10 ms·

Why (and how) we've switched away from Google Maps

277 points by freyfogle 15y ago

officemonkey 15y ago
According to the article, the Google "sales force" seems to leave much to desire. They don't keep appointments, they can't explain their product, they don't understand their client, and they overprice their product. It does not surprise me in the least that savvy users will find other arrangements.
- joshuahedlund 15y ago
  Interesting to read about this on the same day I read an article about Google's infamously challenging interview process. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204552304577112522982505222.html?mod=googlenews_wsj http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020455230457711...) Clearly something doesn't add up (though it could be as simple as the non-engineers don't get as much scrutiny. Shouldn't Google want the world's best sales reps too?)
  - taf2 15y ago
    It takes one to I know one... Google was founded by phd's not sales people- it is. Very different to hire and manage a sales force compared to an engineering team... Sales people tend to be less honest and often comeback to bit - look at groupon
  - a1k0n 15y ago
    My Google interview wasn't anything like that. If anything, those could be questions they ask non-engineers, but I don't actually know.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      They also don't type on computers during interviews, which I doubt is something specific to engineering. My interviewers took notes, copied down what I wrote on the whiteboard, and then (apparently) later entered all of this into the computer system. As for the questions, they certainly don't ask any that are in the article. Steve Yegge's article covers the exact category of questions they ask: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... I don't remember the exact questions I was asked, and signed about 80 pieces of paper saying I would Never Speak Of Them, but they are of the style where you must know X and then use pieces of X to solve completely unrelated problems. (X could be, for example, quicksort.) Graphs, algorithms, and data structures are essential, but nobody is going to ask you "implement a binary tree"; that is way too easy to study for. (I'm guessing that discrete math questions are also common; but because of the position I was interviewing for, they replaced those with testing and refactoring questsions. Which was good, because I was never good at discrete math.) I had not seen any of the questions they asked before, and two of them were interesting enough to keep me thinking about them for several days. (I was disappointed to discover, while implementing my solution to one, how easy it is to brute-force problems involving English words. There just aren't very many words. But the idea is what counts, and brute-force is not going to get you hired :) Since I've been hired by Google, people have pointed me at a lot of "popular media" articles or videos about Google, and not many have matched my experience, but then again, I haven't actually started work yet. (The linked article also talks about Bank of America intervewing, which doesn't have a standardized process. I know because I worked there and asked different questions, 100% chosen by me, every time I interviewed someone. So while one person at Bank of America may have asked "What animal are you?", that's not some sort of company policy. So it's a bit disingenuous of the article to name-drop Bank of America there.)
      - esrauch 15y ago
        > They also don't type on computers during interviews One of my engineering interviewers took notes on a computer instead of on paper. Clearly your mileage may vary.
  - groby_b 15y ago
    Uh, what? That's certainly not a typical interview for Google. Check what an ex-Googler has to say on the brain teaser questions: http://www.technologywoman.com/2010/05/17/debunking-the-google-interview-myth/ http://www.technologywoman.com/2010/05/17/debunking-the-goog...
    - gsivil 15y ago
      Can somebody please give the rationale behind banning the brain teasers?
      - groby_b 15y ago
        I would imagine it's because brain teasers test mostly one thing: If you've heard the brain teaser before. (Or, alternatively, how much of a smart aleck you can be. "Why are manhole covers round?" - "Because manholes are round. If they were square, they wouldn't fit")
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- btb 15y ago
  Well we just went through the same process. And the guy we talked to at google was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. But in the end that did not matter, because even after a 80% discount of the list price the final google maps offer was still 350% more expensive than our local alternative(a country-specific provider). So come january 1st, we are changing map provider. Fortunately it was rather easy to switch. Its been great having been able to use google maps all these years for free, and for that we are grateful.
untog 15y ago
It's nice to promote open data, etc. but lets be honest- it's all about the money. And Google charging for Google Maps usage is going to result in a lot of people doing this. I'd advise that everyone at least explores the possibilities out there, though. I'm making a mobile app right now that uses roadmaps, and have ended up generating my own map tiles using TileMill and open data. It's surprisingly easy to do, and makes things like offline caching (not possible with the Google Maps license) possible.
- freyfogle 15y ago
  Agree, everyone should look at the alternatives. Can't recommend enough that you write your code using something like Mapstraction for future proofing
  - yock 15y ago
    Absolutely. Enough articles are written on the topic of abstracting layers of your application away from each other (data access, view, service, etc) but rarely do we hear about the importance of abstracting your application from 3rd party libraries and services.
    - zobzu 15y ago
      And with all the cloud stuff nowadays it's actually very, very important. each could go down any day, start charging more any day, or just not be as good as you hoped.. and then a 3 line changes to switch service might just be the difference between dead company and profitable company.
- justincormack 15y ago
