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Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

openstreetmap.org

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Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#151

Post by Freak_NL »

lucb1e wrote: post #75
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the approach to names which takes them and translates them: Pen-Y-Bont and Bridge-end are translations, but the name is one or the other. Transliteration seems fine to me, Caerdydd Cardiff, but we shouldn't say it's "name" in English is Diffcastle (or perhaps Taffcastle if you take an etymological approach). /rant

I simply wouldn't be able to remember or refer to Russia if it was always called Русский, but I do agree that we shouldn't translate as much as we do. Be it names in translated books, cities, countries, software... For example, the number of translations for a small city in Belgium called Liège/Lüttich/Luik is just confusing, and it's not even a popular tourist destination (everyone drives through it on their way sou…

It's a fair-sized city (population of 200000) in the French-speaking part of Belgium near the Dutch-speaking part, with historical ties to the German language. Of course it is known in all three languages. And as with all cities of some importance on OpenStreetMap, its entry includes the names it is known by in a variety of languages. These aren't shown by default, but they can be used to search for in ones native language.

> because it looks very ugly when you only drive through it on the highway

A lot of places look ugly if you stay on the highway.

Your attitude pegs you as a fellow Dutchman holding the classic but outdated, tiresome, and condescending view of that city that you only pass it on your way to France for the holidays. But do stop there some time, the past decade has been kind to it (the modern train station is beautiful). Keep in mind that this is a large city in an area dominated by the coal industry for the better part of the twentieth century.

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#152

Post by sidstling »

crazygringo wrote: post #111

I totally support OSM 1000%... But frankly, it seems it's still a lot of work to build OSM into your own website/app, setting up your own tile server. I know there are instructions for this [1] [2] -- but to really get popular, it seems like there really ought to be up-to-date, auto-updating, officially recommended and totally secure server images on Digital Ocean, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure where anyone can spin it…

We can’t really use google maps in the Danish public sector where I work, because they track your data. So we use osm and I think you’re daily spot on.

I work in a small municipality so we don’t really have the resources to do the integration ourselves. What we did was find a company which specializes in making google maps like APIs/integration to osm as well as having a support line that can correct osm mistakes for us.

This is not free, like doing the integration ourselves would be. I can’t give you the exact price, but it is a lot cheaper than google maps and it’s worked great for us for several years now.

We did by a package with little osm support because we can update osm ourselves, but calculating routes is something we could never do within our budget.

If your country doesn’t have any companies offering these types of osm services, then I bet you could make a lot of money by building it though.

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#153

Post by Vinnl »

1996 wrote: post #13

And if you can't use OSM, try Here maps. They are easy to download for offline use. Following the suggestion of friends, I have repurposed an old phone as a "travel phone" with maps of the whole world (or at least the parts I can download!) Not perfect, but when I catch a plane, I don't have to worry about local networks. Fun story: recently in Europe, Google Maps stuttered. Now and then, there was a networking issue…

> No network, so no lookup of business names, but Here maps offline with street addresses did better than Google Maps online.

I haven't used Here Maps so I'm not sure what it's like, but at least using OSMand I do have lookup of business names. Furthermore, I've been planning a trip recently and found out that Wikivoyage actually offers GPX files next to at least the articles on the places I'm going, containing the addresses and descriptions of places of interest. I loaded them into OSMand, and it's a pretty great experience.

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#154

Post by gytdev »

I am an avid traveler currently traveling South-East-Asia. One of the most favorite tools used by travelers is an Android app Maps.me, that is based on Openstreet maps. You can download any Country or region and have it for offline use, only need a GPS connection.

There are some practical caveats in using it though: -If You are planning a ride by car, the estimated time for Your journey most likely be way (waaaaayyy) off. Especially in Asian countries that are less covered. It can show 3 hours in a journey that is 8 hours without traffic. -some areas are completely not covered (I mean at all)

But for bigger cities it's pretty good in coverage

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#155

Post by VvR-Ox »

crazygringo wrote: post #111

I totally support OSM 1000%... But frankly, it seems it's still a lot of work to build OSM into your own website/app, setting up your own tile server. I know there are instructions for this [1] [2] -- but to really get popular, it seems like there really ought to be up-to-date, auto-updating, officially recommended and totally secure server images on Digital Ocean, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure where anyone can spin it…

Exactly the same, I'd like to support it because the idea is great!

