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Google recently hiked enterprise license fees for access to translation services pretty substantially. I wonder if we'll see similar competitive momentum in that market.
Most likely, yes. But translation services are far easier to enter than mapping.
Are Apple and Microsoft's map services built on OpenStreetMap? Or are they just contributing for the heck of it?
Seems like OSM has a future. This is great. Only sad thing is perhaps some day we won't be able to have the fun of making contributions ourselves, if the big companies handle all that for us like Google does. In the mean time, though, I can make an easier case to people as to why they should care about this, since it's now used by Apple and Pokémon Go.
> Only sad thing is perhaps some day we won't be able to have the fun of making contributions ourselves, if the big companies handle all that for us like Google does. There will always be room for individual contributions, because there are things that the big corporations do not care about. For example, many hiking trails and agricultural tracks good for cycling are missing from Google Maps because they simply do no…
or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand.plu...
This is great! Google has recently spiked fees drastically and it will be good to see more alternatives with high quality data
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OSM worked great for me on newly built streets in Cambridge UK, where Google Maps had zero cartography. The only major disadvantage of OSM-derived applications is the lack of real-time traffic information. Google Maps harvests data from phones inside cars and some car navigation systems. They also buy it from third parties. http://opentraffic.io/ is trying to do some data harvesting, but it's still not very good. Ano…
Here at Mapbox we're doing navigation on OSM with traffic data - we collect our own telemetry, and use it to guide OSM-based routing. There are numerous Android/iOS apps using our API that you could use, or you could build one yourself.
Feel free to install on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme... or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand.plu...
This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…
I've been trying to get Google to fix an incorrect path drawn at a state park that I frequent. I've submitted an alternative route twice now, but it's been denied twice with little explanation. The path is a loop, but Google has it missing half of the loop, off by an eighth of a mile or so, and has it drawn where it cuts through private property. In contrast, OSM's data is completely spot on with what my GPS shows.
The park is in a tourist area, and I go to this park often enough that I've actually ran into multiple people visiting who have been standing on the trail with Google Maps open on their phone, thinking they've made a wrong turn.
I've experienced the same thing at GNP in Montana, BWCA in Minnesota/Canada, and all along the Richardson Highway in Alaska. If you're in a rural area or on public land, OSM data is the best available --- even better than what a ranger station would sell you.
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Most likely, yes. But translation services are far easier to enter than mapping.
Both are hard and are open problems.
This is far more cost-intensive, both in upfront as in maintenance, than the translation problem.
Software is easy. The real world is hard.
This is competitive pressures at work, similarly to IBM and other's investment in Linux in the early 2000's as a way to place competitive pressure on MS/Windows. If you're not the leader in the field, and won't be able to catch up just by investing, you try to make the leadership in the field (Google's) irrelevant. If the 2nd-best-by-small-margin base map info is open, having the best one isn't a competitive advantag…