Google removed Organic Maps from the Play Store
twitter.com
twitter.com
In any case, at least we can see the replies and other posts from the account without having to create an account. Still better than Twitter/X in my view.
While true, I'd much rather read discussions on HN than say X or even Reddit these days.
— But that’s where the information is.
— Stop linking to Twitter/X, here’s a Fediverse link with more information.
— But it has fewer engagement.
— Stop linking to Twitter/X, here’s a Fediverse link with more information and more engagement.
— …
— OK, at some point, you need to recognize that you are the problem.
Why does posting there make a user a “problem”?
Who’s the judge of what’s a “problem” and what are the criteria, I wonder.
As someone without a Twitter/X account, their links are bad. I can only see the first post of a chain, can't see replies, etc. Mastodon is better in that regard.
This has nothing to do with the content of the platform, Musk, etc, btw. It's just the fact that now it's a bit hostile for logged out users/people without accounts. It used to be fine, but now it hides content, which is bad for me.
It only motivates me to avoid the platform.
It was always awful, in my opinion. Twitter does a good job at letting people publish "sound bytes"; little bits of what's on their mind. Past that (into longer form and discussion) it has never been good.
Why is posting there make the user a problem? Because, if the user is trying to communicate something, they are choosing a platform that isn't interested in making it effective at communication. A closed off community isn't the town square it claims to be. If you are communication on that site, you can be sure people directed aren't getting the full story.
Who's the judge? Me. I am the judge of what a problem is. So is the parent poster you were replying to. They are also a judge. It's odd that you hand off opinions to others and don't make your own.
Clicking on almost any of the UI elements leads to a log in prompt, without showing anything else. For people without accounts (or those who don't want to make one), that's probably not functionally different from dropping a link to some forum that requires registration, albeit in this case I guess at least the main post is visible.
The Mastodon link in comparison has the discussion visible up front, which is nice to see! Now whether the fediverse is popular enough to actually have good discussions, that's a bit harder to say, but at least it's something!
I think Facebook also had similar issues, where it gates a lot of things behind a login prompt, quite user hostile, though also understandable why they'd do it that way.
I don’t have an Instagram account and don’t see a reason to create one, but my friends can still link me pictures or videos that I can look at. If I want to engage in any way or read past the couple top comments, I need to create an account.
Showing the user what they came for is a good way to get free advertisement, but requiring them to create an account to actually use the platform is perfectly reasonable.
I don't know who was the first moron who decided to post the first "long form writeup" on a platform that only supports blurbs... but I am absolutely amazed that people thought it was a good idea and followed suit.
2. Because you are basically linking to a deep link in the dark web.
3. We all get to make our own decisions, and the person calling out shitty websites that you should not bring to the group has my support.
If someone was telling me to look up information from a print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from the 1970s, I'd have the same problem: it is an absurd thing to ask of me because there are better, more frictionless ways to obtain the information.
For better or for worse at least you can view this single tweet now, but right after Musk took over he blocked all access without account which was just annoying.
Imagine if HN would require you to have account browse and read it. That's what's mostly happened to twitter (and happens to the rest of our benevolent overlords/social platforms like fb and instagram, to which regular web migrated with the information :/)
There is a reason most people in democratic countries don't like it, if there country has all the powers in one hand. At the same time it seams to be accepted for cooperation, as long as there are big enough.
It's a much more serious problem with iOS, where if Apple doesn't like your app, your service, your policies, or even your attitude, you just aren't getting your app out to your users, period. But we'll see where EU DMA takes this.
So complicated.
On iOS, I'm sure the EU regulators will demand that Apple at least tone down their warnings.
The warnings are just that.
If you are not on the Play Store you lose the majority of your installations.
It's like a musician who is not on YouTube and not on Spotify.
Or a website that is not on Google Search.
- Generic utility apps, the kind that you would search by what they do, like an audio player, an image converter, or a file manager — yes, it works for them like you say.
- Those free to play mobile games everyone knows and loves (no). They buy stupid amount of ads to get people to install them. They may get some installations thanks the app stores themselves, e.g. from the top charts, assuming they get high enough there. So app stores do play a role in their visibility, but a limited one. And this is where it ends.