But this amount of work is just too much.

Besides running your own tile server I'm also having problems using OSM to navigate. In the meantime I use G-Maps for stuff that is important and when I have to find my route quickly, it's just more reliable (it hurts to say that).

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#157

Post by ris »

gytdev wrote: post #154

I am an avid traveler currently traveling South-East-Asia. One of the most favorite tools used by travelers is an Android app Maps.me, that is based on Openstreet maps. You can download any Country or region and have it for offline use, only need a GPS connection. There are some practical caveats in using it though: -If You are planning a ride by car, the estimated time for Your journey most likely be way (waaaaayyy)…

Have you been improving the less-covered areas during your travels?

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#158

Post by JdeBP »

jrockway wrote: post #129
mtmail wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> up-to-date, auto-updating, officially recommended and totally secure server images Plus volunteers to answer any and all support requests? And the tile rendering needs to be fast? $5/month isn't enough hardware to a world-wide tile server and it sounds like users aren't willing to pay for setup costs. > just want to "throw in a map", I don't want to spend a day+ doing it. There's plenty of SaaS offering OSM tile ho…

I think the $5/month he's envisioning is for the computing/bandwidth charges on the cloud providers he mentions. The software, container, images, etc. should all be provided for free, and the open source bug tracker should have a 1 second SLA for replying to questions on getting it set up. But on a serious note, yes, it would be nice if there was some pre-built container that just served the OSM tiles on an HTTP port…

> Google Maps is free for 25,000 map loads per day

This statement is true for a few more hours. As the headlined article informs us, Google changes its pricing plan tomorrow, 2018-07-16. Instead of 25000 free loads per day, as of tomorrow people get USD200 credit per month, on accounts that now must be backed by credit cards (or have billing enabled). Google tells us that a credit of USD200 per month is equivalent to 28000 free loads (of a dynamic map) per month (not per day).

* https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/

* https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/

Hence the timing of the OpenStreetMap article, of course.

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#159

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

crazygringo wrote: post #111

I totally support OSM 1000%... But frankly, it seems it's still a lot of work to build OSM into your own website/app, setting up your own tile server. I know there are instructions for this [1] [2] -- but to really get popular, it seems like there really ought to be up-to-date, auto-updating, officially recommended and totally secure server images on Digital Ocean, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure where anyone can spin it…

> I assume I'd be using at least a day to set things up

You assume wrong. :)

It takes an hour or so to get a tileserver up and running with the switch2osm instructions. I've done it countless times. (You do then need to wait for the Postgres database to populate, but that's just fire-and-forget.) They're written for Ubuntu LTS versions so the "newer versions" issue doesn't arise.

Or if Docker's your bag, you can get a ready-to-go image from openmaptiles: https://openmaptiles.com/server/

> where anyone can spin it up for $5/mo

Not gonna happen. Running a worldwide map server needs a lot of (SSD) storage and decent CPU. I have a £10/month Hetzner VM just to do geocoding (with Photon: https://github.com/komoot/photon) so you aren't going to get a tileserver for half that - and that's no surprise; OSM is ultimately competing with Google, and you can't really expect to host your own Google for $5. But there are plenty of hosted options with tiered pricing.

Re: Why Use OpenStreetMap Instead of Google Maps?

#160

Post by joeblau »

One of the interesting trends I've been seeing are the amount of companies that are rebuilding there maps from the ground up. While Google currently provides the best data set, there is a resurgence of companies mapping from the ground up to solve problems that Google isn't solving for its customers. You've got Apple[1], Tesla[2], and Uber[3] all rebuilding maps and all current/previous customers of Google.

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

[2] - https://electrek.co/2017/07/03/tesla-map-navigation-open-sou...

[3] - https://www.uber.com/newsroom/mapping-ubers-future/

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