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Openstreetmap’s product fails to compete with Google Maps

• lukeqsee 6y ago
  OSM needn't compete with Google Maps (as a consumer application) directly; it doesn't, really. Lots of apps based on OSM data do need to compete, and that is very difficult to do on a global-scale. That's why most successful OSM-based consumer applications serve a few niches incredibly well. This is not counting the dozens of companies offering OSM-based base maps for use in other, mostly non-map-related uses (such as a store locator or data visualization tool). OSM has the advantage of time, no need to make money, and a vibrant community around it. Google has to make money directly or indirectly via Google Maps to justify continued investment; OSM simply has to exist, and the longer it exists, the better the data will become. As the ecosystem around OSM improves (and continues building positive feedback loops), I strongly suspect we will see a successful consumer-targeted app using OSM data, and it will be much better than the many (good) apps right now, simply because another 5-10 years of accumulated data improvements outstrip the competition's willingness to continue investing. Caveat: I cofounded an OSM base map provider. I'm biased. :-)
  • robertlagrant 6y ago
    It's likely it will never compete. Either its data will never get better than Google's, or it will. If it does, Google might switch the mapping source for Google Maps over to OSM, and make loads of money off it that way. A bit like MS Edge on top of Chromium.
    • lukeqsee 6y ago
      > Either its data will never get better than Google's, or it will. If it does, Google might switch the mapping source for Google Maps over to OSM, and make loads of money off it that way. A bit like MS Edge on top of Chromium. Sure, that's reasonable, too. I think OSM (the project & database) wins in that situation, even if its derivations don't compete. Again, I don't really see OSM directly competing with Google Maps (the app).
    • ghaff 6y ago
      In some ways, I'd argue it is better today. I find using an OSM-based app is far more likely to show trails than Google Maps is. (Probably because Google 1.) Doesn't really care and 2.) Official data for trails is pretty fragmentary.)
      • lukeqsee 6y ago
        Shoutout to MapOut on iOS! An excellent outdoor map implementation (including fully offline), and I use it all the time.
        • ghaff 6y ago
          I will take a look! I'm still using maps.me. ADDED: Very nicely done. Just bought it.
        • spratzt 6y ago
          Why does Mapout need to use your location even when it isn't open?
          • riejo 6y ago
            it can record your hikes and rides
      • m4rtink 6y ago
        Exactly this - Google maps seem to really have all the drivable roads in all areas I've been in but hardly have anything at all that is pedestrian only as far as I can tell. As an example in 2019, we climbed on Mount Shiroyama above Kagoshima and looking at Google Maps the only way down to the city was the one we came from or some car only tunnels.On the other hand OSM listed a path with lots of stairs the locals apparently use to get up and down the mountain quickly. If we used only Google Maps we would have to backtrack quite a bit over parts of the city we already went to but instead we arrived back in the city quickly just in time to get a tasty evening ramen. :)
    • megous 6y ago
      You seem to operate under assumption that Google maps have great data or UI. They don't have either. Google maps may or may not be good for road travel, I don't know. I don't drive. They certainly seem to suck for public transport planning because of silently added walking times that you can't turn off, and overcomplicated 3D-chess like UI, that's hard to navigate and automatically jumps around the map for no really discernible reason. On a recent holiday, I had to constantly switch between gmaps and one other app with better actual mapping data/display (just because one has better public transport data, and the other is better at actually being a map - having things like a scale!, or contour lines). A lot of walking/cycling tracks were just not there in gmaps at all, nevermind the washed out display style of the map tiles and lack of clearly visually defined features you typically orient yourself by when walking, like houses, or other important things you need when planning a walk, like contour lines. Or let alone a scale for quick orientation on how far something is at the current zoom level. All they really have going for them at this point for me is public transport data (not the UI though). A case in point: Google "maps": https://megous.com/dl/tmp/46f0e2aff9573bba.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/46f0e2aff9573bba.png Actual maps: https://megous.com/dl/tmp/003b6d5bc0f15199.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/003b6d5bc0f15199.png (with forests where forests really are, lol)
  • otabdeveloper4 6y ago
    Maps.me is OSM under the hood, and it's very popular and far ahead of the Google offering on features and completeness.
    • blinding-streak 6y ago
      Citation needed.
    • lukeqsee 6y ago
      Agreed. It just has a cluttered and sometimes confusing interface (in my experience) which makes it difficult for me to intuitively use it for routing especially. So I typically use Apple Maps for routing—because it just works and is easy.
    • TulliusCicero 6y ago
      Open source software is often comparable or even superior to the proprietary sort in feature set, the kind of thing you can list in bullet points. But it tends to fall down when it comes to user experience. I remember attempting to use OSM on my phone before, and I remember being similarly confused about "which app should I use?" and the ones I tried just being fairly clunky. But I'll give maps.me a try, I can't remember if that was one of them.
      • mixedCase 6y ago
        OsmAnd~ (F-Droid build) has been serving me well for the past 5 years or so and it's gotten a lot of love over time in the UI/UX side.
        • paulryanrogers 6y ago
          Is the tilde part of the name?
          • asddubs 6y ago
            Yes, and it's only on F-Droid. Apparently there's OsmAnd and OsmAnd+, and the one with the tilde is basically the + version with no dependencies on google services. At least according to german wikipedia, which had a convenient little table
  • foepys 6y ago
    Some local public transportation "companies" in Germany (which are called "Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts" - literal translation "entity of public law" - and are more or less non-profit businesses funded by the city) are using OSM data for their apps and websites and they often edit the bus/tram/train routes and stops if they change them. This is where OSM shines: public entities keeping their data up to date for the benefit of all.
