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Google Maps launches Street View in India
- somecommit 4y agoThat's need some courage and determination for sure
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoIndia really needs its own Google Maps alternative. I spent a while living there and found the near universal dependence on Google Maps to get anywhere a scary amount of reliance on a foreign service. I worry a Google Maps outage, accidental or intensional, could have big consequences on many people's ability to navigate around. (Eventually people will get directions by just asking on the street, but that's gonna be really tough for drivers) Developers in India could make some really cool solutions to the different address system, provide more interesting sources of realtime data, and better support for local languages.
- hgazx 4y agoTo develop Google maps you need to pay engineers a Google salary, which is impossible anywhere but America.
- matkoniecz 4y agoYou can get quide good (or for some use cases superior) products. See - Organic Maps - OsmAnd - mapy.cz Note: Google has clearly better car routing and shop listings. But for cycling or hiking OSM is typically superior. And you can fix map if something is wrong.
- db1234 4y agoThere is a cultural angle as well here. Unlike America, it's quite common and acceptable in India to just ask someone directions which helps with the last mile directions so India doesn't need a perfect map solution, just a good enough one.
- selimthegrim 4y agoIf the person doesn’t know they may be too embarrassed to admit it and make something up. Which is why the last mile qualifier is crucial.
- nalinidash 4y agoFrom my experience,if they do not know the route they say that frankly rather than making up something.
- selimthegrim 4y agoYou’ve never been to Lahore I’m guessing.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago> Unlike America, it's quite common and acceptable in India to just ask someone directions What? What makes you think this is unacceptable in the US? I think most Americans prefer to be independent and not have to ask someone, but it's not really that rare.
- londons_explore 4y agoGoogle maps is bad for hiking because they generate most of their map data from what the street view cars can see, and cars can't go down hiking trails.
- dudus 4y agoThis is just plainly wrong. Most of the data is licensed from third parties.
- londons_explore 4y agoWhen Google maps started this was the case... But now only a tiny proportion is third party data (some business listings, some transit data, various icons and logos, ads)
- matkoniecz 4y agoIt is bad because it is niche not very profitable sector. At least not Google-scale profitable. And many hikers care A LOT about hiking and their maps. Hiking and cycling data in OSM is extremely good, as result of many such people being interested in project - as mappers and as users of data, including software creation.
- dartharva 4y agoExactly how much do you think Google pays its engineers and how much does it deviate from the industry?
- politelemon 4y agoWhat you're saying feels true for any place though. There's a huge reliance on their maps for getting around anywhere and similarly affected by availability. Open Street map exists as a dataset to build alternatives on, and I've seen a few like Maps.me which are pretty decent. But it does require crowd sourcing.
- andrewshadura 4y agoMaps.me is now known as Organic Maps.
- matkoniecz 4y agoOr strictly speaking, it was forked by original authors after hostile takeover. Nice case of how open sourcing was useful.
- thriftwy 4y agoChina, Russia and South Korea have competing maps services for their countries. I wonder if Japan has some kind of Yahoo Maps. UPD: yes, they do, and these seem to be much better tailored at local audience from the first glance.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoLarge parts of the former USSR are covered by 2gis.com, which has full offline capability. I think the last time I updated maps on my phone was a couple of years ago (although they publish monthly updates), and it still works fine.
- stoicjumbotron 4y agoAgreed. My dad always asks me what would happen if Maps was shut down? Do we have any alternative service? And I'm not able to give a concrete answer to his question. Sure there is OSM, but apart from pure locations (which are community led afaik) I don't know of any good reliable service for navigation not reliant on Google. Edit: Apart from Apple Maps as well. Just in case someone points out the major competitor.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoApple Maps wasn't super helpful for me when I was there. Even within cities. They don't have a big enough team on the ground (yet?) to detail the maps out
- webmobdev 4y agoApple maps isn't the real competitor to Google Maps in India. It is HERE - https://www.here.com/applications/wego https://www.here.com/applications/wego ... Google was forced to offer offline maps in India and EU because the Here apps offered it for a long time. (Apple maps still doesn't but it has a slight advantage over Here in that it licensed data from JustDial, an online yellow pages services, and so it can show the location of many retail and other commercial outlets better). Here had Nokia as a stakeholder, but is now owned by consortium of EU automobile manufacturers.