  Well it was more specifically that their service could not support the cost. Sounds like they would have paid if it had been less or their business was much more profitable. It is a big problem with this type of service where many uses are not directly revenue generating. The traditional model has been to try to get the sales team to price at what the customer will pay, rather than have list prices, but Google by the sound of this has not got a good sales team in place, they are not culturally a sales organization. They should perhaps try some sort of auction based pricing that works for this type of data service in the adwords model so it can become self service. OSM is of course an excellent product for people who want to do more than the off the shelf google functionality.
valuegram 15y ago
I definitely agree about the Google deficiency in sales/customer service. Their technical products and expertise are excellent, but have you ever tried to get anyone from google on the phone? As they deploy more enterprise solutions, they will certainly need to provide better sales/support systems around those, or they risk losing market share like this.
PaulHoule 15y ago
I wouldn't use "Mapstraction" the amount of Javascript to see OSM through Mapstraction is about 20 greater than Google Maps. Visitors to your site will definitely experience longer loading times.
- freyfogle 15y ago
  20 times is an exaggeration. Yes, using an abstraction layer will of course add some size, but once you gzip and have the client cache it, it's negligible.
  - Shorel 15y ago
    Even if bandwidth is the only cost to you, it doesn't mean that client CPU usage by JavaScript can be safely ignored, as it can create a less than optimal experience for customers.
    - SimHacker 15y ago
      Agreed. This should be obvious. It's in the name: mapSTRACTION. Another layer.
- ffffruit 15y ago
  Surely one can a) minify b) remove 'unwanted' services from the file in order to speed things up?
  - beaumartinez 15y ago
    Browsers still have to interpret the JS—I'd wager that in these situation performance (especially on less optimised JS engines) is CPU bound, not IO bound
  - freyfogle 15y ago
    Actually with mapstraction v2 you load only the libraries you need by default.
politician 15y ago
Should a startup which uses so much of Google Maps that it needs to pay be complaining that about poor salesmanship when it can't afford to pay? It sounds to me that both companies have monetization issues.
- freyfogle 15y ago
  Hi politician, we're more of a small business than a startup. We've been going for 6 years and are nicely profitable. The issue is the prices quoted were more of the level for large corporate multinationals - hundreds of thousands of dollars/year just for our UK service (one of eight that we operate).
- JS_startup 15y ago
  What does the inability to pay for the data have to do with their take on the sales team? Their experience with the sales team is invalid because they can't afford to pay for the data?
  - ffffruit 15y ago
    Read the post again, you are missing the point. The price itself was the last drop. The overall experience they got, for a company that has been featured on Google Maps promotional publications, was abysmal.
    - JS_startup 15y ago
      I totally agree that the sales process was bad. My post was responding to politician's insinuation that because they couldn't afford to buy the data they had no right to complain about the embarrassing salesmanship.
      - politician 15y ago
        It's simply interesting that their use of the service was such that they were asked to pay, yet when they couldn't afford it, they complained about the way in which they were asked. Suppose your government provides electricity for free below a certain threshold. Suppose you exceed that threshold. Suppose a rude person calls you up and asks you to pay. Suppose you can't afford it. Should you then complain that they were rude and how it was their rudeness that caused you to switch providers? Or do you simply explain that you found a cheaper provider that aligned with your long-term goals? Was the point of the post to try to give Google customer service a black eye? Because, to me, all it did was betray pettiness.
JS_startup 15y ago
The article has a very ingratiating tone towards Google. The summarized version is: Google started charging for Maps usage, their sales team sucks and their pricing is too high. All of that could have been said without the unctuous praise of Google's work on geo technology.
mythz 15y ago
I suspect #3 Google introduced charging for map usage - was the catalyst over noble points 1 & 2.
- erikpukinskis 15y ago
  Why, because you don't believe there are businesses with values that trump profit?
  - pgeorgi 15y ago
    The article states that they did the switch because Google asked for too much money - a very good reason to move items to the top of the TODO list. So while the "noble" reasons were there, they probably had enough other things to do (those that make money directly). And thus the new Google Maps pricing actually was the catalyst.
    - freyfogle 15y ago
      You hit the nail on the head, pgeorgi
  - kbolino 15y ago
    There's a difference between "our profit margins will be reduced" and "our profits will disappear" and it sounds like this company was in the latter case. Profit may not always be king, but staying in business surely is.
JacobIrwin 15y ago
This is an interesting discussion.. I was watching a YouTube demo made by the 3d mapping company Apple recently bought. During, I caught on to some new developments that are quite astonishing (e.g. social embedding). You can read the HN post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393011 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393011
mmwako 15y ago
I read the post and it's mentioned many times that OSM is as good as Google Maps. Others argue "its just about the money". Why would someone want to pay for a service that you have to pay for and its just as good as the alternatives? I think the key factor here is something Google does very, very well: UI. There is just something about google maps that makes it more appealing to the eye. And that's crucial to create a great service. I saw a post long ago (i couldn't find :/) that compared the graphic style of Maps, Bing and others. Google just nails layout, ease of understanding and other factors. I believe it is this key factor that makes the difference.
- freyfogle 15y ago
