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Crowdsource by Google

crowdsource.google.com

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61–70 of 142 posts

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#61

Post by szastamasta »

asiachick wrote: post #49
bprasanna wrote: post #22

They should avoid using the word community, if side product of these contributions are going to empower their sales. I had been contributing to Google Maps for more than 8 years now, but in return all i get is stars and maximum an invite to a meetup. But, when i saw the other side of Google Maps with respect to consuming it through API usage point of view, the prices are not affordable in long term. Also, there is a…

you're getting the use of the service..... for free...Yeesh! Consider before Google Maps. You'd either (a) buy a local map every few years (b) pay for a car navigation system. Now Google comes along and offers you a free maps and navigation service and you're complaining that if you try to make it better you're being screwed over? IT'S FREE!

Google is making a lot of money on Maps. The consumer app is free only so you feed them free data from your rides. They also kicked out of business all competition (hard to compete with free). And as usual with monopolies, when there’s no competition, you can do what you want. Wait for it. In few years it will be shut down or will cost a lot if they no longer can sell your data to someone else.

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#62

Post by totetsu »

userbinator wrote: post #6

Because calling it "free labour" just wouldn't attract quite as many people... Perhaps ~2 decades ago I would've been a bit more optimistic, but now that I'm aware of the authoritarian dystopia which Google and the rest of Big Tech are trying to drive society towards, I feel obliged to point out that helping it achieve that goal is a really bad idea.

I gave away quite a bit of free labor to Google and niantic as they were launching ingress. If I had known that pokemon go would eventually be a thing, I might have thought a bit more about the power I had to shape where people would be walking every day for the next 10 years.

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#63

Post by cmrdporcupine »

asim wrote: post #58

I was always a huge fan of Google from the late 90s onwards and was employed their from 2011 to 2013. I continue to use their services to this day. Unfortunately no matter how much you like something, when any one entity amasses this much power it's bound to make you a bit uncomfortable. I wish Google did more to anonymize and potentially distribute this kind of tech in a way that enabled anyone to run it. At the sca…

I agree with many of your points, but re: employees frankly internal systems at Google are pretty heavily audited and locked down not just in regards to PII but in regards to any queries against e.g. log data that try to narrow data down to small result sets. I can't speak to these ML data sets, but I was at Google 2011-2021 and in my time I believe I applied for and got log data access twice and the restrictions were serious, and the whole thing is heavily audited.

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#64

Post by gerash »

userbinator wrote: post #6

Because calling it "free labour" just wouldn't attract quite as many people... Perhaps ~2 decades ago I would've been a bit more optimistic, but now that I'm aware of the authoritarian dystopia which Google and the rest of Big Tech are trying to drive society towards, I feel obliged to point out that helping it achieve that goal is a really bad idea.

I don't know what you are ranting about but the term "crowdsourcing" is exactly what this tool is created to do. Don't use it if you don't want to.

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#65

Post by asim »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #63
asim wrote: post #58

I was always a huge fan of Google from the late 90s onwards and was employed their from 2011 to 2013. I continue to use their services to this day. Unfortunately no matter how much you like something, when any one entity amasses this much power it's bound to make you a bit uncomfortable. I wish Google did more to anonymize and potentially distribute this kind of tech in a way that enabled anyone to run it. At the sca…

I agree with many of your points, but re: employees frankly internal systems at Google are pretty heavily audited and locked down not just in regards to PII but in regards to any queries against e.g. log data that try to narrow data down to small result sets. I can't speak to these ML data sets, but I was at Google 2011-2021 and in my time I believe I applied for and got log data access twice and the restrictions wer…

That might be true and I believe you but that doesn't change the fact that I'm more and more deeply uncomfortable handing over more and more personal data to a single large entity who basically knows as much about my life as I do. The single rogue employee might not be able to do much but inevitably all these companies suffer leaks, hacks and whatever else. Google is not immune to this. Machine learning is also a black box as much as anyone will tell you they understand it they really don't. So the potential for mishaps there are high. Again I do believe Google is the best technology company on earth, I continue to use their products, but I'm also more and more in deep contemplation on how to build viable alternatives to a lot of the products I use. I'll never be able to build things at their scale or even at the caliber of their UX but maybe there's a better alternatives as we go into ambient computing.

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#66

Post by LunaSea »

bprasanna wrote: post #46
colordrops wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you'd put so much free effort into a paid-for product by a trillion dollar company.

To be honest, until i saw the API side of Google Maps i was under the assumption that Google is doing great service with Google Maps. Even now Google Maps gives the accurate result thanks to all the contributors.

But the Google Maps API isn't free so I don't think your point applies here.

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#68

Post by donalhunt »

habi wrote: post #50
toomuchtodo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this be compatible with importing into OpenStreetMap and similar open data projects?

OpenStreetMap does not host images, other projects (close to OSM) do.

In addition CCBY 4.0 isn't compatible with OSM without a waiver for some of the terms. :(

Re: Crowdsource by Google

#69

Post by fxtentacle »

learndeeply wrote: post #21

I was expecting to be pessimistic, but Google actually releases the datasets under a permissive license (CC-By 4.0). Awesome! https://research.google/tools/datasets/open-images-extended-... https://github.com/google-research-datasets/hiertext

"Google shares some Crowdsource data via open-sourcing"

Looks like the releases will only be partial. This kind of data should be collected bu a nonprofit for the benefit of everyone.

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