- randomperson_24 4y agoApple Maps is honestly no where close to Google Maps. Especially in dense Indian cities with multiple roads to reach a place, some roads are not even there on Apple Maps. It also (like OSM) lacks in contact details of businesses, open/close time, etc. which are a real value add for Google Maps. Hopefully some real competitor emerges.
- yolo3000 4y agoAll the map data of google is public, it's probably been copied/vectorized/etc, add some errors to it, remove some streets, shift the street a meter or two, you got a comparable service. Probably google has a lot of checksums in there to see if it's their data you're drawing, but since maps is almost an essential service I don't think they can abruptly remove it without consequences, one of which would be to allow a new service even on stolen data.
- selimthegrim 4y agoHave you ever tried asking for directions on the street in India?
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoMy wife has! It always takes at least 3 people to point you in the right way
- diskiesk 4y agoOf course there is OSM, but also Sygic navigation provides offline maps for whole world, including India. I believe there are also some other similar companies. I don't think we are all dependent on Google.
- perryizgr8 4y agoNokia used to have a first class maps offering in India about a decade (more?) ago. Really well done and complete, for the time. They also had proper voice navigation, even in Indian languages. But the problem with vendor locked services is that they tend to go down with the vendor. That's why we need a separation between the OS providers, device manufacturers and software providers.
- webmobdev 4y agoIt still exists; Nokia sold it, and now some EU automobile manufacturers own it and maintain it well - https://wego.here.com/ https://wego.here.com/ (apps for both android and ios are available, and you can download maps for offline use statewise or for whole of india). English only though.
- vvs29 4y agoMapMyIndia does pretty well in the cities at least. I haven't tried it out in tier3 cities and rural areas. Though the traffic information is still better with Google Maps.
- sssk 4y agoYou mean this -> https://www.mappls.com/ https://www.mappls.com/
- selfhoster69 4y agoIf there's a home developed alternative, it is significantly more likely to experience outages than Google's offering, given how terrible gov. services are in the country. Wanna withdraw money from a Post Office? Be prepared to return back empty-handed because "Link down" or gov. employees watching cricket matches.
- ajakate 4y agoIt's interesting to see how certain regulatory requirements of countries can disrupt the ubiquity of google maps. For the longest time South Korea looked completely different when you zoomed in on it in google maps. South Korea didn't want high-resolution map information to fall into the wrong hands, so they disallowed storing that kind of map data on foreign servers. I believe it was also hard/impossible to get driving directions [1]. Curiously, I just checked gmaps and it appears to look normal now. This must have happened in the past few months, not sure why I can't seem to find any info online. [1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/one-thing-north-korea-has-the-south-doesnt-google-maps-24650 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/one-thing-north-k...
- webmobdev 4y ago> It's interesting to see how certain regulatory requirements of countries can disrupt the ubiquity of google maps. It was done for the right reasons - security. You don't want foreign governments to have data on physical government assets, especially military and critical infrastructure. Moreover, the Google street view vans also collect other data (including scanning for WiFi networks and collecting associated metadata) - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285928324_The_Google_Street_View_Wi-Fi_scandal_and_its_repercussions_for_privacy_regulation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285928324_The_Googl... ... I think it also collected atmospheric data (pollution levels etc).
- saagarjha 4y agoSecurity is a reason. It’s not always the right decision.
- webmobdev 4y agoHere, I feel India has found a nice compromise - indian companies are allowed to get license to collect the street data, and others (including foreign companies like Google), can license it from them. This takes care of security concerns of the governments, creates more jobs, fosters a more competitive business environment (Google alone won't have the street data) and western investors can be relieved that the aim wasn't protectionism.
- lolpython 4y agoReally excited to see how this affects the Geoguessr[0] meta. This will be up there with Russia, Brazil, Turkey, USA, and Canada in that it can really make or break competitive games. Since the countries are so large and it can be difficult to tell which region you're in [0]: https://www.geoguessr.com/ https://www.geoguessr.com/
- pradn 4y agoIf in urban areas, the presence of street signs in different languages will help in a multi-lingual country like India. The trees and terrain can also vary quite a bit, from arid to rain-forest.
- Arnavion 4y agoA bunch of GeoGuessr streamers I watch can't tell the difference between Bangla and Sinhala/Tamil and basically do a 50-50 coin toss when it comes to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. I look forward to them being even more befuddled by all the Devanagari variants.