  Agree, Google does very well with their UI. But so do others. Check out Leaflet for example http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ More importantly, with OSM you can do whatever YOU want with the actual underlying data. A great example are these beautiful maps: http://mike.teczno.com/notes/osm-us-terrain-layer/foreground.html http://mike.teczno.com/notes/osm-us-terrain-layer/foreground...
  - zobzu 15y ago
    http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ This url you have put is actually much better than Google maps somehow. It's way smoother and faster. Pretty cool!
- rsoto 15y ago
  >I saw a post long ago (i couldn't find :/) It seems the site is down, but here's archive.org's cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20110208212952/http://www.41latitude.com/post/2072504768/google-maps-label-readability http://web.archive.org/web/20110208212952/http://www.41latit... http://web.archive.org/web/20101223050944/http://www.41latitude.com/post/2159061658/google-maps-label-reability-2 http://web.archive.org/web/20101223050944/http://www.41latit...
- wensing 15y ago
  Definitely agree. This is why we (Stormpulse) not only avoided Google Maps but spent 1,000's of hours designing the UI. I would avoid mapstraction for the same reason: we see mapping as a core competency of our business. YMMV of course.
Vvector 15y ago
I just checked my home address on OSM. My whole subdivision and the major 4 lane road that goes past it was all build 6+ years ago. None of it exists in OSM. This is a well populated suburb of Atlanta.
- freyfogle 15y ago
  The point of OSM is, if you find an error, YOU can fix it. All maps are out of date to some degree. The only question is can you do something about it. Good luck.
  - rmc 15y ago
    And in some places, OSM is more up to date than Google Maps.
    - querulous 15y ago
      In most places, I think. Google Maps are terrible outside of the USA/Western Europe.
      - rmc 15y ago
        Even inside cities in western Europe, osm is sometimes better than gmaps. More nutty gritty small scale mapping, like pubs, shops, public toilets, etc.
- jan_g 15y ago
  Yep, 80% of my town is unmapped. The same goes for some other towns in neighboring areas that I've checked. Compared to Google maps it's just no good. I have no idea how or on what basis the blog author concluded that OSM is just as good or better then Google maps. Also, I didn't see the option for satellite view.
  - theon144 15y ago
    Well, and my town is mapped perfectly. The difference is that with openstreetmaps, you can simply go and improve what could be better. Of course it doesn't change anything about the quality of the maps, just that you have a choice, as opposed to google maps with which you could possibly be stuck with an incorrect map. And regarding satellite view, how would you even imagine volunteers making satellite images? Basically anyone can get a GPS receiver and make maps, but I have yet to see an amateur hobby satellite in orbit. (I guess you could use R/C planes with GPS and cameras, but that would be incredibly time-consuming and not ideal at large scales.) However, even if you could do that, it's just not goal of OpenStreetMap. You can't use satellite images for routing, there is no legend, etc. And I think that they don't allow external satellite images because of their philosophy on freedom - similarly to you having to explicitly allow installing non-free packages in Debian.
a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
My US address can't be found. I live on a major metropolitan regional grid system.
- rmc 15y ago
  That's a shame. Addresses can be very hard. OSM is an global phenomenon, and trying to figure out all the dozen different ways you can encode a latitude & longitude into a string as an address (and vice versa).
- yellowbkpk 15y ago
  Which city do you live in? Can I help you put your house and address into OSM so you can find it the next time you look?
  - a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
    Ah, I didn't realize you had to put yourself in first.
GFKjunior 15y ago
OpenStreetMap does not work in my city and I live in a very large US metropolis.
- rmc 15y ago
  Hi there. How do you mean "does not work"? OSM is a map. Do you mean your area is not well mapped? That happens some times. You can always improve the area and data yourself.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    This seems rather disingenuous. A map that is missing major areas is not only not well mapped, it clearly "does not work". This sounds to me like the age-old argument us techies make to laymen. Use open source! If there are problems you can fix them yourself! Except these people are not programmers, nor do they have any interest in being one. I'm not a cartographer, I have no interest in being one. I certainly am not signing up to integrate OSM into what I'm building and be on the hook for user complaints about missing map data, and have to do that myself. Not to mention, contributing to OSM in the strictly legal way is not at all trivial - for legal reasons you simply cannot consult any other map, so basically you'd have to go out, walk/drive/bike around your area with paper and pen in hand and "map" it yourself. That or trust you have perfect memory w.r.t. your city. The bar for contributing back is high, can we blame people when they'd rather just have a map that worked?
    - yellowbkpk 15y ago
      > This seems rather disingenuous. A map that is missing major areas is not only not well mapped, it clearly "does not work". It is very rare for OSM to be completely bare in a major metropolitan area (especially in the US). It could be that the addresses are gone, but at the very least the road network will be there from the TIGER import. > I'm not a cartographer, I have no interest in being one. I certainly am not signing up to integrate OSM into what I'm building and be on the hook for user complaints about missing map data, and have to do that myself. You don't have to be a cartographer to add data to OSM. You sign up, point and click or drag and drop. It takes minutes and you don't have to have any particular knowledge before hand (especially cartography). Having said that, I completely understand not wanting to be on the hook for user complaints. That's why Google charges thousands of dollars. Some people (the writer of the blog post in particular) aren't interested in paying that. > Not to mention, contributing to OSM in the strictly legal way is not at all trivial - for legal reasons you simply cannot consult any other map, so basically you'd have to go out, walk/drive/bike around your area with paper and pen in hand and "map" it yourself. That or trust you have perfect memory w.r.t. your city. The bar for contributing back is high, can we blame people when they'd rather just have a map that worked? This is not true. Mapping with paper and pencil on foot or bike or car is a great way to get outdoors and thousands of people use this technique to add to OSM every day, but you can also use any one of the dozens of aerial imagery backgrounds available to help you create data from memory.
