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…
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.