- Apps for IRL services, like getting around (taxi/scooter rental/car sharing), or ordering food, or many other similar things. They get popular because people see their logos around them all the dang time, often together with QR codes with download links. They also often buy ads. Sometimes people recommend them to each other. App stores don't play any significant role for these.
- Apps for something you already use. Like your home utilities, or your bank, or some sort of "smart" device you got, or loyalty programs. Again, you don't discover these thanks to app stores, you usually install them because that company says "we have an app, get it here".
- Social/collaboration apps, the kind that are useless without people you know also using them. No one searches app stores for "social media" or "messaging" or "calls". People recommend them to each other. People see that their friends are on there and get on there too. Again, app stores don't do much here.
I doubt most users will, even when given the link to an .apk, install it. Either because they are discouraged by the alarming prompts (in my opinion a tradeoff that is unfortunately worth it) or because they get lost.
However, I still agree with the GP that if you are not on the Play Store, you lose most of your installations.
If someone has already discovered your app and can't find it on the Play Store, they are more likely to assume that it's not supported on their phone, unavailable in their region or whatever. Even if you explicitly tell them to just download the APK, most people will not do that. Keep in mind that the average user probably doesn't even know that you can install apps from outside the Play Store. Or even if they guess that it's probably possible, they might well perceive it as complicated and sketchy.
Edit: it might be different for younger generations who grew up with modern smartphones.
Except if let's say Uber quit the app store then users would still first search there and many of them will install the first result which will now be a competitior since Google is allergic to showing no results if there is no relevant answer.
For everything else there is the issue of trust. Google does everything they can to make installing apps outside the app store feel like you are doing something dangerous.
There are plenty of musicians who are perfectly happy not being on YouTube or Spotify.
It's almost like a protest, at this point - and I don't mean like a boycott either.
Not only is the fate of your app in the hands of the Play Store, but also in the hands of their testers. Just had a critical bug in an update release 5 days ago, affecting fresh installs. I immediately fixed it after a friend notified me, pushed the fixed update, only to wait till yesterday to get rejected due to a super minor ui issue. Then finally got approval this morning. Typically I waited 30 min for approval, 2 hrs the longest.
During that time I reached out to their non-existent customer support, messaged their "help forum", called any number I could find, finally resorted to randomly messaging employees on LinkedIn out of desperation. Nothing. And when you try to get support through their help options, it's a gamble as to whether or not the help option you select is going to give you an error. Not to mention any number you call ends with "please visit support.google.com. thanks for calling".
In the meantime, I had ~300+ uninstalls out of the ~1200 I had, and risked my 4.8 rating tanking and sinking my chances of success before I even really started.
That's just my story. There are people who are facing even worse rn dealing with them and have been waiting for weeks.
It's much more worthwhile being in a small catalog of quality privacy-preserving software than being in the cesspool of millions of ad- and spyware trash from Google.
I'm sure the mainstream users will find them easier on play but the real target audience will be on F-Droid.
Ps having said that, the ban is ridiculous of course
In this case I'm not sure why Google would pull Organic Maps. That doesn't mean we need the government playing a role in defining ever company's terms of service, deciding when they're broken, and enforcing the punishment. How would that even scale?
Most countries have competition laws that also restrict what companies can do. That is the point here. We need need government intervention when the market lacks competition.
Something like an Ombudsman scheme for app stores would do it.
> In this case I'm not sure why Google would pull Organic Maps.
Exactly. Someone competent should decide whether that is an anti-competitive move or not. Noting that a "mistake" may be anti-competitive and may deserve a fine.
That someone is a government.
People saying that Google shouldn't be allowed to decide who can or can't sell on their platform is like saying someone should have every right to sell their wares from your front porch; even though you're the owner of the property, you pay for living there, and don't want them selling their stuff on your land.
The public marketplace is a different story. If Google prevents you from selling somewhere else then the government needs to get involved because this is anti competitive behavior.
Goes back to my analogy of a random person selling stuff on my porch. I paid for this house and I pay the taxes on the land. If I don't want you selling your stuff here then you need to get out.
It's funny because you seem to use the last two sentences to explain how it is not a monopoly, where it is actually usually a precondition to getting into a monopoly position.
> A monopoly would be if they owned the only means of creating and running a cellphone operating system and prevented others from doing the same.