hazov 15y ago
There's much to be done in the web mapping yet, Google Maps initially brought a renaissance to the field but the problem is that now everyone try to beat Google by emulating Google Maps (just like some companies loves to emulate Apple products). For example, Google buys the majority of surveying data that it uses in building it's maps, everyone can buys and use the same data. OpenStreetMaps has its own data but it is provided by a community that does not have as much momentum as Wikipedia, even New York City data is pretty much incomplete[1] Part of the problem is that people really do not know anything about cartography or how a dynamic maps must behave, even worse the majority of people do not even know how a web mapping service is implemented. By the way, you can use OpenLayers with many tiles, including Google: http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/google.html http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/google.html [1]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/New_York_City http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/New_York_City
- yellowbkpk 15y ago
  > For example, Google buys the majority of surveying data that it uses in building it's maps, everyone can buys and use the same data. This is no longer true. Google spent millions of dollars paying people to drive cars around collecting data for them. The majority of their data nowadays is their own (in most of Europe, Canada, and the US at least). Recently, they've even convinced their users to work on their data for them with the Map Maker product (all while holding the data behind a non-commercial, non-compete license and charging 10's of thousands of dollars for the right to use it).
  - hazov 15y ago
    Yes, found about this in a old blog post. Thanks for the information.
- RussNelson 15y ago
  I wouldn't believe that wiki page's completion table for one moment. It hasn't changed since I was running mapping parties, and yet (for example) all of the one ways are now present.
aubergene 15y ago
I really like the Open Street Map project. I think it's shameful of Google to create Map Maker, which essentially copies the functionality of Open Street Map, however Google don't release the user contributed data under a reusable license, although I believe they do in some poorer countries.
mixmastamyk 15y ago
Another warning about mapstraction... I use it on my site and am not that happy with it. It doesn't support (seemingly) exotic features like z-index for markers and other things I ran into which I can't remember off the top of my head. When asked on the mailing list, devs stated they want to keep the library small. Sounds great but I've got an application to write that needs more than lowest common denom. So you end up hacking the google objects underneath directly to access many features (which you'll think are standard in 2011). So now I have two libraries to support and users to download, much less documentation to rely on, and am not completely abstracted.
- zem 15y ago
  If the ability to switch map providers is critical, would it not be worth the time and effort to cleanly extend your abstraction layer to cover the missing pieces rather than give up and call the specific backend directly?
  - mixmastamyk 15y ago
    It could make sense for some.
    - zem 15y ago
      fair enough; there are definitely things to do at a higher priority than maintaining an abstraction layer that you might never need.
FigBug 15y ago
Other than open street maps, Map Quest and CloudMade (pay) are there any map Apis that let you download the tiles in a desktop application?
cullenking 15y ago
I just recently assembled a tile server using mapnik, OSM data and modtile. Data is importing on our new geocoding server, against using OSM data and Nominatim. We will be switching our routing service over to pgrouting, but I have to wait for a massive hardware budget to make sure it can equal gmaps in routing performance. Going completely over to OSM takes alot of work when building your own hardware stack, but our alternative (with relatively low traffic), is paying google maps $40k next year, and who know what the following...
dmitrykoval 15y ago
In addition to the map tiles, OSM has an unbeatable advantage over any proprietery solution - you can take advantage of raw data and do whatever you can think of. For example, you can write your own route finding solution, tweak it whatever you like and potentially find new unexplored ways to existing problems (which I did for social based routing project in Eastern Europe). Needles to say - none of that is possible with the proprietary providers like Google.
mbeswetherick 15y ago
Other than the Google logo in the bottom left hand corner, Google has done a great job of taking the back seat on development. You can pretty much make a map that looks like it's completely void of the Google family. When creating a mapping application, it's extremely important to stay away from that. There's no point to creating an application that's just a styled Google map. There has to be a point to having your application centered around a map. I think a drawback of using Google maps (or any of the mapping services) is that it's so familiar to people. A lot of people might assume that the application your building is just a Google growth. Fortunately, Google has a good deal of features built into the API to keep that from happening. You can pretty much design what your map will look like down to the most seemingly superfluous of details. Mapping applications are so awesome because of how interactive and driven by visual exploration they are. I think there will be a lot more of them doing things that we don't expect to see in the future. One last note: Any TileMill developers out there? What would your advice be for someone who is making a mapping application/considering moving over from gmap?

