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Ironically, they do, but it seems is irrelevant. And it happened the opposite here. A friend these days reported that a Starbucks closed¹. Apple ignored the re

Ironically, they do, but it seems is irrelevant. And it happened the opposite here. A friend these days reported that a Starbucks closed¹. Apple ignored the report, said it needed additional info... He had to take a photo and send it, only them they approved... With Google Maps, there's level system, where people with higher level can fix these issues easier... Not sure if Apple do the same. [1] https://www.threads.net/@willianmax/post/C2P9nweren4 https://www.threads.net/@willianmax/post/C2P9nweren4

Larrikin 3y ago
There should be an open database he could submit that data to, instead of working for Apple for free.
- chris_wot 3y ago
  It's called Wikidata.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Wikidata is not meant for random restaurant listings. OpenStreetMap will happily accept them though.
  - solardev 3y ago
    It's not very useful to have that in a separate place compared to in Google Maps, which consolidates reviews, official business info (closures), traffic, transit, how busy it is, etc.
    - Larrikin 3y ago
      I was making the point that it is a complete waste of time to contribute your free time to a corporation that will use your efforts for profit and give you nothing. One of the better things about the old internet was the collaborative effort to build up information, but we should not contribute to closed systems anymore. If Google or Apple wants that information they can figure out how to get it themselves or pay users. It's not our duty to help them scale
      - solardev 3y ago
        On one hand, I understand the desire for that, from a sustainable open-data perspective. Any day, Google can decide to close off/enshittify Google Maps (as has already started to happen with location-based ads). However, until and unless that happens, I still find tremendous value in Google Maps, as do many people I know. > It's not our duty to help them scale No, but editing Google Maps also helps a ton of real users, even if Google also happens to profit from it. For the last two decades, Google Maps has been free and used by millions (billions?) of people around the world, myself and most of my friends and family included. More than any other similar service (OSM, TripAdvisor, Yelp, OrganicMaps, county/city GIS, Apple Maps, in-car GPS, standalone GPS, etc.), this has been my go-to mapping & location service, and IMHO it is Google's single best service. Simply put, they do a REALLY good job at it, and it provides unparalleled accuracy and ease of use. The crowdsourced corrections part of it is huge, and not that different from us contributing our opinions here on HN (also a for-profit corporation), or reviewing things on Yelp/Metacritic/whatever, or providing our Android traffic data, etc. Yes, corporations profit from all of that, but they still provide valuable community services. I've seen local businesses gain customers after I updated their listing, delivery drivers find their way after I corrected misplaced pins, etc. It affects and improves my local communities, even as Google profits. Editing OSM doesn't do that, because nobody I know uses it. For me this isn't about "duty" or purity of ethics, just about having a useful & good app to find places and get to them. Again, it's a network effect... it is useful to edit Google Maps because everyone else uses it, and edits it, and in so doing we have a accurate global POI database unmatched by any other effort. Nobody obliges you to use Google Maps. But I'm a very happy user of it, and would gladly pay for it if it weren't free (in fact I wish they offered a paid plan to skip the ads). Do I wish it were a FOSS product run by a nonprofit? Sure. But OSM hasn't caught up in two decades, and it probably won't in my lifetime... if anything the gap between it and Google keeps getting bigger, as Maps gets more and more features and OSM falls further and further behind =/
- solardev 3y ago
  It's a network effect and most of the good data is on Google Maps. In every place I've lived, OSM has terrible POIs years out of date. Not sure about Apple. I edit OSM on occasion but it's just so bad it's not really usable for me day to day. On the other hand, it's super rare for a Google Maps listing to be totally wrong (vs the pin just being off by a bit), and their corrections UI is way way better than the OSM editor. It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps.
  - habi 3y ago
    > It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps. You could use one of those two apps, editing a POI with them does not take half an hour. - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door
    - solardev 3y ago
      OK, on your suggestion, I just tried both of these apps. StreetComplete seems to be gamified and only wants to show me "quests". I couldn't figure out how to edit a specific business that wasn't a current quest. I poked around for a few min and then gave up. Every Door didn't show me anything at all until I manually downloaded the data, then had a pretty bad UI for editing the operating hours, not even localized to my time locales (12hr time). The time picker is horrendous too. I don't think I can stand this UI, sorry. And when I tried to edit actual vector features on the web-based OSM editor (both of them, or whatever the difference is) it was a much more annoying experience than doing the same thing (like editing a road) on Google Maps. The GMap editor is just much more polished and doesn't require me to go out of my way to make a trivial edit -- as you'd expect from a company with nearly infinite resources. I'm sorry, I get that OSM is a great project, but it's just not something worth my time to try to fix. I've checked in on it (and contributed here and there, once in a great while) since its founding nearly 20 years ago, but I've never found it to have good enough data for day-to-day use, nor easy enough editing features to be worth the hassle. I'm happy it exists, but it's just not something I care enough to regularly contribute to... with limited time, it's just more useful for me to use Google Maps. Sorry, it's selfish, and not idealistic at all, but just being pragmatic. Nobody else I know uses it, either. Everyone I know uses Google Maps, so fixing it there has a cascading effect of usefulness for my entire social circle, like when we want to go to a shared location, I can make sure the pin is where it's supposed to be.
solardev 3y ago
> With Google Maps, there's level system, where people with higher level can fix these issues easier... I'm level 6/10 in that system (several hundred contributions, a few million views) and it's totally hit or miss for me. Some edits go through instantly, others take a few minutes, some take a few weeks or months. Some are peer reviewed, others aren't. It's not a very transparent system and there's no way to track them once you submit it, you just eventually get an email (or not) if it goes through or is rejected.
stephenr 3y ago
On an article about a business incorrectly marked as "closed" you're suggesting that expecting some basic confirmation about a change, is unreasonable?
- vitorgrs 3y ago
  And it worked for the business? Doesn't seem so. In the end both had incorrect status.
  - stephenr 3y ago
    We don't know why the business was marked as closed. Maybe they had a sign up during the pandemic saying "closed until further notice".
    - cudgy 3y ago
      Or a competitor used the handy correction feature to mark the business closed?
      - stephenr 3y ago
        Sounds like exactly the sort of scenario you'd want them to confirm with something like a photo... the exact thing the original comment is complaining about happening.

