Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Maps' Moat

justinobeirne.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 619 posts

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#531

Post by 24gttghh »

dom96 wrote: post #497
24gttghh wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too hard to suggest changes to the maps using their feedback option. I've done it around my town to fix some one-ways and lane options a few times now and they get added within a week or two usually.

How do you access this feedback option? Google maps has been showing my address in the incorrect place for the past few months and I have no idea how to let them know. All I've found is "add a missing place".

There should be a little "Send Feedback" link at the bottom right near the mileage/km scale. Same thing in the maps hamburger menu. You have to sign into a google account though.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#532

Post by cmg »

maxerickson wrote: post #97
cooper12 wrote: post #74

Hmm, this really does make me worried for OpenStreetMap. If the competition is so powerful and has a moat protecting it that will only grow larger, how can it ever hope to catch up? This isn't a case like Wikipedia where it entered a market that was barely there (e.g. online/software encyclopedias). Instead, you have to face off against giants with enormous resources and the money for any type of data. Amateur volunt…

Niantic switched Pokémon Go and Ingress over to using OpenStreetMap as the base map last week. That's one way OSM can compete with Google, it is available for the low price of attribution. Pokémon players have quite some interest in improving OSM. OSM can also end up with data for things that Google doesn't find interesting. Google doesn't have the nice walking path/bike trail in a local park that I added to OSM seve…

I noticed the swap only because - at least in my residential neighborhood in a small city - OSM has sidewalk data on their maps, which Google did not.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#534

Post by dom96 »

24gttghh wrote: post #531
dom96 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you access this feedback option? Google maps has been showing my address in the incorrect place for the past few months and I have no idea how to let them know. All I've found is "add a missing place".

There should be a little "Send Feedback" link at the bottom right near the mileage/km scale. Same thing in the maps hamburger menu. You have to sign into a google account though.

Ahh yes, I see it. I'm seeing the edits I made in the past and they have not been applied, with no reason given. I tried to elaborate on the issue, hopefully this time they will fix this.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#535

Post by c0nfused »

aluhut wrote: post #292
sytelus wrote: post #142

Many people don't realize why Google maps are so much better than anything out there. I would actually give lot of credit to Marissa Mayer who suddenly became in charge of maps from otherwise more higher position. Thanks to her influence in Google SLT and ability to make impressive arguments, she was able to make a case for maps as core pillar in Google's offering and consequently obtain huge investment and large tal…

No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci

I have been using open street map in one of my projects and am considering dropping it.

I had the fun experience last week to discover that this was one of the cities in north Texas.

https://i.imgur.com/BkBcuzN.png

The "Boy's Bathroom Tascosa Drive In" Residents are hopefully not going to look at my app any time soon. I am now a bit concerned about the quality in the states as a whole.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#536

Post by maxerickson »

c0nfused wrote: post #535
aluhut wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci

I have been using open street map in one of my projects and am considering dropping it. I had the fun experience last week to discover that this was one of the cities in north Texas. https://i.imgur.com/BkBcuzN.png The "Boy's Bathroom Tascosa Drive In" Residents are hopefully not going to look at my app any time soon. I am now a bit concerned about the quality in the states as a whole.

So that was identified as vandalism in ~9 days and removed and the user has been banned from editing:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1698922081/history

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/1652

Of course as a practical matter the block only applies to an account rather a person, but it makes the point to the person that the vandalism isn't welcome.

I mostly mean to expand on how OSM deals with such things, not to argue whether or not that makes it suitable for your purposes.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#537

Post by kuschku »

bjt wrote: post #530
kuschku wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most bigcos aren't doing that because it's illegal, not because they don't want to. If you, e.g., have market dominance in operating systems, you can't prefer any web browser, install any browser as default, or advertise any based on the OS. In the same way, if you control web search, you can't prefer one web shopping site, or one web maps service. And you especially can't integrate one, but not the other. The goal o…

It's not as clear cut as that. Someone actually has to bring the antitrust suit. In the last few decades, the US government hasn't been doing as much of that as they used to. Once in the suit, then you have to argue about the "relevant market" to determine which other companies count as competitors. This question probably consumes more time in an antitrust case than any other. Then you have to argue about how much of…

Of the three cases I named, 2 already were ruled antitrust violations under EU law, actually. And against the third, a case is also ongoing.

So, from an EU perspective, it is as clear cut as that :)

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#538

Post by theptip »

taneq wrote: post #121
canoebuilder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vehicle should be using its maps as a general guide, not as some kind of ground truth. Not to sound like a jerk, but I would be shocked if there were anyone working on this that was not pursuing things in this way. It just seems kind of obvious that you can't have some big hunk of metal rolling around, following some abstracted track from a map, without "looking" where it is going.

And yet we have Waymo building 2cm-resolution maps and not operating outside of mapped areas, and (more scarily) Tesla geotagging false positives where Autopilot misidentifies some roadside feature and panic brakes.

Are those approaches mutually incompatible? It seems to me that it would be easier to build a system which can drive fast when what it's seeing matches what it's expecting to see (most of the time), and which falls back to a much more conservative stance in the case of surprisal (i.e. expectation not matching observation).

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#539

Post by GFischer »

JepZ wrote: post #494
aluhut wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No love for OpenStreetMaps here? In Germany it is often superior to everything out there. Especially due to the mappers/updaters motivation and nice gamification tools like StreetComplete or more professional tools like Vespucci. https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vespucci

Just to give an example Google Maps vs. OSM: https://www.google.de/maps/@53.6402644,10.0622627,17.38z https://www.openstreetmap.de/karte.html?zoom=17&lat=53.63958...

The fact that Germany banned Street View contributes to it being less useful there, and I theorize that it might indirectly contribute to less data in Germany.

Street View is so amazing, it's a huge game-changer from Google.

Re: Google Maps' Moat

#540

Post by GFischer »

lucideer wrote: post #398
sytelus wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have public transit in major countries, business listing, up to date open hours, reviews, walking directions, terrain view, My Maps feature, offline maps, offline directions, high quality coverage in dozens of countries, ability to search through other people’s list, street view, high detail satellite view and so on in said services?

A big part of my point above was that I was surprised that given those resources (many of which you've listed) the aggregate product is surprisingly poor. Nobody else has the amount of data Google has, that could, with good design, potentially contribute to a good mapping experience. Even so, to go through the things you list (ignoring Street View and satellite which I already mentioned above): - Nokia maps has much…

I guess that's a case of YMMV, here in Uruguay Google wins on several of these.

OpenStreetMap wins on street numbers and other, because they're maintained by the municipal government.

Post reply on HN