277 points by freyfogle 15y ago

According to the article, the Google "sales force" seems to leave much to desire. They don't keep appointments, they can't explain their product, they don't understand their client, and they overprice their product. It does not surprise me in the least that savvy users will find other arrangements.

joshuahedlund 15y ago
Interesting to read about this on the same day I read an article about Google's infamously challenging interview process. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204552304577112522982505222.html?mod=googlenews_wsj http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020455230457711...) Clearly something doesn't add up (though it could be as simple as the non-engineers don't get as much scrutiny. Shouldn't Google want the world's best sales reps too?)
- taf2 15y ago
  It takes one to I know one... Google was founded by phd's not sales people- it is. Very different to hire and manage a sales force compared to an engineering team... Sales people tend to be less honest and often comeback to bit - look at groupon
- a1k0n 15y ago
  My Google interview wasn't anything like that. If anything, those could be questions they ask non-engineers, but I don't actually know.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    They also don't type on computers during interviews, which I doubt is something specific to engineering. My interviewers took notes, copied down what I wrote on the whiteboard, and then (apparently) later entered all of this into the computer system. As for the questions, they certainly don't ask any that are in the article. Steve Yegge's article covers the exact category of questions they ask: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... I don't remember the exact questions I was asked, and signed about 80 pieces of paper saying I would Never Speak Of Them, but they are of the style where you must know X and then use pieces of X to solve completely unrelated problems. (X could be, for example, quicksort.) Graphs, algorithms, and data structures are essential, but nobody is going to ask you "implement a binary tree"; that is way too easy to study for. (I'm guessing that discrete math questions are also common; but because of the position I was interviewing for, they replaced those with testing and refactoring questsions. Which was good, because I was never good at discrete math.) I had not seen any of the questions they asked before, and two of them were interesting enough to keep me thinking about them for several days. (I was disappointed to discover, while implementing my solution to one, how easy it is to brute-force problems involving English words. There just aren't very many words. But the idea is what counts, and brute-force is not going to get you hired :) Since I've been hired by Google, people have pointed me at a lot of "popular media" articles or videos about Google, and not many have matched my experience, but then again, I haven't actually started work yet. (The linked article also talks about Bank of America intervewing, which doesn't have a standardized process. I know because I worked there and asked different questions, 100% chosen by me, every time I interviewed someone. So while one person at Bank of America may have asked "What animal are you?", that's not some sort of company policy. So it's a bit disingenuous of the article to name-drop Bank of America there.)
    - esrauch 15y ago
      > They also don't type on computers during interviews One of my engineering interviewers took notes on a computer instead of on paper. Clearly your mileage may vary.
- groby_b 15y ago
  Uh, what? That's certainly not a typical interview for Google. Check what an ex-Googler has to say on the brain teaser questions: http://www.technologywoman.com/2010/05/17/debunking-the-google-interview-myth/ http://www.technologywoman.com/2010/05/17/debunking-the-goog...
  - gsivil 15y ago
    Can somebody please give the rationale behind banning the brain teasers?
    - groby_b 15y ago
      I would imagine it's because brain teasers test mostly one thing: If you've heard the brain teaser before. (Or, alternatively, how much of a smart aleck you can be. "Why are manhole covers round?" - "Because manholes are round. If they were square, they wouldn't fit")
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
btb 15y ago
Well we just went through the same process. And the guy we talked to at google was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. But in the end that did not matter, because even after a 80% discount of the list price the final google maps offer was still 350% more expensive than our local alternative(a country-specific provider). So come january 1st, we are changing map provider. Fortunately it was rather easy to switch. Its been great having been able to use google maps all these years for free, and for that we are grateful.

untog 15y ago

It's nice to promote open data, etc. but lets be honest- it's all about the money. And Google charging for Google Maps usage is going to result in a lot of people doing this. I'd advise that everyone at least explores the possibilities out there, though. I'm making a mobile app right now that uses roadmaps, and have ended up generating my own map tiles using TileMill and open data. It's surprisingly easy to do, and makes things like offline caching (not possible with the Google Maps license) possible.

freyfogle 15y ago
Agree, everyone should look at the alternatives. Can't recommend enough that you write your code using something like Mapstraction for future proofing
- yock 15y ago
  Absolutely. Enough articles are written on the topic of abstracting layers of your application away from each other (data access, view, service, etc) but rarely do we hear about the importance of abstracting your application from 3rd party libraries and services.
  - zobzu 15y ago
    And with all the cloud stuff nowadays it's actually very, very important. each could go down any day, start charging more any day, or just not be as good as you hoped.. and then a 3 line changes to switch service might just be the difference between dead company and profitable company.
justincormack 15y ago
Well it was more specifically that their service could not support the cost. Sounds like they would have paid if it had been less or their business was much more profitable. It is a big problem with this type of service where many uses are not directly revenue generating. The traditional model has been to try to get the sales team to price at what the customer will pay, rather than have list prices, but Google by the sound of this has not got a good sales team in place, they are not culturally a sales organization. They should perhaps try some sort of auction based pricing that works for this type of data service in the adwords model so it can become self service. OSM is of course an excellent product for people who want to do more than the off the shelf google functionality.

valuegram 15y ago

I definitely agree about the Google deficiency in sales/customer service. Their technical products and expertise are excellent, but have you ever tried to get anyone from google on the phone? As they deploy more enterprise solutions, they will certainly need to provide better sales/support systems around those, or they risk losing market share like this.