    • izacus 6y ago
      Is that really so much different than those same companies pushing their timetable feeds directly to Google for display in GMaps? Where does OSM provide value here and how can it beat GMaps in mindshare and keep suriving?
      • Retric 6y ago
        It’s simply more efficient to update OSM, which makes OSM more up to date. Google maps pulled data from OSM so the government had ~zero incentives to publish to GMaps and every other mapping service directly. It’s simply more work without benefit. PS: If I remember correct Google was on a 2 week delay for OSM data at the time, but that wasn’t considered meaningful. Also, what’s with all the hate here?
        • esarbe 6y ago
          I don't know. Just ignore them, the hate is not relevant.
      • foepys 6y ago
        I can pull, analyze, and use the data I paid for with my taxes instead of having to beg Google or any other company for access to the data.
      • croes 6y ago
        OSM is non-profit, Google is not. Google tracks the users, OSM does not.
  • liotier 6y ago
    Openstreetmap is not an end-user oriented product - but it is perceived through such products. Understanding what might make it more useful to developers benefits from competitive analysis of the consumer products.
  • bradbeattie 6y ago
    > OSM simply has to exist, and the longer it exists, the better the data will become. Probably, but not necessarily. The world changes with time and if OSM contributions languish, it falls out of date with the world and tangibly becomes a worse product. Certainly not inevitable, but a possibility worth noting.
    • quietbritishjim 6y ago
      Agreed. In fact, I think the OSM total fraction of errors will exponentially decay towards some non-zero fixed fraction of errors. That's because, on average in the long term, the world probably changes at an approximately fixed rate (relative to total mappable features in the world) and OSM is updated/corrected at a fixed rate (relative to fraction of mappable features that are wrong or missing). Even given the benefit of a lot of time, the OSM can never catch up with a mapping service that updates faster because that other service will have a different equilibrium.
      • Twisell 6y ago
        As of current technology every geographical database lag behind real world and took time to catch up. 20 year ago the average lag was often accounted in years between two survey. It would be nice to determine some random controls points and compare lag on different mapping service. The average lag would maybe maybe drop under a year for some (and it will depend on which feature, road update faster than building if you account for gps data). However I really don't see why OSM would necessarily lag more than Google Map or any commercial database. Because the more OSM usage is widespread (directly or through apps) the more human "field sensors" you get to update the map. Same way that I don't think many commercial encyclopedia can claim that they are more up-to-date than Wikipedia to record new facts.
    • Bakary 6y ago
      The places where the data matters might keep a healthy update rhythm
  • dheera 6y ago
    Yeah I was here to say this. OSM doesn't even compete with Google Maps, or rather, Google Maps doesn't even compete with OSM if you want to do any kind of large scale analysis on streets without silly licensing restrictions.
  • howlgarnish 6y ago
    > the longer it exists, the better the data will become. This is unfortunately not a given. The world changes constantly, and things like having up to date coverage of restaurants require an immense amount of essentially ephemeral work to keep up to date.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      That's why there should be a decoupled architecture. I am not an OSM expert. It may have this already. I am all for OSM, and sincerely wish it great success. What I do have, however, is experience in founding a worldwide, federated infrastructure that supports a fairly specialized (read: "small") demographic, but does that exceedingly well. It has become a worldwide standard, and is being taken to the next level by a team that doesn't really include me, anymore. It has a lot of structural support for federation. The idea is to push specialization away from the core as far and as fast as possible. The core is a relatively simple, tightly-focused, ultra-high-quality database engine, with a powerful semantic API. The services are addons that were written by some really energetic and skilled people that bring far more to the table than Yours Truly. In fact, these addons are what made the system suddenly become a "must have" for everyone. I'm assuming that OSM should have a "core mission" of geographic data, which is really just geolocation stuff. Basically, tagged locations. The tags can be used to relate the locations to external datasets. I would then assume that things like businesses, government services, and other geotagged datasets are attached as adapters to the "core," so they can be managed by others, who are specialized. Google does this (with arguable success) by letting businesses and individual users contribute data. I assume that it uses its own tools to aggregate and clean that data, and probably applies the data in an adapter fashion. This is what they are good at, and at vast scale and performance. Say what you will about them, but they do "big and fast" really well. I have found, through my own experience, that if I want local data to be accurate, it is important to let locals directly supply that data. In my experience, that started with an infrastructure designed for federation, and is realized by writing data harvesters that provide a rich, simple UI. Also, it is important to keep the core "pure." Specializations should be supplied at the adapter level; not by changing the core. For the most part, the central database schema of my system hasn't changed in ten years, but it does a lot more now, than I ever dreamed it would, back then. But that's just me. I don't think I'm anywhere near the level that many people live at. My experience is fairly small and humble. But effective.
  • betwixthewires 6y ago
    I'm with you on the "free projects have forever, proprietary projects have a deadline" line of thinking, I use it often when talking about social networks and microblogging. But one thing to consider is the motivation for predatory or destructive action. The OSM community does not have the motive or the resources for destructive activities towards Google, whereas Google has a motive and resources to sabotage OSM. This sort of thing you see historically with Microsoft and EEE, with Facebook and XMPP, and with lots of other things, including some of Google's behavior. I wrote about this in another comment in this thread (and talked about a solution to the problem), but I believe the existing OSM navigation apps that exist work well, and that the remaining friction point preventing them from competing with google in the consumer navigation market is address lookup. OsmAnd for example is very user friendly and I use it almost exclusively, but looking up addresses is the main difficulty.
