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

lyft.com

171–180 of 181 posts

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then again, Apple Maps started getting sorted out around then too iirc. And we assume completely coincidentally? Not that Apple Maps, like Google Maps, pulls in data volunteered by the OSM community (both corporate and personal members), packages and improves (sometimes "improves") it, then locks it away behind paid API calls? In this case and many others, the free and community built project enabled, assisted, or…

> Not that Apple Maps, like Google Maps, pulls in data volunteered by the OSM... then locks it away You have that backwards, at least for some companies. > How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are contributing to OSM At the State of the Map conference in Milan, the teams from Microsoft, Apple and Facebook presented their projects, describing how they are working with communities. https://www.theodi.org/article/how-are-f…

> You have that backwards, at least for some companies

Absolutely I do - my overall (and apparently poorly communicated) point was more about Apple pulling in data from OSM to improve their product. They (and others) do contribute back, I only meant it's hardly coincidental that OSM and Apple Maps improved around the same time.

> I've never seen any cite for Google contributing their data to OSM.

This is what I'm so up-in-arms about: people spend so much time adding to Google Maps for free (not even necessarily via OSM), to be locked away behind paid (past a limit) API calls. Perhaps I should have been more explicit in that many companies contribute back, and Google being an outlier in that.

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

#172
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought that some major service migrated to OSM by 2019. I can’t remember which, or even if it was a success. But I didn’t realize the data was that bad just three years ago. Then again, Apple Maps started getting sorted out around then too iirc.

> Then again, Apple Maps started getting sorted out around then too iirc. And we assume completely coincidentally? Not that Apple Maps, like Google Maps, pulls in data volunteered by the OSM community (both corporate and personal members), packages and improves (sometimes "improves") it, then locks it away behind paid API calls? In this case and many others, the free and community built project enabled, assisted, or…

Apple Maps doesn't use OSM for developed countries, but for places like SEA and Africa. It's places like Facebook and Mapbox who use OSM for everything IIRC (don't trust me here as I didn't check this.)

Actually, does Google Maps use OSM for anything?

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then again, Apple Maps started getting sorted out around then too iirc. And we assume completely coincidentally? Not that Apple Maps, like Google Maps, pulls in data volunteered by the OSM community (both corporate and personal members), packages and improves (sometimes "improves") it, then locks it away behind paid API calls? In this case and many others, the free and community built project enabled, assisted, or…

Apple Maps doesn't use OSM for developed countries, but for places like SEA and Africa. It's places like Facebook and Mapbox who use OSM for everything IIRC (don't trust me here as I didn't check this.) Actually, does Google Maps use OSM for anything?

Google dont directly use osm, as far as we know, but they or subcontractors check the changelogs and often add newly built things hours/ days after they get added to osm, presumably from their own sources as the data is not identical.

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

#175
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Looking at all edits done by osm member affiliated with Grab from that wiki list ( https://piebro.github.io/openstreetmap-statistics/#b34d ) it seems they contributed a lot of edits (21M in total, sixth largest company contributor). The amount of edits slowed down on the last year though.

Wow, meta has _millions_ edits per month. So does Amazon.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they actually take credit cards nowadays? And do they expect gigantic tips? I really hate shelling out $60 for a 20 minute taxi ride, then being expected to shell out an extra $20 on top of that and getting endless grief over wanting to use a credit card to top it all off

Every cab I've been in in the last decade has expected that you're paying by card. Many prefer it, because the drivers don't want to carry a bunch of cash. Many cab companies even have apps where you follow the progress of the cab you called, and pay for the ride. I have no idea what the tip expectation of cab drivers are. I tip the same rate I tip for all traditionally tipped services. I don't actually care whether…

When I was a teen I would tip the driver whatever the change would be to the cash I had on hand. These would be trips between LAX and West Hollywood. Cost like 25-30 bucks? I don't remember.

The only cab I saw that took cards had a thing that would slide across the front and get an impression of the text embossed on the card. I guess that wouldn't work today since cards aren't embossed anymore

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not that Apple Maps, like Google Maps, pulls in data volunteered by the OSM... then locks it away You have that backwards, at least for some companies. > How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are contributing to OSM At the State of the Map conference in Milan, the teams from Microsoft, Apple and Facebook presented their projects, describing how they are working with communities. https://www.theodi.org/article/how-are-f…

> You have that backwards, at least for some companies Absolutely I do - my overall (and apparently poorly communicated) point was more about Apple pulling in data from OSM to improve their product. They (and others) do contribute back, I only meant it's hardly coincidental that OSM and Apple Maps improved around the same time. > I've never seen any cite for Google contributing their data to OSM. This is what I'm so…

> it's hardly coincidental that OSM and Apple Maps improved around the same time

True, but in Apple's case, the massive improvements stemmed from no longer relying solely on data licensed from others, and starting a program back in 2018 to collect their own map data from scratch.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every cab I've been in in the last decade has expected that you're paying by card. Many prefer it, because the drivers don't want to carry a bunch of cash. Many cab companies even have apps where you follow the progress of the cab you called, and pay for the ride. I have no idea what the tip expectation of cab drivers are. I tip the same rate I tip for all traditionally tipped services. I don't actually care whether…

When I was a teen I would tip the driver whatever the change would be to the cash I had on hand. These would be trips between LAX and West Hollywood. Cost like 25-30 bucks? I don't remember. The only cab I saw that took cards had a thing that would slide across the front and get an impression of the text embossed on the card. I guess that wouldn't work today since cards aren't embossed anymore

Every cab I've been in over the last 10 years or so has had a card reader. Sometimes just Square, sometimes something fancier.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have something like this at our firm (IT consulting shop). Every Christmas, everyone gets to propose & vote on projects (software and otherwise) that we should fund.

Any good literature on how to convince companies to do this?

Oof, I'm afraid I don't know of any. Our company is generally very, let's say, employee-oriented and has been doing donations this way for a long time (longer than I've been there), so I don't know how our bosses came to like this approach.

One argument would certainly be: Employees / engineers tend to know much better which projects are worth supporting and/or in need of financial help.

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