PaulHoule 15y ago

I wouldn't use "Mapstraction" the amount of Javascript to see OSM through Mapstraction is about 20 greater than Google Maps. Visitors to your site will definitely experience longer loading times.

freyfogle 15y ago
20 times is an exaggeration. Yes, using an abstraction layer will of course add some size, but once you gzip and have the client cache it, it's negligible.
- Shorel 15y ago
  Even if bandwidth is the only cost to you, it doesn't mean that client CPU usage by JavaScript can be safely ignored, as it can create a less than optimal experience for customers.
  - SimHacker 15y ago
    Agreed. This should be obvious. It's in the name: mapSTRACTION. Another layer.
ffffruit 15y ago
Surely one can a) minify b) remove 'unwanted' services from the file in order to speed things up?
- beaumartinez 15y ago
  Browsers still have to interpret the JS—I'd wager that in these situation performance (especially on less optimised JS engines) is CPU bound, not IO bound
- freyfogle 15y ago
  Actually with mapstraction v2 you load only the libraries you need by default.

politician 15y ago

Should a startup which uses so much of Google Maps that it needs to pay be complaining that about poor salesmanship when it can't afford to pay? It sounds to me that both companies have monetization issues.

freyfogle 15y ago
Hi politician, we're more of a small business than a startup. We've been going for 6 years and are nicely profitable. The issue is the prices quoted were more of the level for large corporate multinationals - hundreds of thousands of dollars/year just for our UK service (one of eight that we operate).
JS_startup 15y ago
What does the inability to pay for the data have to do with their take on the sales team? Their experience with the sales team is invalid because they can't afford to pay for the data?
- ffffruit 15y ago
  Read the post again, you are missing the point. The price itself was the last drop. The overall experience they got, for a company that has been featured on Google Maps promotional publications, was abysmal.
  - JS_startup 15y ago
    I totally agree that the sales process was bad. My post was responding to politician's insinuation that because they couldn't afford to buy the data they had no right to complain about the embarrassing salesmanship.
    - politician 15y ago
      It's simply interesting that their use of the service was such that they were asked to pay, yet when they couldn't afford it, they complained about the way in which they were asked. Suppose your government provides electricity for free below a certain threshold. Suppose you exceed that threshold. Suppose a rude person calls you up and asks you to pay. Suppose you can't afford it. Should you then complain that they were rude and how it was their rudeness that caused you to switch providers? Or do you simply explain that you found a cheaper provider that aligned with your long-term goals? Was the point of the post to try to give Google customer service a black eye? Because, to me, all it did was betray pettiness.

JS_startup 15y ago

The article has a very ingratiating tone towards Google. The summarized version is: Google started charging for Maps usage, their sales team sucks and their pricing is too high. All of that could have been said without the unctuous praise of Google's work on geo technology.

mythz 15y ago

I suspect #3 Google introduced charging for map usage - was the catalyst over noble points 1 & 2.

erikpukinskis 15y ago
Why, because you don't believe there are businesses with values that trump profit?
- pgeorgi 15y ago
  The article states that they did the switch because Google asked for too much money - a very good reason to move items to the top of the TODO list. So while the "noble" reasons were there, they probably had enough other things to do (those that make money directly). And thus the new Google Maps pricing actually was the catalyst.
  - freyfogle 15y ago
    You hit the nail on the head, pgeorgi
- kbolino 15y ago
  There's a difference between "our profit margins will be reduced" and "our profits will disappear" and it sounds like this company was in the latter case. Profit may not always be king, but staying in business surely is.

JacobIrwin 15y ago

This is an interesting discussion.. I was watching a YouTube demo made by the 3d mapping company Apple recently bought. During, I caught on to some new developments that are quite astonishing (e.g. social embedding). You can read the HN post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393011 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393011

mmwako 15y ago

I read the post and it's mentioned many times that OSM is as good as Google Maps. Others argue "its just about the money". Why would someone want to pay for a service that you have to pay for and its just as good as the alternatives? I think the key factor here is something Google does very, very well: UI. There is just something about google maps that makes it more appealing to the eye. And that's crucial to create a great service. I saw a post long ago (i couldn't find :/) that compared the graphic style of Maps, Bing and others. Google just nails layout, ease of understanding and other factors. I believe it is this key factor that makes the difference.

