People should be responsible for the machines they operate. North Carolina should be responsible for their roadways. Google _should_ update their maps but that's aspirational. It's clearly a hard problem to solve when no data exists.
I think it's really cool that Maps has these community features (and they're often more up to date than even OpenStreetMap).
But the process is totally opaque. Sometimes you submit a random edit[1] and it shows up a minute later. Other times you can submit the same highly important edit (this road will be closed for months), multiple times, and it won't show up for months if ever. But beyond the initial confirmation that says thanks, they'll review it, nothing. No status updates unless it actually goes through. No request for additional evidence or denial with or without reason. Just silence a lot of times.
I wish they'd provide followups and really allow the local guide community -- their volunteer boots on the ground "ground truth" team -- more transparency and proper change tracking. We want to help. We live in these places and use Maps multiple times a day.
Maps's errors range from inconvenient to outright dangerous (my area has a bunch of fake stop signs that don't actually exist, and real stop signs that aren't on Maps, and I've nearly slammed on the brakes when it told me there's a stop sign when there isn't). And it's gotten a lot worse recently. Not sure if they're using more AI or whatever, but there's just wrong information everywhere, often for months if not years. I fix them every time I can, but the process is aggravatingly slow and seemingly random. It would be better to use peer local moderators instead of whatever invisible process they have now.
They don't lack data. Even the article says they received reports. They lack a functional pipeline to vet and approve that data in a reasonably timely fashion.
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[1] Side anecdote: One time, deep in my discontent during an election cycle, I marked a local political headquarter of one of the two major parties as a "Garbage Dump". It went through immediately and stayed for months, even making the local news. Every time you were in that area, the icon would prominently show up. Yep, political party X, still ever the dumpster fire. Got a kick outta that, heh. Sweet, petty digital vengeance.
Why not contribute to an actually open database that benefits to everyone and takes your contributions seriously?
(I personally don't think that Google, of all organizations, needs to be helped by unpaid volunteers - and they can import OSM themselves anyway if they choose to)
But in my day to day life, frankly, Maps is just a lot easier. It has traffic and Wyze real time reports built in, shows crashes and construction and parades and whatnot. It has the world's best POI database with contact information, reviews, pictures, menus, etc. It has good offline support with vector tiles. It integrates with my contacts so I can easily say "navigate to friend X's home". It's very useful... when it's accurate.
I guess I'm just practical like that, being generally supportive of OSM and open source in general, but not a purist by any stretch. If there are any other map apps, proprietary or not, that nears feature parity to Google's (especially real time traffic and reports), I'd consider switching and contributing there instead. Is anything close yet?
Why don't you contribute to OpenStreetMap instead? That way it will be more up to date than Google Maps in your corner of Earth too (like it does in many areas). Organic Maps is a very good replacement for the Google Maps app, I am told.
But in regards to:
> What you describe are not community features, but rather "user-sourced one-way value creation," ie. you can't benefit from the content you contribute unless Google takes unilateral action to allow you.
It's not very different from, say, Metacritic or Steam or Amazon reviews or Goodreads. Or this HN forum, for the matter. These things unfortunately have a network effect, and it takes a critical mass of editors to make them worthwhile. Maps has that first mover advantage, coming out the same time at OSM but seeing massively more adoption, especially when it comes to POIs like restaurants and such.
I find that OSM has better and better geography, but its POI layers are still lacking modern conveniences like contact information, reviews, and photos. Its UI is still pretty primitive and opts for miscellaneous tags instead of useful primary business attributes. Generally I just find it harder to use, and harder to share with others. I feel like it's juuuust near critical mass, but not quite there...
I fully agree, and refuse to feed unpaid content to them.
> Or this HN forum, for the matter.
No. (Unless HN is monetizing my content in some way I'm not aware of.)
> [OSM] POI layers are still lacking modern conveniences
Please come join us and help make it better! :-)
Huh. Interesting idea. What language are the frontend and backend in?
There are many "front-ends" [2].
A developer's view of some of the OSM infrastructure is at [3].
[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors
[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM-based_servic...
so you've almost caused accidents looking at your phone instead of outside the car at the actual road?
After that experience I learned to just ignore them all in Maps.
To be clear, I think the stop signs and stoplights in Google Maps are a total anti-feature, a distraction that should be disabled. As soon as I saw them I wanted to turn them off (you can't), especially after this experience. It's been months now and they are still wrong, and there's no way to submit feedback about a stop sign, and I'm sure Google doesn't care. Sigh.
Ironically, if anything gets me to switch to OSM, it'll be because Google self-sabotaged their service yet again. Maps peaked a few years ago and has been steadily getting more ads and clutter. And last week or so they rolled out a new color palette that makes it impossible to distinguish between the current navigation route and other alternative routes. It's really a safety hazard, sigh. Maybe time to seriously look at alternatives...
You can notice a stop sign being displayed on a screen attached near or on the windshield at the corner of your sight when you are looking at the road.
I would imagine anyway. I don't drive much. I bike and take the train.
Wikipedia has humans in the loop too but doesn't take forever.
It's more a matter of transparency and tracking, I think, never knowing what happens to an edit once it's submitted. In most similar user submission systems you at least get status updates if not outright version control and ticket tracking.
Yes, but there are limits. E.g. if you're sold a car whose brakes are not fit for purpose, the manufacturer should bear some of the blame when you hit something. The alternative is that every consumer needs to be an expert (or consult an expert) before every purchase, which is a ton of friction for a functioning economy.
I'm not sure how much blame Google should bear in this case, but that's why we have a court system.
Just because they aren't designed to fly doesn't mean car acquisitions don't need to be 'pre-flighted' and taken for a shakedown cruise.
https://contentpartners.maps.google.com/
https://support.google.com/mapcontentpartners/answer/144284?...
If you read the article, Google had received reports that it was directing drivers to that collapsed bridge at least 2 years prior to this man's death, and google responded saying "they were looking into it".