    • distances 6y ago
      I really wany to love OsmAnd, but I'm not sure I agree on the user friendliness yet. First thing user feels is how slow the rendering is while panning. I can't measure it but I'd guess about 10fps on my phone, and the area revealed by panning is all grey for a good while before it gets drawn. It's fine for a tool, but has no chance to compete for casual end users like this.
      • usrusr 6y ago
        But fast OSM renderers exist. Take a look at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gr.talent.cruiser https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gr.talent.crui... for an example. It's perfectly smooth. The application is closed source but the underlying renderer (VTM) is LGPL3. The renderer, https://github.com/mapsforge/vtm https://github.com/mapsforge/vtm, is basically an OpenGL alternative for the mapsforge offline maps format and maintained by the same guy (the original mapsforge renderer is arguably a bit slow, struggling to hide its slowness behind cached tile bitmaps).
        • distances 6y ago
          Damn, that's very smooth! Way better than Google Maps. Do you have any insights why this isn't used by OsmAnd?
• emacsen 6y ago
  I'm the author of both "Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap" and "Why OpenStreetMap is in serious trouble". I think the issue of a mobile application is an interesting one, and on its own is not an issue, but combined with other issues, it is. My favorite OSM based map app was Mapzen Mobile. The reason I think Mapzen Mobile worked better than other apps was that it generally understood the ways in which users use OSM data, which largely ties into the critiques I and others have around OSM's geolocation services. They're very Euro-centric- even in comparison to how a North American uses the same services. But as long as map apps aren't good, then users will be forced to use proprietary maps, which feeds back into itself. We have some amazing opportunities- more now than ever, but the OSMF needs to put conscious effort into direction, making (ie funding and overseeing development) over mechanisms to allow for regular people to have OSM as easily and as well as Google Maps. This is no small feat, but I think that such a design could be designed- especially if it combined not only the existing mapping technologies for data (ie vector maps across the wire) but also localization of geolocation in a manner that mimiced the way geolocation data itself is crowdsourced- making it easy to build more relevant results from search and display the information people want quickly and easily. But like the author, I am disheartened and have my doubts that the OSMF would take on such an ambitious task. I wish very much that they would!
  • subins2000 6y ago
    I use OsmAnd and there are a lot of features. What troubles with Google Maps in India is that every road is considered basically the same and the routes it calculate often tends to be on very bad roads whereas OsmAnd tries to pick the road based on quality/main-roads first then side roads. This is very useful in India where many roads have potholes. Major roads (national, state, district highways) are better maintained than the rest. This distinction between roads are clearly mapped in OSM, at least in Kerala. GMaps also tries to calculate the very shortest path possible, but this often is a bad idea in India cause the roads won't be that great to go through. Some of the things I like about OsmAnd: navigation-with-voice, speedbump warnings, sightseeing notifications, trip recording+stats, parking area finder, different profiles (walking, driving, browsing etc.) :- all this available offline :)
    • 6y ago
• maire 6y ago
  I use only 1 metric to compare maps - are they accurate giving directions to my address? Google Maps used to be great - far better than Map Quest. Waze was pretty bad. Apple was initially bad. Open Street Maps was pretty good except they thought my driveway was a road. In the past year Google got pretty bad. Apple became awesome. About a year ago Open Street Maps improved. Then this morning I checked Open Street Maps and it now has the exact same bug that has irritated me with Google! I suspect there is some bad code sharing between OSM and Google. Details - if your physical address is in a different county than your postal office it confuses the heck out of Google. OSM used to handle this just fine, but not now. Accuracy counts more than anything else!
  • lukeqsee 6y ago
    What app are you using? OSM itself (openstreetmap.org) doesn't do routing, so I'm guessing the data itself is bad? It could be a bad governmental open data merge.
    • maire 6y ago
      > What App are you using. I used the OSM web page. Just type in the address with zip code, and it takes you to a completely different different zip code. This is a relatively new bug. I find it interesting that I am down voted by 4 points. The OSM fans must not understand the value of user testing. Maybe it is the google fans who don't understand user testing.
      • lucb1e 6y ago
        I'm sorry you're being downvoted, I see where you're coming from. The misunderstanding is that OSM is argued to be not a map but a database. The homepage at openstreetmap.org is meant to be a sort of dummy viewer, showing what data is there and that you can have different styles, it also integrates a popular geolocation service (Nominatim, this is the component you're complaining about) and some routing services. But it's all just a demo and not meant to be the best one could offer. There is no proper user testing because it's not a commercial company and also because it's just a simple demo, similar to how one might have a demo for some JavaScript library that shows many or all of its features but not necessarily in the best or most integrated way. The idea is that this database can be used by anyone, e.g. OsmAnd, the openstreetmap.org homepage, Facebook, Apple Maps, Mapbox, GraphHopper, etc. provide various services on top of it. Nominatim, the component you're having trouble with, is indeed fairly picky in its input. But do mind that you're comparing this to Google, the company on this planet that is the undisputed king of search. I'm not surprised their search function works better than this open source project using an open source set of data. For what it's worth, if you stick to common address formats and don't put in abbreviations like a country-specific postal code (it doesn't look for results near you, it just searches the planet for what you typed; it has no knowledge of where in the world you are as it doesn't track you -- yeah, maybe it should), then it works fine, or at least as reliable as the underlying data is.
• j45 6y ago
  Are there former google maps employees who could be hired to work on OSM? Sounds like it could be something folks would be willing to chip in for.