freyfogle 15y ago
Agree, Google does very well with their UI. But so do others. Check out Leaflet for example http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ More importantly, with OSM you can do whatever YOU want with the actual underlying data. A great example are these beautiful maps: http://mike.teczno.com/notes/osm-us-terrain-layer/foreground.html http://mike.teczno.com/notes/osm-us-terrain-layer/foreground...
- zobzu 15y ago
  http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ http://leaflet.cloudmade.com/ This url you have put is actually much better than Google maps somehow. It's way smoother and faster. Pretty cool!
rsoto 15y ago
>I saw a post long ago (i couldn't find :/) It seems the site is down, but here's archive.org's cache: http://web.archive.org/web/20110208212952/http://www.41latitude.com/post/2072504768/google-maps-label-readability http://web.archive.org/web/20110208212952/http://www.41latit... http://web.archive.org/web/20101223050944/http://www.41latitude.com/post/2159061658/google-maps-label-reability-2 http://web.archive.org/web/20101223050944/http://www.41latit...
wensing 15y ago
Definitely agree. This is why we (Stormpulse) not only avoided Google Maps but spent 1,000's of hours designing the UI. I would avoid mapstraction for the same reason: we see mapping as a core competency of our business. YMMV of course.

Vvector 15y ago

I just checked my home address on OSM. My whole subdivision and the major 4 lane road that goes past it was all build 6+ years ago. None of it exists in OSM. This is a well populated suburb of Atlanta.

freyfogle 15y ago
The point of OSM is, if you find an error, YOU can fix it. All maps are out of date to some degree. The only question is can you do something about it. Good luck.
- rmc 15y ago
  And in some places, OSM is more up to date than Google Maps.
  - querulous 15y ago
    In most places, I think. Google Maps are terrible outside of the USA/Western Europe.
    - rmc 15y ago
      Even inside cities in western Europe, osm is sometimes better than gmaps. More nutty gritty small scale mapping, like pubs, shops, public toilets, etc.
jan_g 15y ago
Yep, 80% of my town is unmapped. The same goes for some other towns in neighboring areas that I've checked. Compared to Google maps it's just no good. I have no idea how or on what basis the blog author concluded that OSM is just as good or better then Google maps. Also, I didn't see the option for satellite view.
- theon144 15y ago
  Well, and my town is mapped perfectly. The difference is that with openstreetmaps, you can simply go and improve what could be better. Of course it doesn't change anything about the quality of the maps, just that you have a choice, as opposed to google maps with which you could possibly be stuck with an incorrect map. And regarding satellite view, how would you even imagine volunteers making satellite images? Basically anyone can get a GPS receiver and make maps, but I have yet to see an amateur hobby satellite in orbit. (I guess you could use R/C planes with GPS and cameras, but that would be incredibly time-consuming and not ideal at large scales.) However, even if you could do that, it's just not goal of OpenStreetMap. You can't use satellite images for routing, there is no legend, etc. And I think that they don't allow external satellite images because of their philosophy on freedom - similarly to you having to explicitly allow installing non-free packages in Debian.

a_a_r_o_n 15y ago

My US address can't be found. I live on a major metropolitan regional grid system.

rmc 15y ago
That's a shame. Addresses can be very hard. OSM is an global phenomenon, and trying to figure out all the dozen different ways you can encode a latitude & longitude into a string as an address (and vice versa).
yellowbkpk 15y ago
Which city do you live in? Can I help you put your house and address into OSM so you can find it the next time you look?
- a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
  Ah, I didn't realize you had to put yourself in first.

GFKjunior 15y ago

OpenStreetMap does not work in my city and I live in a very large US metropolis.

rmc 15y ago
Hi there. How do you mean "does not work"? OSM is a map. Do you mean your area is not well mapped? That happens some times. You can always improve the area and data yourself.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  This seems rather disingenuous. A map that is missing major areas is not only not well mapped, it clearly "does not work". This sounds to me like the age-old argument us techies make to laymen. Use open source! If there are problems you can fix them yourself! Except these people are not programmers, nor do they have any interest in being one. I'm not a cartographer, I have no interest in being one. I certainly am not signing up to integrate OSM into what I'm building and be on the hook for user complaints about missing map data, and have to do that myself. Not to mention, contributing to OSM in the strictly legal way is not at all trivial - for legal reasons you simply cannot consult any other map, so basically you'd have to go out, walk/drive/bike around your area with paper and pen in hand and "map" it yourself. That or trust you have perfect memory w.r.t. your city. The bar for contributing back is high, can we blame people when they'd rather just have a map that worked?
  - yellowbkpk 15y ago
    > This seems rather disingenuous. A map that is missing major areas is not only not well mapped, it clearly "does not work". It is very rare for OSM to be completely bare in a major metropolitan area (especially in the US). It could be that the addresses are gone, but at the very least the road network will be there from the TIGER import. > I'm not a cartographer, I have no interest in being one. I certainly am not signing up to integrate OSM into what I'm building and be on the hook for user complaints about missing map data, and have to do that myself. You don't have to be a cartographer to add data to OSM. You sign up, point and click or drag and drop. It takes minutes and you don't have to have any particular knowledge before hand (especially cartography). Having said that, I completely understand not wanting to be on the hook for user complaints. That's why Google charges thousands of dollars. Some people (the writer of the blog post in particular) aren't interested in paying that. > Not to mention, contributing to OSM in the strictly legal way is not at all trivial - for legal reasons you simply cannot consult any other map, so basically you'd have to go out, walk/drive/bike around your area with paper and pen in hand and "map" it yourself. That or trust you have perfect memory w.r.t. your city. The bar for contributing back is high, can we blame people when they'd rather just have a map that worked? This is not true. Mapping with paper and pencil on foot or bike or car is a great way to get outdoors and thousands of people use this technique to add to OSM every day, but you can also use any one of the dozens of aerial imagery backgrounds available to help you create data from memory.