This reminds me of this french movie (OSS 117) where the main character genuinely doesn't understand what a dictatorship is. And he says: "A dictatorship is when people are communists, cold, with gray hats and zippered shoes."
The problem in this case is not that Google should be forced to "sell" stuff they don't want to sell. The problem is that Google takes advantage of the fact that they are in practice the only marketplace to sell their own goods (here Google Maps or Waze) and prevent competitors from reaching an audience (here Organic Maps).
And your comparison is very limited anyway, because Google is not selling stuff on their front porch. They are distributing software to billions of devices. It's a very different situation.
Imagine you wrote an application and you choose who you want to partner with. You agree on what that partner can and can't do. Now, someone else comes along and says you must partner with them and they should be allowed to do whatever they want in your app. Are you saying you have to comply? Even if you're the one absorbing all of the cost and you don't agree with the content?
If so, please let me know where you live so I can come set up my business from your house. It's going to save me so much money since you have to take all the financial risk of paying for my utility usage, plumbing, internet, etc. And I can tap into all the connections you've made over the years living there.
Edit: Google does not have a monopoly on cellphone OSes or app marketplaces. There are numerous others and anyone is free to create their own. You just have to spend the billions of dollars they spent to make yours as popular.
> You just have to spend the billions of dollars
That's exactly what makes a de facto monopoly. Your arguments sound like this to me: "This is not a dictatorship, because you are not forced to obey the power in place. You could just overtake the government and take the power yourself."
What's preventing you (or someone with capital they want to risk) from building a mobile OS?
Even without a monopoly, it should be illegal for the owner of a popular app store to promote their products like this.
They just need to get big fat fines when they do it. But of course, "it was an unfortunate mistake". Or we should just split them: Google Maps could be out of Google.
If I want this app I am now being sent to download an APK, I lose all the protection of the app store. If they cry wolf enough people will get used to doing that. Then when something comes along that is harmful and they want to yank it genuinely to protect users, people will still download the apk.
I'd argue that it would be safer than the Play Store version because F-Droid builds are at least reproducible, while it's not clear what checks are actually done by the Play Store before publishing an update. Most of what Play Protect claims to do could be from a simple malware signature check.
On the other hand, GMaps is better for up-to-date commercial data like stores and their opening hours. Its navigation system is better too. As much as I'd like to drop all Google services from my life, Maps is too useful to let go.
Google has an infinitely-larger community; a local community is not sufficient in dense areas where businesses are opening and closing every day. France has the third largest OSM community and yet some neighborhoods of its largest cities are full of outdated businesses.
That being said, I switched to Organic maps years ago. For 90% of places I go, it turns out I go to them repeatedly day-to-day, so I added them to the map the first time and update them when I go there and the hours have changed. Then they're on the map the rest of the time when I need to look up hours or what not so I rarely have anywhere around here that I go to that's not on the map anymore. When I do, I add it and next time it's on there and it works well enough 99% of the time.
For example, bicycle routing in my area was unreliable, because it would try to route me over rough trails. Just adding a few tags improved the experience dramatically. And then it was fixed not only for me, but everybody else too.
Meanwhile, other people fixed other annoyances, and the map works better across many areas. Google instead decides to hide things that interest me, and shows sponsored places I don't care for. I have zero recourse.
This works for routing, but doesn’t apply to businesses: for the bare minimum you have to add one or two tags (type + name), to make that more useful you have to add the opening hours and ideally the website. Now multiply this by 60,000 (the number of businesses in Paris, France). By the time you’ve finished your neighborhood some businesses you checked last month are already closed and some new ones already opened. Go on holidays? Too bad, you have to start over again when you come back. Trust me, I’m contributing almost every day and I can’t keep the pace.
And I think even partially complete OSM is helpful. If I add just one ATM, that can already help somebody looking for one. That might even be me, when I know it's there somewhere, but not exactly where.
community size absolutely does not matter, it's the activity. a local active community of 2 active persons for every 260 residents is sufficient
That would be huge. For a city with 2M inhabitants, that would mean 8k active contributors. Remember that there are ~40-50k active OSM contributors in the whole world.
Google - a real person - calls every week to update.
Business owners usually provide it on their door. I added opening hours to many places, and importantly I didn't have to add opening hours to many other because they already had them.