  • emacsen 6y ago
    The issue isn't lack of engineering but that the engineering in OSM is entirely on the "value add" providers, that are the companies using OSM. The OSM Foundation and general leadership (both official and unofficial) are people who sell these services (map rendering and geolocation) and appear blind to the need for a dedicated effort to make it better. They instead rely on work done a decade ago, proprietary work done by companies or else work done by volunteers without coordination. Because of this, the situation persists and gets worse over time.
    • j45 6y ago
      I’m new to this problem and appreciate the scope of the explanation.
      • Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
        It’s also nonsense. The chairman of the OSMF board is the retired US ambassador to Turkmenistan. That’s an interesting definition of “people who sell these services (map rendering and geolocation)“.
        • dang 6y ago
          Please make your points without breaking the HN guidelines. Your comment began with the sort of swipe that commenters are asked to avoid here. Your post would have been fine without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        • j45 6y ago
          Leadership/Management/Design by committee has its pros and cons for sure.
• Pinus 6y ago
  OSM:s biggest problem seems to be that it offers a product — a map database — that very few people need, and even fewer people can use, while still relying on millions of ordinary people for data collection (which means understanding the data model, which is getting hideously complex, because it tries to encode everything that can be located).
  • lukeqsee 6y ago
    The value is in the derivative works (literally hundreds of companies directly and indirectly rely on OSM for their map data).
  • larzang 6y ago
    Individuals may not need it, but companies? The company I work for has multiple products which internally rely on geolocating arbitrary addresses. OSM keeps our costs way down, we only have to pay Google when OSM fails a match and we fall back to the Google Maps API. I doubt we're uncommon in this. OSM had less of a programmatic use when Google's free monthly tiers were large and subsequent costs low, but that hasn't been the case for a good while now.
  • matkoniecz 6y ago
    > which means understanding the data model This not needed. You can use iD (default in-browser editor) without direct tag use. On Android you can use StreetComplete that has no exposure to tags or tagging schemes and requires 0 OSM-specific knowledge to use (except creating OSM user account). > OSM:s biggest problem seems to be that it offers a product — a map database — that very few people need, and even fewer people can use Most people use it indirectly, that is not some fundamental problem.
• Shank 6y ago
  My biggest critique with OSM and OSM-based maps is that contributing an OSM change has an unknown time delay between "OSM change" and "actual map software updates to have it." I was infuriated to find multiple geography issues in Apple Maps in my area. I went to OSM, and the underlying source has already been corrected. The satellite imagery is correct, but the map layers for navigation and travel are wrong. How long will it take for OSM changes to make it into Apple Maps? No clue. You can submit corrections for some info (like place details) to Apple and Google and they'll change within 24-48 hours. If you update OSM, however, it'll take you an unknown amount of time. Some iOS apps proudly champion being able to update OSM data monthly -- but that's still huge compared to basically over a weekend.
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    The changes make it into the database in more or less real time and there are condensed feeds providing the changes for the last minute, hour, or day. So the delays are on the data consumer side. A lot of that ends up being QA, because big companies don't want to publish vandalism. Of course, when they accidentally do publish vandalism, their slower update pace becomes a weakness.
    • Drdrdrq 6y ago
      Does that happen? One would assume that the slower update pace is just a matter of policy, so with vandalism they would be able to apply fixes much faster.
      • maxerickson 6y ago
        There was a notable example a few years ago. https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2018/08/30/osm-condemns-vandalism/ https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2018/08/30/osm-condemns-vanda... OSM had the vandalism removed in a couple hours. A few weeks later, the QA mistakenly let the vandalism through and it wasn't corrected until it got quite a lot of attention.
  • iggldiggl 6y ago
    > You can submit corrections for some info (like place details) to Apple and Google and they'll change within 24-48 hours. Maybe it's because I only infrequently bother to submit corrections to Google Maps, but that certainly wasn't my experience – a number of changes all took weeks to months to resolve and sometimes required multiple attempts on top.
• Nextgrid 6y ago
  OSM has the same problem as many other open-source projects: not enough focus on branding and user experience. Right now, if I want to use OSM on my iPhone and I search "OpenStreetMap" in the App Store I get various applications under various, unknown names. The closest to an "official" name would be OSMaps, but it turns out even that one isn't official and has no navigation capabilities. On Android, I don't have a phone to test with but seems like the most popular option appears to be OsmAnd. Again, not only is the name cryptic but doesn't imply anything unless you're already familiar with OSM. "Google Maps", "Apple Maps", etc in contrast automatically imply what the app is for even if you've never heard of the brand itself. If OSM wants to succeed in the consumer space, they need to release an official, "reference implementation" of a mobile client with an UI comparable to the competition that a layman can understand and use even if they have no idea what OSM is nor are interested in contributing.
  • estaseuropano 6y ago
    But that would mean OSM Starts competing with its corporate users. Not sure this will be a healthy strategy. What I would love to see would be an app allowing me to quickly contribute to OSM, e.g. fix things, add street names or POIs, etc.
    • bchanudet 6y ago
      On Android you can use StreetComplete. With it, you'll be mostly able to add missing details around you, and the types of quests available are very broad. Arguably, you can't fix things with it, I heard there was an other app on F-Droid to do this but I haven't tried it yet.
      • matkoniecz 6y ago
        "Arguably, you can't fix things with it" - you can fix certain things, thanks to resurvey quests that were added. For example resurvey of old opening hours data, recent version (v28.0) added also ability to directly handle shop that is gone and replaced by another (it may not be released for you, especially if you use F-Droid). See https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/releases/tag/v28.0 https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/releases/ta... for details. For full scale editing on Android see Vespucci.