hazov 15y ago

There's much to be done in the web mapping yet, Google Maps initially brought a renaissance to the field but the problem is that now everyone try to beat Google by emulating Google Maps (just like some companies loves to emulate Apple products). For example, Google buys the majority of surveying data that it uses in building it's maps, everyone can buys and use the same data. OpenStreetMaps has its own data but it is provided by a community that does not have as much momentum as Wikipedia, even New York City data is pretty much incomplete[1] Part of the problem is that people really do not know anything about cartography or how a dynamic maps must behave, even worse the majority of people do not even know how a web mapping service is implemented. By the way, you can use OpenLayers with many tiles, including Google: http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/google.html http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/google.html [1]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/New_York_City http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/New_York_City

yellowbkpk 15y ago
> For example, Google buys the majority of surveying data that it uses in building it's maps, everyone can buys and use the same data. This is no longer true. Google spent millions of dollars paying people to drive cars around collecting data for them. The majority of their data nowadays is their own (in most of Europe, Canada, and the US at least). Recently, they've even convinced their users to work on their data for them with the Map Maker product (all while holding the data behind a non-commercial, non-compete license and charging 10's of thousands of dollars for the right to use it).
- hazov 15y ago
  Yes, found about this in a old blog post. Thanks for the information.
RussNelson 15y ago
I wouldn't believe that wiki page's completion table for one moment. It hasn't changed since I was running mapping parties, and yet (for example) all of the one ways are now present.

aubergene 15y ago

I really like the Open Street Map project. I think it's shameful of Google to create Map Maker, which essentially copies the functionality of Open Street Map, however Google don't release the user contributed data under a reusable license, although I believe they do in some poorer countries.

mixmastamyk 15y ago

Another warning about mapstraction... I use it on my site and am not that happy with it. It doesn't support (seemingly) exotic features like z-index for markers and other things I ran into which I can't remember off the top of my head. When asked on the mailing list, devs stated they want to keep the library small. Sounds great but I've got an application to write that needs more than lowest common denom. So you end up hacking the google objects underneath directly to access many features (which you'll think are standard in 2011). So now I have two libraries to support and users to download, much less documentation to rely on, and am not completely abstracted.

zem 15y ago
If the ability to switch map providers is critical, would it not be worth the time and effort to cleanly extend your abstraction layer to cover the missing pieces rather than give up and call the specific backend directly?
- mixmastamyk 15y ago
  It could make sense for some.
  - zem 15y ago
    fair enough; there are definitely things to do at a higher priority than maintaining an abstraction layer that you might never need.

FigBug 15y ago

Other than open street maps, Map Quest and CloudMade (pay) are there any map Apis that let you download the tiles in a desktop application?

cullenking 15y ago

I just recently assembled a tile server using mapnik, OSM data and modtile. Data is importing on our new geocoding server, against using OSM data and Nominatim. We will be switching our routing service over to pgrouting, but I have to wait for a massive hardware budget to make sure it can equal gmaps in routing performance. Going completely over to OSM takes alot of work when building your own hardware stack, but our alternative (with relatively low traffic), is paying google maps $40k next year, and who know what the following...

dmitrykoval 15y ago

In addition to the map tiles, OSM has an unbeatable advantage over any proprietery solution - you can take advantage of raw data and do whatever you can think of. For example, you can write your own route finding solution, tweak it whatever you like and potentially find new unexplored ways to existing problems (which I did for social based routing project in Eastern Europe). Needles to say - none of that is possible with the proprietary providers like Google.

mbeswetherick 15y ago

Other than the Google logo in the bottom left hand corner, Google has done a great job of taking the back seat on development. You can pretty much make a map that looks like it's completely void of the Google family. When creating a mapping application, it's extremely important to stay away from that. There's no point to creating an application that's just a styled Google map. There has to be a point to having your application centered around a map. I think a drawback of using Google maps (or any of the mapping services) is that it's so familiar to people. A lot of people might assume that the application your building is just a Google growth. Fortunately, Google has a good deal of features built into the API to keep that from happening. You can pretty much design what your map will look like down to the most seemingly superfluous of details. Mapping applications are so awesome because of how interactive and driven by visual exploration they are. I think there will be a lot more of them doing things that we don't expect to see in the future. One last note: Any TileMill developers out there? What would your advice be for someone who is making a mapping application/considering moving over from gmap?