> For real time bus/rail status you need integrations to countless public transit systems.
For public transportation, I personally usually need to buy a ticket, which Google Maps doesn't provide. So I use the public transportation app of the country in question. For countries where public transportation are public, which usually implies an app, of course. Countries that have broken public transportation won't work the same, but anyway the public transportation is broken there :-).
I actively avoid contributing to that corp. Not even marking spam. Let them drown in the fruits of their own incentives.
Even if you managed to help a shop get hundreds or thousands of new customers by updating their online information, they wouldn't even give you a cup of coffee if you asked. More likely they'd spit in your face.
For most physical businesses that are open to the public, correct information on map services are by far their most important advertising. Yet, they neglect this and spend thousands on billboards, social media, radio spots, etc. If they are failing as business owners, that's their own problem.
Not in my country. They don't even keep track of national holidays, and very often keep listing establishments that closed down years ago.
Also, you might be standing in front of a restaurant and when asking google maps for nearby restaurants, if that one isn't blessed, you'll get directions to a 3km restaurant instead.
google used to be good, because if the hours were there, someone had put effort in. they were 95% accurate for CONUS. but over the last 6~ years the quality has degraded. Only about 65% accurate now. And to me, that's worse than unuseful, because i can't plan, i need to verify, so i might as well have gone to the store website anyways.
also who the heck needs open and close times? if you need that level of precision you need a personal assistant.
Uh I do?
Not all restaurants are open for both lunch and dinners, and in every country there's different ideas on what's the appropriate time for having a meal.
I much prefer Every Door, especially for updating opening hours and any kind of place details. Have you tried it?
So many places have better OSM-based coverage nowadays.
If you want to make OSM data better (like that business hours you mentioned) I find Street Complete [0] app fun and absolutely friction less way to do that.
Guys, if the device has location services disabled, your app should get the hint after I dismiss the prompt for the n!th time.
I switched from OSMAnd to Organic Maps a few years ago. Organic Maps is way faster, and I actually understand what all the buttons do.
It has some minor limitations, though: it cannot keep the GPS on when you switch to a different app, and it doesn't do track recording.
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.
They are not entirely wrong to view the market this way. Most apps and projects are built these days primarily as means to extract revenue from the market at a low cost. Sometimes they are so much this that we call them grifts, and there have been many in tech recently, and certainly on the Play Store. But there are still some companies with better values.
This is a long way to say that unless an app/project/business/website is evidently monetized, it can probably be assumed it's monetized by selling data or ads. Likely, this assumption was made by the reviewer here, there may even be guidelines about it.
To some degree, it would even benefit consumers to do such a reality check too before they buy products and subscribe to services — is this a visionary purpose-driven product, or one that seeks to extract money from me as its primary goal? If latter, how do they do it — in evident ways, or through selling data or ads/influencing? But one must be able to see nuance that not everything in the world is built for the capitalistic objective. Sometimes, cool things are built, art is made, and inventions are made to better the world.
Overall, it is a problem that they don't see this nuance which made Google successful in the first place. It is clear across their business, products and services. But I think it is not unexpected.
An app shot down because it doesn't grift in an evident way, under an assumption it grifts in a hidden way — it's not the most wrong decision in the world. It just does not demonstrate competence either.
https://www.slashgear.com/google-blames-rogue-contractors-fo...
Once power is sufficiently uneven, the stupidity of the powerful is no different than their malice, for with that power comes the greater responsibility to avoid doing harm with it.
(I still use the Google Maps Web site on my laptop, though, and like StreetView, satellite, and the texture-mapped aerial 3D imagery there.)
Even if you don’t open it, you should have it in case everything goes wrong.
I like waze, but sometimes it just fails to find me a certain place.
Besides, if you have a wireless signal, you can always just of the browser with Google Maps.
A real backup means having a paper map when hiking, and just following the local road signs when driving. When things really go wrong, Google Maps is just about the last thing to use.
Doesn't Waze belong to Google?
However, on android, if the google location services (the spyware half of gmaps) is not installed, then third party apps like uber and lyft, and real world infrastructure access, like ev charging and paying parking meters break.
I don't know if it does what you want or if it's for the reverse.