• orange_tee 6y ago
  OSM always worked better for me. I suspect this is going to be very location dependent. I guess in the US Google tries really hard to get good data or maybe it is easier to get good data. I lived in various countries in Europe, always in smaller cities and rural areas. OSM data is always more reliable for whatever reason. I noticed and was rather surprised that even my small hometown of 5000 people had multiple OSM contributors.
• mynegation 6y ago
  That might be a good time to share my anecdote. Back in 2017 I was driving in Mexico using maps.me in offline mode (saving on ex-orbitant data roaming fees). At one point, the highway did a wide turn, and some village was tucked away in this turn. Maps.me decided it would be a good idea to cut through the village as its main street connected two points on the bending highway like a chord. Yes, in terms of distance it was shorter, if you do not account for the allowed speed limit and conditions. I spent 10 minutes slowly crawling through the village trying not to kill any chickens. I was also low on gas and had barely enough to get to the next gas station, so I was not amused. Since then I always triple-check maps.me routes, looking at the whole route and checking it against google maps if I have a chance. To be fair, it has probably more to do with maps.me routing algorithm than OSM data, but it is hard to know.
  • kortilla 6y ago
    Accounting for speed limits is such a basic thing in a route plan. I wonder if there was incorrect information in the source about the limits.
• rawland 6y ago
  It's not a product. Click bait.
  • lucb1e 6y ago
    Sensationalized title, rather. You're right but it's not the author's, Christopher Beddow's, fault.
    • mkl 6y ago
      Indeed. The original title is "The Mobile Map App Part I: The Void".
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• gwilikers 6y ago
  Why apples as a product fails to compete with oranges - part 1/3
• chippy 6y ago
  OSM does not fail as a product because it is not trying to be a product and it is not trying to compete! From his twitter it appears that the author is a Facebook employee. Now working (I guess) on Facebook Maps and (probably) on the Mapillary product. The somewhat surprising fact to many is that OpenStreetMap does not need Facebook. If Facebook disappeared, OSM would continue. Think about that again, OSM does not need the participation of any large corporate body to continue. The editors of OpenStreetMap welcome big corporate users of the database but they don't actually seek out or need huge corporate users. Don't get me wrong - OSM editors love that Facebook and Apple use and contribute, there's lots of reasons to praise this. It's like a wikipedia editor who hears that teachers are using their articles in all the nations schools - they are honoured and welcome it, but if the teachers stopped one day the wikipedia editor would still keep on writing those articles! So, OpenStreetMap does not need Facebook or Apple. OpenStreetMap does not need to compete or be a product. Seems to me that I would view that as a big risk for Apple and Facebook. So, lets imagine how two of the FAANG could protect their investments and reduce risks. Would the changes that OpenStreetMap would need to make to be a product and to compete with Google Maps reduce such risk? It seems to me that there might possibly be a push from the FAANG users of OSM to make it into a product, to grow, to be a tech organisation with actual employees, a CEO, a structure, an organisation that is familiar to many in tech and their lawyers, a business one can do business with, create contracts with, make NDAs to, employee people in, write deals with, have a say in the direction of and invest actual money in. Currently there is none of that and I think that might be worrying to FAANG. Even if there's no conscious push from these huge corporations its more probable and it makes more sense to someone with a Silicon Valley mindset that any tech organisation look, behave, and be organised as every other successful tech organisation. It's therefore logical from multiple directions to want OSM to change to become a product company. I would argue that OSM is successful exactly because it is not like a tech organisation.
  • gaogao 6y ago
    On your last part, isn't that just Mapbox, if you want OSM as a product company?
• orthoxerox 6y ago
  I find OSM (the website) is a great map. It's blazing fast (Google Maps aren't), and the color scheme is very clear. When I want to explore some random place on Earth (that uses a writing system I can actually read) I always use OSM. Google Maps (or its local competitors) are great for spatial searches (ATMs in the area, shops in the area) and routing. Finally, Wikimapia is great for virtual urban exploration. If you saw an abandoned building or warehouse, or found a suspicious bald spot in the middle of the forest when using OSM or Google Maps, the best place to learn about it is Wikimapia.
  • ivan_ah 6y ago
    Direct link to Wikimapia https://wikimapia.org/ https://wikimapia.org/ Highly recommended for looking around when you move to a new neighbourhood or city... I would say tourism, but that is NaT (not a thing) right now.
  • mschuetz 6y ago
    I'm also in favour of OSMs color scheme. It's much easier to parse.
    • iggldiggl 6y ago
      Oh yes, Google's colour scheme seems heavily geared towards the map only ever serving as an inconspicuous geographical background for displaying routing information or POIs. When you actually want to use it as a map in its own right, it's absolutely infuriating, though – forests disappear when you zoom in, the distinction between built-up areas and surrounding open space does so likewise, so all you're left with is lots of faint white streets on a light grey background with some random green spaced dotted around.
• sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  Do not try installing Maps.me now. It's been sold twice and current owners kept only the name, replacing the original code with a Mapbox demo app. AFAIK, the spiritual successor to Maps.me is Guru Maps. But if you can live with the complexity of OsmAnd UI, just get it from F-Droid to avoid the 5-maps limit imposed by the Google Play version.
  • ce4 6y ago
    Discussion from 11d ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25515004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25515004
  • matkoniecz 6y ago
    mapy.cz is fine. I recommend paying for OsmAnd if you use it and it is not a very serious amount of money for you.
    • lucb1e 6y ago
      Having recently done the math on how much it costs to process the whole planet file into packed regions, I'm surprised it's so cheap, a one-time payment, and payment is not even supported at all in the F-Droid version.
