And kind of like Linux, you have a patchwork of unsatisfying solutions. Mapbox isn't always cheaper than Google. They have not lowered their tile prices in yea

And kind of like Linux, you have a patchwork of unsatisfying solutions. Mapbox isn't always cheaper than Google. They have not lowered their tile prices in years, for example. And on geocoding and some other APIs they give out poor results compared to Google. Do they have competition? Cloudmade went in some car-related direction. Mapzen never managed to have a real business plan. And your "excellent small providers"? Yeah, Andy may be able to create some bespoke solution for you if he has time, and Geofabrik can wrangle some host-it-yourself setup onto AWS, but it's still very true that OSM themselves don't have a good story on a lot of mapping needs. You can either browse their web map with unusable search or download the 38GB database, and that's about it. No wonder many businesses just pay Google rather than dive into the rabbit hole of OSM.