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Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

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Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#51

Post by 0x457 »

RajT88 wrote: post #20

I enjoy how Bing Maps (and Bing in general) are so unloved that it's not even part of the debate. (Bing Maps hasn't changed - yet - but probably will eventually, since they caved on the Gulf of Mexico)

It’s not like Microsoft has artisanal cartographers sitting around deciding what to call every geographic feature. Bing Maps ingests its base map data from providers, which in turn aggregate a bunch of authoritative, commercial, open, and government datasets.

And for things like official geographic names, government naming databases are often one of the authoritative upstream sources. So if the U.S. government changes the name in its official geographic database, it’s not surprising for that change to eventually propagate through map providers and into Bing.

Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#52

Post by chewbacha »

gruez wrote: post #7
wlonkly wrote: post #5

They'll get their 15 minutes, but there's no _there_ there. They're owned by System1, a bottom-of-the-barrel advertising company where 1990s web brands go to die (Metacrawler? Startpage.com?? Dogpile?!?!). Their maps are OpenStreetMaps maps. People think they have their back (because OSM is showing Lake Ontario), but it's just marketing.

>Startpage.com I thought that was still the best way to get anonymous google index search results?

I also enjoy their privacy focused email startmail.com

Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#53

Post by fwip »

Varelion wrote: post #12

Finding MapQuest on the PlayStore was a quest all on its own. More specifically, it does not exist on my PlayStore, and I had to install it on my phone remotely through the browser PlayStore. Review wise, it sits firmly at a single star, so it's possible that Google burried it, although I would not put it past them to rig things.

Recommend you instead use something like OsmAnd. Mapquest pulls data from OpenStreetMaps - might as well use an open source application.

https://osmand.net/

Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#54

Post by allturtles »

afavour wrote: post #50
allturtles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Choosing one via popular usage would not be a good solution. Huh? Isn't that exactly what you've described? In the UK they show the popular usage in the UK, and the same in France.

No, they show what the respective governments describe them as in official datasets etc.

> No, they show what the respective government datasets contain

Which matches popular usage in the respective countries. Your example is a non sequitir for explaining why matching popular usage can't possibly work.

For the popular usage of major geographical features to change is extremely rare, so I am skeptical that it's a huge amount of work to keep up with changes in popular usage. People made maps before they had automated pipelines for ingesting geographical names.

Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#56

Post by ndriscoll »

nancyminusone wrote: post #13
wlonkly wrote: post #5

They'll get their 15 minutes, but there's no _there_ there. They're owned by System1, a bottom-of-the-barrel advertising company where 1990s web brands go to die (Metacrawler? Startpage.com?? Dogpile?!?!). Their maps are OpenStreetMaps maps. People think they have their back (because OSM is showing Lake Ontario), but it's just marketing.

as opposed to a top of the barrel advertising company like Google

Or a top of the barrel choice like just using one of the many non-profit FOSS apps that are also UIs over OpenStreetMap instead of one of the scam commercial ad-wrappers.

Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#59

Post by MisterTea »

nancyminusone wrote: post #13
wlonkly wrote: post #5

They'll get their 15 minutes, but there's no _there_ there. They're owned by System1, a bottom-of-the-barrel advertising company where 1990s web brands go to die (Metacrawler? Startpage.com?? Dogpile?!?!). Their maps are OpenStreetMaps maps. People think they have their back (because OSM is showing Lake Ontario), but it's just marketing.

as opposed to a top of the barrel advertising company like Google

That barrel rotted away a long time ago and all we're left with is a head -- the top is the bottom.

Re: Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

#60

Post by afavour »

allturtles wrote: post #54
afavour wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they show what the respective governments describe them as in official datasets etc.

> No, they show what the respective government datasets contain Which matches popular usage in the respective countries. Your example is a non sequitir for explaining why matching popular usage can't possibly work. For the popular usage of major geographical features to change is extremely rare, so I am skeptical that it's a huge amount of work to keep up with changes in popular usage. People made maps before they ha…

My point isn’t so much that it would be impossible to do, more that it’s giving more power to the tech giants to define things however they wish (given they get to define “popular”). In this instance that would be a good thing but as a precedent I’m a lot less sure.
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