      • m4rtink 6y ago
        Just cutting the global planet file to regional data packs is really not that hard - I did it some time ago in a beefy server with 48 Opteron cores and 256 GB of RAM and it less than 12 hours. I would assume it would take less than a week even on a normal modern PC. If you need to do some more processing per region, that could be more involved but still doable. You can also do a lot of caching and prioritization or even diff updates possibly so you might not have to fully reprocess whole regions.
• luplex 6y ago
  Before Christmas, i downloaded StreetComplete so I have something to do on my daily walks. This post just reminded me to actually upload my changes. The whole process worked flawlessly, i can recommend it. The only problem is that there seems to be not a lot of community coordination, so I'm not sure which data types I should focus on.
  • matkoniecz 6y ago
    Glad to hear that it works nicely :) (I am one of contributors to that software) > The only problem is that there seems to be not a lot of community coordination, so I'm not sure which data types I should focus on. So you want to know how data contributed with SC is actually used? Address data and road names are obviously heavily used, surface data is used for routing, opening hours is shown in multiple places showing shop data from OSM. https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/blob/master/app/src/main/java/de/westnordost/streetcomplete/quests/QuestModule.kt#L119 https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/blob/master... has list of quests in terms of their priority with some mentions in comments with some examples this data is used.
    • lucb1e 6y ago
      Is surface data really that helpful in routing when the road type is accurate? If a road is indicated to be a major one, the surface ought to match its heavy use. What's more, if you've ever driven in Belgium, or crossed the border from Germany into the Netherlands over a highway while it's raining (pervious asphalt, "ZOAB"), you'll find that asphalt != asphalt. Driving from Aachen to Nijmegen might be much nicer over Dutch roads than over German ones in the rain, but both would be tagged with the same surface. It's a very easy quest so I complete it when I'm checking the location anyway, but I do find it to be quite a bit less useful than, say, whether a road is lit, which I have been tagging near me because my girlfriend mentioned that she was having trouble planning runs because she doesn't know which streets are lit. The lit tag is prioritized below surface data, and road type isn't a quest at all. (Ties into a book I'm reading: invisible women. We're not purposefully ignoring them, but men developed the app and we are much less likely to care whether a road is lit when going out after dark. I don't actually know why prioritization was set this way, just that I wouldn't be surprised if this bias subconsciously played into it, or perhaps is the reason why there are so few apps that display it.)
• zelphirkalt 6y ago
  Well, so far I have always preferred OSM over Google Maps, simply because of tracking and spying and because for me personally the user interface delivered a better experience. Also it only needed third party stuff when searching for routes from A to B. However, lately the situation with OSM has drastically worsened, when they started relying on fastly. I'll unfortunately have to find a new map website now. Welcoming any suggestions for map websites with basic functionality like OSM, but without relying on spying eyes.
• deanclatworthy 6y ago
  I’m surprised nobody has mentioned tiles here. In order for anyone to build products around OSM data you’re probably going to want to render a map. Tile hosting services are costly and I have up last time I tried to find out how you could do it yourself.
  • lukeqsee 6y ago
    > Tile hosting services are costly and I have up last time I tried to find out how you could do it yourself. Blatant self-promotion: my company (https://stadiamaps.com https://stadiamaps.com) is trying to fix this problem (I think we have in many ways). I strongly believe you shouldn't have to stand up your own tile hosting infra just to deploy a map without paying $$$ / month. If you want to though, do it! It'll teach you a lot.
  • m4rtink 6y ago
    There are on device or even in browser renderers that only need remote or locally stored vector data to render the map. This moves the burde of rendering to user devices that should be more than capable for this today (especially if you use a GPU renderer) and makes you server into just a dumb data pipe that should be able to scale much better & more cheaply. One such renderer available via Qt/QML: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/location-plugin-mapboxgl.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/location-plugin-mapboxgl.html Alternatively you can have a local daemon running that does the tile rendering on your device from offline data packs. This way even "legacy" apps requiring simple bitmap tiles will work without (major) changes. One such project providing this (among other APIs) is OSM Scout Server: https://github.com/rinigus/osmscout-server https://github.com/rinigus/osmscout-server
• sildur 6y ago
  > I worry myself every time I open Google Maps on my phone. I feel like a traitor. Easy, uninstall it and use only their web version, which is hideous in mobile.
  • BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Yeah, the article is frustrating in missing such an obvious solution. It's like : what kind of developer do you think contributes more to Linux : one that is using it (almost) exclusively, or one that runs back to Windows/MacOS every time he stumbles on some half-baked or missing feature ?
• Emptysister 6y ago
  good luck finding some data on google maps that cant be monetarized (walking paths, public restrooms, drinking fountains, etc ...)
• lizknope 6y ago
  Google Maps is great but Maps.me has tons of hiking trails that Google doesn't have. I know Google Maps can download map sections ahead of time but I go to a lot of places with no mobile phone service and if I forgot to download maps ahead of time I don't worry about it. I just open up Maps.me and it has all the trails, roads, and usually the parking lots. For many uses it is superior to Google Maps. I am glad I have both.
  • s0rce 6y ago
    Open street map is great for hiking trails, particularly around urban areas where the US government maps (USFS, USGS) are way too out of date and don't cover new trails. I routinely update OSM for trails around the SF Bay area as I hike/bike them. I like the TF outdoors product accessible via the Caltopo and Gaia GPS apps, particularly the ability to easily download the maps for offline use.
• HunOL 6y ago
  The biggest drawback of OSM and OS-related apps is POI. Lots of outdated information so it's not reliable and can not be used day to day life.