- googlryas 4y ago
- zichy 4y ago
- googlryas 4y agoNot really, I'm slightly above average but outclassed by many geoguessrs. And it is useless since I'll most likely never use this knowledge outside of geoguessr. My point is that watching a geoguessr player who doesn't know how to interpret street signs is like watching a chess streamer who doesn't know about en passant. I guess if you're watching them for their humorous commentary or their cleavage, that's cool, but it hopefully is not because you think they're good players.
- ashineo 4y agoSomething I'm kinda interested in is how one might make a semi-complete, even locally, alternative to street view. It seems like something that could potentially be made much cheaper with a collection of drones with 360 cameras. they could all be programmed to fill out areas relatively quickly I think. It might not be street height which would be a bit of a loss, but an open dataset (with appropriate face/license plate/etc filtering) would be worth that I think.
- Larrikin 4y agoIf the height is not street level, what's the niche that's being filled by that when we already have tons of satellite data.
- ashineo 4y agoI dont mean that its above the buildings on streets just that it would probably need to be above car/van/lorry height to not get smashed
- Pakdef 4y agoProbably could use the data from self driving cars, including lidar, to make something interesting.
- Ajedi32 4y agoKartaView and Mapillary are open data Street View alternatives, though they mostly rely on dash cam footage, and thus often don't have fully panoramic views. There's also OpenDroneMap, which is more drone-focused and captures full 3d point clouds, but that still isn't quite the same as what you're proposing.
- rootusrootus 4y agoWhat does it mean to "launch Street View"? Some street view imagery has been available for several years in some areas. E.g. Hitec City in Hyderabad. Are they trying to say that now it will become a formal effort to send cameras down every street in every city?
- Anunayj 4y agoMost of these street view imagery was done by private individuals, in private spaces. Security and Privacy concerns didn't allow google to send Google's camera down the streets snapping pictures. Which imo is not a bad position to take, I wonder what changed.
- cuteboy19 4y agoModi govt is slightly less protectionist compared to previous governments
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kensai 4y agoGermany's still waiting, don't sweat it...
- elcombato 4y agoThe Streetview equivalent of Apple Maps was rolled out very recently in Germany. The coverage is impressively good. Even small villages are covered.
- bla3 4y agoThey're not waiting, they didn't want it https://www.androidpolice.com/apple-google-street-view-germany-no-excuse-being-bad/ https://www.androidpolice.com/apple-google-street-view-germa... is a pretty good writeup on things.
- Imnimo 4y agoI miss the days when Google Maps was frequently adding (relatively) dense coverage for new countries. I guess they decided the economics weren't there for it.
- ChrisArchitect 4y agoofficial blog post: https://blog.google/intl/en-in/products/explore-communicate/google-announces-local-partnerships-to-build-a-more-helpful-maps-experience-in-india/ https://blog.google/intl/en-in/products/explore-communicate/...
- jmsflknr 4y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32247493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32247493
- supreme_berry 4y ago
- godelmachine 4y agoJust an FYI - Google did make an attempt to launch Street View more than a decade ago in India but had to cave in Ref - https://web.archive.org/web/20110629104228/http://hken.ibtimes.com/articles/166562/20110621/india-it-hub-orders-google-to-suspend-street-view-service.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20110629104228/http://hken.ibtim...
- z9znz 4y agoI doubt the excuse of "security concerns". I think it's more likely that the government didn't want it to be so easy for the rest of the world to see what life was like on the ground. Taking random clicks through Street View, it looks postapocalyptic. (I'm not blaming it on the people, although I think littering is a choice; almost certainly this is a top-down problem, where corruption in all levels of government is bleeding so much financing away from the people that public services are not operating anywhere close to their potential.)
- ra7 4y agoThis makes zero sense. India isn’t North Korea. If you want to see what life on the ground is like, you can just... visit the country. No one’s stopping anyone from doing that. The security concerns may be overblown (although I can understand why given so many terror attacks in the past), but stopping non-Indian companies from mapping the country so rest of world shouldn’t see the littering sounds like nonsense.
- z9znz 4y ago> you can just... visit the country Obviously. But it's considerably easier for anyone with an internet connection to now be able to take a virtual tour; thus, it is much more exposed. What the street views illustrate is how far behind the key infrastructure is. With a population that is motivated and willing to work hard, it suggests failures at the government level. This has been a global topic for 10 years, but it does not seem to have changed much (while the population has significantly increased). Street views everywhere just make it easier for management failures to be seen and analyzed. This will hopefully result in some changes and improvements.
