.pocket-lint.com/apps/news/tomtom/115879-tomtom-s...

> (as far as I know) is still using TomTom internationally

Apple has been expanding the areas where they replace TomTom's data with their own.

Today, they are using their own data in the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia and most of the EU. Another expansion to fill out the EU coverage is in testing and expected to go live this week.

https://www.justinobeirne.com/new-apple-maps-france-monaco-n...

"Google is a notable omission from the Overture Maps Foundation’s founding members. "

Also Apple seems to be missing there.

I hope Apple, Mapbox and others get involved here. It will be an important counterweight to Google’s dominance in Maps, especially with them increasing prices on customers about a year ago

https://www.techighness.com/post/google-maps-price-hike-its-...

MapBox imploded https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812401

...also Esri, OpenStreetMap Foundation, Mapbox.

Well, it's obviously a map that will be a competitor to Google.

Esri, garmin and mapbox as well

I'm curious to see how open that data will be in the end: Is everything public domain, who can change the data and will information flow back to OSM? What is the distinction to OSM?

see the FAQ: https://overturemaps.org/resources/faq/

For those who won't click through;

What is the relationship between Overture and OpenStreetMap?

How will Overture data be licensed?

> Data contributed to ODbL licensed datasets will be contributed under both the ODbL and CDLA permissive v2. Contributions to CDLA permissive v2 datasets will be contributed under the CDLA permissive v2.

How will Overture code be licensed?

> Overture’s open source code will be subject to the MIT license.

So basically, they're going to use Open Street Map's data, but as a data source to their own project. They won't be giving their efforts to improving OSM?

Fucking lame.

I think the focus on Overture is going to be on machine-generated data like imagery-based mapping. Unfortunately it isn't really super practical to feed this kind of thing back into the OSM project right now (extremely high change rate makes it hard to review changes, OSM process for approval of automated imports is oriented towards a high level of reliability that this data doesn't always have). I think maintaining this kind of data separately from OSM but still permissively licensed makes a lot of sense, and will benefit the OSM project as these data layers will become useful sources for the manual, human-intelligence-based mapping that the OSM project is really built around.

Or to put it a little differently: from my experience with OSM politics (not expansive but also not that small), the OSM project probably doesn't want this data. It would become a huge headache for OSM contributors to do QA on. There have been multiple notable incidents of companies starting to feed automatically generated data in to OSM and getting lambasted for it. Keeping it separate from OSM but available for use with and for OSM is the respectful thing to do.

That's how I view this too. Increasing the 'demand' for OSM's data will be a net good since it guarantees a future where companies are using it and reliant on it. Not burdening them with all of this extra info that they don't want and can't reasonably steward makes a lot of sense. It's hard to see how this is anything but a big plus for the OSM community.

This is spot on.

> We combine OSM with other sources to produce new open map data sets.

I worry that they will proceed to claim that it means that they do not need to actually attribute OSM. Well, Facebook for example is already violating OSM license by hiding attribution in places where normal user will never see it - even typical HN user may not click on this hidden button on FB maps.

To me, this is the Google alternative that we have been waiting for. Open, collaborative, but with some real money attached to it. I hope it works.

I’d like to see them commit to free map updates for the navigation systems preinstalled in many vehicles. Every car I’ve owned in the past 18 years has used TomTom maps, and has charged for annual map updates. In the last 12 years, you’ve just downloaded them onto a USB drive and your head unit recognized the data. The download data seems to be encrypted, and sometimes even vehicle-specific. My guess is the vehicle specific data is to account for features related to physical buttons on the head unit, GPS antenna input, and signals used for dead-reckoning.

It will be interesting to see how the data is licensed. E.g., will they use a Copyleft license compatible with OpenStreetMaps or a more permissive license like CC-by? If the license permits, it will also be interesting to see how the schema interoperability with OSM develops to build on that enormous data source.

The FAQ suggests they'll use a permissive licence (CDLA Permissive) by default, and the ODbL (as used by OSM) when contributing to existing ODbL-licensed data.

Daylight distribution and building footprint were toes dipped in the pool… Now everyone jumped in. ODbL-aware, both upstream & downstream of Openstreetmap. Fun times ahead at the interface between their industrial scale automation and Openstreetmap craft mapping !

Interesting. We're using maps API at work and We're looking for other solutions just in case google goes nuts hiking it's prices, etc...

It'd be great if Apple would throw their weight behind this effort.

Apple and open data in the same room? Nah.

They won't bat an eye if no profit is involved, and no guarantee to be the only one to profit.

Apple has full-time employees contributing to openstreetmap https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/issues

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