  • lucb1e 6y ago
    Google goes so far as to send businesses physical mail to make sure they put their business on the map. When an old employer of mine got this, I remember thinking of making flyers that people can distribute and drop in mailboxes for OSM. (Similar to how my school emailed everyone, every year about how generously Microsoft gives us their Office suite for only 40 euros or something, failing to mention that LibreOffice works perfectly fine --if you don't mind the design-- and is of course completely free. Why not encourage people to donate 40 euros every 5 years to LibreOffice instead, or alongside?) Didn't end up doing it, also because there just isn't an easy editor that businesses would use. I would make one, but then how would I make them aware of this? OSM in general and such an editor in particular? It's just such an uphill battle when everyone uses Google Search, businesses can get free advertising by putting themselves on Google Maps (that map shows up when you look for a local business or category of businesses), and Google spends a boatload of money on driving cars around and getting more business owners on board as well.
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      You can point businesses at https://www.onosm.org/ https://www.onosm.org/ (It creates a note rather than directly adding the business to OSM)
      • toomuchtodo 6y ago
        Have you used this? Would it be straightforward to build custom URLs per biz into QR codes, stick them on postcards, and shoot them out using Lob or a similar services to rapidly get POI data on OSM?
        • maxerickson 6y ago
• lucb1e 6y ago
  The title is sensationalized from "The Mobile Map App" to "Why Openstreetmap's product fails to compete". There also is no singular OSM app (or any other product aimed at end users) so this is misleading as a headline for those not already familiar with the database vs. user software distinction, and OP seems to not have read the article because OSM is arguably used more widely than Google Maps. See the list of uses mentioned in the article, or compare the map completeness beyond the USA's borders: it's quite a large gap and Google isn't winning. But also the article is weirdly skeptical: > no map was accessible without downloading the region Google could mandate this as well... maybe file a feature request with the developers of the app you were using (maps.me, unaffiliated with OSM)? > ["]What map is this? Where can we see it?["] It’s a bit easier to explain such an impact if you contribute to something like Linux Erm, yeah try that with my parents (only ever heard of Linux because of me) or my grandparents. They have zero trouble understanding the concept of a map. Moreover, I was over at my grandma recently and she doesn't even know what a website is, not even conceptually. She doesn't use the internet at all. Explaining how I can contribute to a map, any map, digitally, is a challenge. So I asked if she had a map of the area. She pulls one out that she got from the municipality. I point at a parking lot: I drew that lot. I take out my phone, pull op the OSM website, and show the history view for the object. "Added by [me] 4 years ago". Ooooh how what so cool -- really, /you/ drew that? She was flabbergasted and amazed. Compared to the Linux kernel... I'm not convinced the concept of a kernel would be easier to frankly almost anyone, let alone non-techies. Why bother when there is Windows and macOS? That's not even a (near) monopoly like Google has! Even many tech people barely know what a kernel is, and I don't mean in casual use (I call my OS "Linux" all the time) but also in understanding. When someone asked about killing PID 1 for some reason, I said that you'd be left with just a kernel if anything. They assumed that means you get a bash shell as only thing on the screen, and this person is absolutely not unfamiliar with Linux-based OSes in general. > I can tell people that they’ve seen this map that us OSM contributors produce when they use Facebook apps. Many people find that acceptable, acknowledging our painstaking map editing is relevant. Saying "it's used here" doesn't give much perspective as to why this "painstaking" map editing (to me it's enjoyable) is useful. I don't do it just because someone (especially Facebook) uses it. They could very well use Google's expensive data if OSM did not exist. The reason is that Google spends a billion every year to update their map, lets people view it but only in ways they like, and wins back the money by using your data. It's not open for purposes that don't serve the ad market like researchers, and some people would frankly prefer an alternative to needing Google for everything. That's the reason why people contribute to OSM (aside from it being a strangely enjoyable hobby).
• qwerty456127 6y ago
  Because Google Maps is pushed down your throat. Whenever somebody shares their location with me it shows a tiny preview and requires to install Google Maps. But Google Maps are the worst maps I ever had to use so I don't even have them installed. Fortunately there is quite a number of alternatives. In some countries there even are domestic competitors which usually are guaranteed to be much better than any global-scale map providers.
  • lucb1e 6y ago
    Isn't it anti-competitive to use your dominance in one market to push yourself in another? Try googling anything that can be put on a map. Observe the Google Map popping up. I mean, it makes sense to integrate it, but I can also see how the ubiquitous Google Search now leads to ubiquitous Google Map use. Every business wants to be in the search results (free advertising) and so Google Maps has all the businesses², plus a consistently decent base layer of other data in most rich countries, making app developers (almost invariably also from rich countries) use that instead of a cheaper and in many (but not all) regards better alternative. Not that I'm not also from one of the richest countries in this world, I just happen to contribute to OSM and so know more about its coverage than the average developer would. ² OSM is less complete and more outdated for this specific kind of data, in contrast to e.g. roads, trails, landcover, power grids, and most other geospatial data.
    • qwerty456127 6y ago
      By the way, there is no hard technical problem in overlaying search results of anything which has physical address/coordinates over any maps. Google could still be useful in finding local bars/gyms/toilets even without forcing you to use their maps. So they don't have an excuse for anti-competitive practices. I live in a fairly rich country but still hate Google Maps. Fortunately there are alternatives which are better in every aspect (including having all the local businesses, attractions and conveniences listed + able to tell you when to take a bus to get anywhere).
• philipwhiuk2 6y ago
  Clearly hasn't seen OSM's view on the whole thing: https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/DYXWDC/ https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/DYXWDC/
  • rmc 6y ago
    That's just one (knowledable & influential) person's opinion. “OSM” itself doesn't “have views” on topics as complicated as that.