At least one person must have sent them a “do not sell my personal information” or “right to be forgotten” request, and then declined to accept the new terms.
Isn’t that want folks want - to not have to go through the gatekeeper, aka Play Store?
The thing that makes this particular case feel weird to me is that the organization playing gatekeeper is also competing directly with this app.
While I sympathise with developers who are the victim of mistakes, we have no transparency to know who is actually in the wrong.
There is also constant subjective criticism about what is too little or too much protective oversight. Fortnite was approved by both Apple and Google despite the FTC fining Epic for intentionally tricking children into making unwanted purchases, (Epic would also kill the account if the parent did charge backs), other scam apps have snuck onto the various stores over the years, and it wasn't too long ago that both Facebook and Google used side-loading to distribute data collection apps that wouldn't pass official channels.
Distribute the cost by distributing sources. The GNU/Linux ecosystem has been operating just fine on this model for decades.
This scenario is for a curated marketplace which needs to demonstrate that they are not acting improperly towards those with which they could have a potential conflict of interest.
There is no opportunity to debate whether such marketplaces have a software discovery and security benefit, that is already established. Implying to dissolve the marketplace is unserious and not an answer to the problem, and not helpful to the ideals of computing for the masses.
My implication was busting the monopoly into its logical components, not out of existence.
Today, when I install an APK I get a 10 seconds unskippable warning screen about "potential dangers", and after installing, another unskippable 1 minute "security check" screen. All of this bullshit is 100% done to deter most people from going through, by scaring them or making it a chore.
Also, apps installed through APKs do not update automatically, you have to fetch the updated APK file for every updates and go through this painful process again.
Ideally, we could use third party app stores, that would be allowed to provide the same level of comfort as the play store.
Also, as a sibling comment pointed out, there are third party app stores with all the comfort of the Play store (and far less adware): https://f-droid.org/
How to turn Google Play Protect on or off
Important: Google Play Protect is on by default, but you can turn it off. For
security, we recommend that you always keep Google Play Protect on.
Open the Google Play Store app Google Play.
At the top right, tap the profile icon.
Tap Play Protect and then Settings Settings.
Turn Scan apps with Play Protect on or off.Policy 1 [0] seems the most likely cause to me. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some vandalism on OSM that had some "inappropriate" content or similar.
0: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Would they ever apply the same scrutiny towards their own apps? Can you imagine Google maps being taken off the play store without being given a reason?
I filed a support issue in the play store complaining about being unable to install the app.
But quite frankly this should be a case for antitrust.
On top of this, the Play Store is just one of the few stores you can have on Android. Organic Maps itself can be installed via F-Droid, Huawei's store, Aptoide, etc, not to mention that you can download the apk from their site/Github and install it.
I'd agree with you if this was about Google Search or something like that, but Android apps? I don't see any monopoly there.
I'm interested to see what technical hoops you're jumping through to get your app reinstated, if you don't mind sharing. As a developer myself I've had my "fun" with policy compliance and review processes. All the best either way, hope it gets reinstated soon!
--
The unspecified "you have violated our terms of service ergo your account has been closed / your data has been deleted / you can't open this page or this app, no appeal or review allowed" is a pretty insidious example of this prepotence.
Super important for intentional travel or nature (National parks often have no signal).
It's blazing fast — far snappier than other map apps I've used. And OSM data is better than Google's for hiking and biking.
The POI database isn't as detailed, and you wouldn't use it to find an espresso shop near you (...yet). But it's much better as a map app.
StreetComplete is also great and very beginner friendly, but it is mostly for completing missing information for existing places. However, I think quite recent addition was that now you can actually add new places. Haven't used it much though.
About a gigabyte for the US, several gigs for the whole world.
You can't download the map for the the entire world, or even an entire country.
I'm sure the answer is 'automated review process, humans are expensive', but it's really fucked up to see a huge corporation like Google just removing one of the two most well-known OpenStreetMap apps like that (the other being OsmAnd).
If you use Android: get free software apps like these from F-Droid.
This is hilarious but brothels search and bbq area search are the two Overpass Turbo shortcuts in my browser.
great app!
I use it on E/os and lineage phones.
My friends have it on their googled phones, not from the play store.
I get them to install Droid-ify and install it from there.
Then I adb remove google maps completely for them.
Apple lets you