Mapping has become a commodity. The differences between various maps are increasingly cosmetic (i.e. styling) and now that people can self host openstreetmap th

Mapping has become a commodity. The differences between various maps are increasingly cosmetic (i.e. styling) and now that people can self host openstreetmap through things like protomaps, even cost is no longer a big obstacle. Core map features have almost no value, it's all the stuff people do on top of maps that holds the value. Honestly Google Maps is fine for what it does but as a search expert I notice that precision and recall metrics aren't great for Google Maps these days. It doesn't find places (recall) I know exist or ranks them so low that you won't find them unless you really look. And it boosts places that (presumably) are paying to get boosted (precision). It's more than a bit manipulative. All that erodes trust. If, I look for restaurants or bars in an area that I know has loads of them, I expect to see all of them; not just a few. This is a problem because it erodes trust and breaks the promise to the user that Google has it all. Once that obviously stops being true, users are free to use competing products. The question is what they should use. Because a lot of the alternatives aren't much better.