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Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

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Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#31

Post by tedivm »

sushisource wrote: post #17
bri3d wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if Lyft plan to contribute their map corrections back to OSM? They mention other companies doing so in this blog post, but don't make it clear whether or not they, too, intend to. I'm curious to see how good Lyft Maps is, too. Uber Maps is, frankly, a disaster in my area, frequently suggesting illegal and/or impossible turns. I try to submit map feedback every trip (very hard as a rider, as most form…

I also find it consistently obnoxious that there is essentially no way to say "My driver was fine, but your platform did something stupid" when leaving feedback. At least, not without jumping through a million hoops. The arrogance of our industry is tiresome. I took a ride in SF a while ago and it predicted a 3 minute pick up time which turned out to be 25 minutes - no fault of the driver, and the only way I could co…

Lyft's pick up estimates are basically made up as far as I can tell.

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#32

Post by Retric »

throwaway049 wrote: post #9
bri3d wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if Lyft plan to contribute their map corrections back to OSM? They mention other companies doing so in this blog post, but don't make it clear whether or not they, too, intend to. I'm curious to see how good Lyft Maps is, too. Uber Maps is, frankly, a disaster in my area, frequently suggesting illegal and/or impossible turns. I try to submit map feedback every trip (very hard as a rider, as most form…

I've submitted a correction for an illegal turn instruction twice on Google maps. No reply. But my other corrections have been accepted.

Map creators include intentionally incorrect information (Map Traps) so people copying them are obviously copying them. I sometimes wonder if that’s the root cause of companies failing to correct some of their mistakes.

https://www.gislounge.com/map-traps-intentional-mapping-erro...

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#33

Post by Ajedi32 »

reaperman wrote: post #16
refulgentis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think they wanted to own more of their product, integrated OSM, and now if there's complaints or things to change they're like "sorry nah"? That doesn't sound right to me, I'm curious if you have any examples or sources

I think GP is saying they expect Lyft respond to complaints or things to change by fixing them in their internal OSM database, but maybe not propagate those changes back to canonical OSM for everyone else to enjoy.

Couldn't that become hard to maintain after a while though, once the OSM map changes and they start getting conflicts? I think that's often the biggest reason why corps contribute back to open source projects rather than maintaining internal forks for everything.

I guess it's possible though they could just deal with that if they feel like having better maps is a significant competitive advantage, but if the goal is just to not be dependent on Google upstreaming the edits sounds like a better idea.

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#34

Post by pcurve »

"For instance, Google always presents drivers with the fastest route, regardless of tolls. But sometimes, paying a toll would shave only a minute or two off the ride, while adding significantly to the cost."

Ah... the joy of NYC tolls. Even with EZ pass, a ride to JFK from NJ is almost $28 just in toll roundtrip. $37 without EZ pass. $37!!!

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#35

Post by uneekname »

bri3d wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if Lyft plan to contribute their map corrections back to OSM? They mention other companies doing so in this blog post, but don't make it clear whether or not they, too, intend to. I'm curious to see how good Lyft Maps is, too. Uber Maps is, frankly, a disaster in my area, frequently suggesting illegal and/or impossible turns. I try to submit map feedback every trip (very hard as a rider, as most form…

Lyft is one of the biggest contributors to OSM. Here is a list of OSM accounts related to Lyft [0]. In many places where I've edited OSM, Lyft employees have contributed quality data where there wasn't any before.

How (and, how respectfully) companies should contribute to OSM is an ongoing debate. But corporate influences are often a good thing, and I think nearly anyone would agree that Lyft's contributions to OSM have been resoundingly helpful.

[0] https://github.com/OSM-DCT-Lyft/US/wiki/OSM-Team-Members

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#36

Post by jazzyjackson »

ryandrake wrote: post #27
sushisource wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find it consistently obnoxious that there is essentially no way to say "My driver was fine, but your platform did something stupid" when leaving feedback. At least, not without jumping through a million hoops. The arrogance of our industry is tiresome. I took a ride in SF a while ago and it predicted a 3 minute pick up time which turned out to be 25 minutes - no fault of the driver, and the only way I could co…

Pick up time predictions are garbage, because ride shares allow cancelations. Last time I used a ride share, I had eight drivers accept and then cancel on me. The predicted departure time was always "8 minutes away" and then "looking for another driver" over and over. I probably waited an hour.

Talking to a driver about this I was told that the platform is always re-routing drivers to maximize revenue for lyft, so when the app says "finding you another driver", it's not the driver that canceled, it's the platform decided that driver was better off, revenue wise, to complete a different fare.

The fact that this is opaque to the end user just means we get mad at the workers and not the corporation, classic.

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#37

Post by acdha »

otterley wrote: post #23

The tone of this article is troubling. First, the focus is on savings to Lyft, and not how this innovation benefits customers in any way. Second, it is highly antagonistic to Google - who is probably still a partner to Lyft in many other aspects (advertising etc). Taking shots at your partners is generally considered bad for business.

Savings benefit Lyft customers directly by keeping the company solvent – since the rides aren’t being heavily subsidized, the rates are going to go up and things like this will reduce the sting.

It also helps indirectly by giving them control. Google doesn’t do product development well and Maps has been stagnant or even regressing for years. Lyft can always flub it but now they have the incentives lined up where the only party needed to make what Lyft users want is Lyft.

As for Google, they’re a big company and they can take criticism. It’s certainly not like they’re shy about canceling products or changing the terms any time some MBA thinks it’ll help their bonus, and I’d be quite surprised if they didn’t pass on the opportunity to keep a customer multiple times before now.

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#38

Post by lefuturiste »

shp0ngle wrote: post #15
DoctorOW wrote: post #6

This is yet another "We found a community project providing us with billions of dollars in free work but don't find it worth the effort to contribute anything back"

Big corps that use OSM are actually contributing a lot back into OSM by actually fixing data issues. I have seen that first-hand; at a Corp that was using OSM, they had a big team doing just that the whole working day. Just fixing issues in OSM that the customer have reported. I think they in the end decided to fork OSM and make it proprietary to keep the data in-house; but I might be wrong. I was not there anymore.…

If they fork it and use the data publicly, it need to be shared in the same license (ODBL)

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#39

Post by grishka »

> and pickup and drop-off guides to heavily trafficked destinations, so drivers and riders can get in and out of the airport (or stadium or park) more easily

Lyft doesn't have that?! I though this was a standard feature of taxi apps. Yandex Taxi allows you to call a taxi to a specific pole in the arrivals area at the airport in my city, for example.

Re: Lyft’s plan to take control of its maps and its future

#40

Post by acslater00 »

bri3d wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if Lyft plan to contribute their map corrections back to OSM? They mention other companies doing so in this blog post, but don't make it clear whether or not they, too, intend to. I'm curious to see how good Lyft Maps is, too. Uber Maps is, frankly, a disaster in my area, frequently suggesting illegal and/or impossible turns. I try to submit map feedback every trip (very hard as a rider, as most form…

Yes - Lyft contributed the overwhelming majority of the new data back into OSM. The only exceptions were layers that didn't meet OSM community standards for various technical reasons.

Source - I led this team

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