- paxunix 4y agoSome time ago I had asked one of my Indian friends (who manages a software team in India and the US and has travelled the world, so he has a varied perspective) what he thinks is the biggest barrier to India's advancement? He said "Corruption. The bureaucracy and the government have so much corruption at so many levels". This sounds like a different way to state your mention of "management failures". Hopefully the additional worldwide scrutiny is a motivator for change.
- kc10 4y agoI can see Street view for few certain areas in Hyderabad. But few areas still show a black screen or I can't navigate the street view. Probably still WIP. Given the population density, once all the faces and number plates are blurred out the street views are a lot more blurry. But I am really excited to see this.
- phendrenad2 4y agoFinally. As a "starving software developer", I can't really afford to travel the world. Luckily we live in an age where something like Google Maps is possible. I've traveled everywhere I want to go from my desk chair. Looking at Google Maps in India right now, I'm seeing a lot of blank/black views, and navigation along streets seems broken. So maybe they had to implement custom logic for this, and it isn't fully baked.
- webmobdev 4y agoIt's a work in progress. They've only announced "street views" for 10 indian cities so far. I guess data is still being collected and processed before it will be available for the whole country in Google Maps. Some prominent, touristy street views that Google publicised in India includes - Red Fort, Delhi ( https://www.google.co.in/maps/@28.6559308,77.23832,3a,75y,103.14h,100.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sc4oMdNuGcsiuqC90w5l0_Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.in/maps/@28.6559308,77.23832,3a,75y,10...? ) and Gwalior Fort, Madhya Pradesh ( https://www.google.co.in/maps/@26.2296974,78.1691643,2a,75y,359.35h,97.52t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4E06StChzlMAAAQfCQPsZQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.in/maps/@26.2296974,78.1691643,2a,75y,... ) ...
- fernly 4y agoA quick try, holding the little yellow figure out over first Agra and then Delhi, it appears only a patchy subset of streets have been pictured as yet. Very specific neighborhoods, with large blank areas between. That won't work well with geoguessr, were you like to "drive" along a road for a while looking at signs.
- gchokov 4y agoNothing about what Google launches does not excite me anymore..
- qart 4y agoI hope it comes with the option of fuzzing out houses on demand. I believe Germany has this feature? Since law enforcement is so weak here, I don't want Google Maps to create a privacy nightmare.
- Freak_NL 4y agoIs this not a global feature? I've had my house blurred in the Netherlands for years now.
- kcindric 4y agoHow to apply for this kind of thing?
- Freak_NL 4y agoThere is a 'report a problem' link in the ⋮ (vertical ellipsis, three dots) menu. From there you should be able to request blurring for people and houses etc. You'll have to do it several times, because usually not all years are done at once, and not all angles. I think I had to report it five times or so.
- _ink_ 4y agoWhat excatly is the privacy nightmare of a static frontal picture of your house? Because of the concerns of the german population Google canned StreetView in Germany, which is a shame IMHO.
- qart 4y agoLet's say you apply for a job. They ask you for an address, and you give it to them. Most bosses may be cool people, but some of them tend to pry. If they get to see the street view of your house at the click of a button, they can estimate how rich/poor your family is, and can use it against you. For example, if the job applicant comes from a very poor family, they may play hard-ball with salary negotiations. Or your sister posts a pic of herself on Instagram, showing a quarter of the house-front. Some random creep who recognizes the locality can use street-view to narrow down where she lives. All from the comfort of his own home.
- irthomasthomas 4y agoCool. I once did a streetview based art project, noplacetosit, that was initially inspired by the Ginsberg poem: "on Jessore road, long bamboo huts, no place to shit but sand channel ruts." Only the Instagram account is still up, at the moment, which doesn't do justice to the large panoramas. This development might make me revisit the project, get some fresh locations, and upload the larger photos. End of the road https://www.google.com/maps/@23.0390469,88.8844274,3a,60y,238.7h,87.55t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sr3PEnsHQBOJux6fqqEpOfw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@23.0390469,88.8844274,3a,60y,23... http://instagram.com/noplacetosit http://instagram.com/noplacetosit