• sethherr 6y ago
  As a note: this article says Strava uses Google maps, which is incorrect. Strava has for a while used Mapbox, which uses OSM.
• betwixthewires 6y ago
  Ive been interested in this sort of thought for quite some time, as an avid OSM user (I use it essentially exclusively for all my map needs) and sometimes contributor (I've contributed some information in areas I've lived, and a couple of interesting overlay maps in the US). I do not use Facebook at all, nor any of their products, so that isn't really a draw for me. I've found that OsmAnd for street navigation works as well as and in some cases better than Google, particularly semi rural areas. The big sticking point with using OSM for car navigation (the biggest use case for any map framework and/or app) is address lookup. Usually Nominatim is used, and particularly in the US it doesn't give you any address data, only cross streets, so navigating to a place you have no idea where it is means you're going to use Google or something else to find it, and then use OSM to navigate out of principle. This is a major roadblock, if you've got to use Google to find out where it is, you'll normally just use it to navigate as well. I have a solution to this problem, and that is to source address data from openaddresses.io (a collaborative, open source geocoding project) for address lookup. It will require a bit of work to do, specifically on Android, I will have to build an address lookup backend alternative to Nominatim that sources address data from openaddresses.io, which requires account registration to download geocoding data, which means that it will probably require local storage and lookup of data. Once this exists though (and I have not started building it, I tell myself I will but I have other things going on) you've essentially eliminated the big friction point with OSM and it becomes a viable competitor to proprietary navigation in cars or otherwise on roadways. I think if this were built, and the word got out, it would kill the Google Maps monopoly over consumer use, at least with the "sick of google" demographic, which is sizeable.
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    This project releases map files for OsmAnd that include OpenAddress data: https://github.com/pnoll1/osmand_map_creation https://github.com/pnoll1/osmand_map_creation
    • betwixthewires 6y ago
      That is actually really great. Do you know a lot about this project?
• RivieraKid 6y ago
  In Czechia, Mapy.cz is: - 10x better in map data and aesthetics (https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=13.8929744&y=50.0331743&z=14&l=0 https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=13.8929744&y=50.0331743&z=14... vs https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0297578,13.8901237,13z https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0297578,13.8901237,13z) - Better in app UX and functionality (tracker, offline, weather on a route, etc.). - Substantially worse at places data, especially user reviews and photos - when I'm choosing a restaurant, I use Google Maps. - Worse at search.
  • bagacrap 6y ago
    I just opened mapy in my mobile browser and it was essentially unusable because I couldn't drag the map with out long, slow redraws.
    • RivieraKid 6y ago
      The mobile app is quite good.
  • tuukkah 6y ago
    And outside Czechia, Mapy.cz is based on OSM.
  • widerporst 6y ago
    >- 10x better in map data and aesthetics (https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=13.8929744&y=50.0331743&z=14 https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=13.8929744&y=50.0331743&z=14... vs https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0297578,13.8901237,13z https://www.google.com/maps/@50.0297578,13.8901237,13z) I just don't understand why Google Maps has merged the colors of forests, pastures and farmland. In your example, everything is just green. I've seen arguments about removing unnecessary information and decluttering the map. But very often forests, for example, have very distinctive shapes, which helps immensely to intuitively recognize locations with a quick glance.
• ketamine__ 6y ago
  > Gaia GPS is my favorite for hiking, hands-down, and I happily pay for an annual subscription to it. I bought it in the app store and I'm grandfathered in. Feels good! :)
• nicbou 6y ago
  I use OSM heavily, and it blows Google Maps out of the water in certain categories. It has much more granular data that is especially useful for outdoor activities. You can tell roads from trails from tracks, and all are there. In many places, everything is mapped down to benches and signage. Google Maps shows you a white line, and it's up to you to find out whether your vehicle fits on it. This bit me a few times. When I was in Central Asia, I used it to find gas stations and ATMs that weren't on Google Maps. I mapped a dozen of them myself, and added information about the fuel octane they had. It's also how I found accommodation and restaurants that wouldn't be listed on Google Maps. Google Maps covers people living in cities rather well, but if your use case isn't "take the train to a nice restaurant", OSM has a lot more to offer.
• WA 6y ago
  Google Maps: I use it for driving, because of traffic data, not because of map data. I use OSM through Komoot for hiking, biking, walking. Because every tiny trail is in there and Google Maps is lacking this. I don’t use OSM directly, because Komoot offers additional data on top of OSM such as photos, trails etc. I wonder why the author doesn’t include the simple fact in the analysis that Google Maps doesn’t win because of its map data, but because of the additional data it provides and OSM is one layer below. It’s not an equal comparison.
• IndySun 6y ago
  Taking the title at face value, then something should be done about the monopoly of Google, not to lament the so-called 'failure to compete' of OpenStreetMap.
• BlueTemplar 6y ago
  How good is OSM's traffic data ? In my experience that's something that Google Maps does very well.
  • matkoniecz 6y ago
    OSM has no traffic data and it will not have as it is utterly unsuitable for manual collection by hobbyists. Traffic data needs fully automatic data collection that requires support from map data (and OSM can help here).
• thefz 6y ago
  > The data quality is always improving, the local knowledge is stellar but varies, the editing tools are ever-improving, the community is growing in size as well as across countries and demographics. But the product of OpenStreetMap is poorly marketed, lacks developed user interfaces and experience, and remains in many ways a raw material—a database as we say—waiting to be refined. That was the point with OSM from the start, and the author is clearly missing it.