Larrikin 3y ago

There should be an open database he could submit that data to, instead of working for Apple for free.

chris_wot 3y ago
It's called Wikidata.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Wikidata is not meant for random restaurant listings. OpenStreetMap will happily accept them though.
- solardev 3y ago
  It's not very useful to have that in a separate place compared to in Google Maps, which consolidates reviews, official business info (closures), traffic, transit, how busy it is, etc.
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    I was making the point that it is a complete waste of time to contribute your free time to a corporation that will use your efforts for profit and give you nothing. One of the better things about the old internet was the collaborative effort to build up information, but we should not contribute to closed systems anymore. If Google or Apple wants that information they can figure out how to get it themselves or pay users. It's not our duty to help them scale
    - solardev 3y ago
      On one hand, I understand the desire for that, from a sustainable open-data perspective. Any day, Google can decide to close off/enshittify Google Maps (as has already started to happen with location-based ads). However, until and unless that happens, I still find tremendous value in Google Maps, as do many people I know. > It's not our duty to help them scale No, but editing Google Maps also helps a ton of real users, even if Google also happens to profit from it. For the last two decades, Google Maps has been free and used by millions (billions?) of people around the world, myself and most of my friends and family included. More than any other similar service (OSM, TripAdvisor, Yelp, OrganicMaps, county/city GIS, Apple Maps, in-car GPS, standalone GPS, etc.), this has been my go-to mapping & location service, and IMHO it is Google's single best service. Simply put, they do a REALLY good job at it, and it provides unparalleled accuracy and ease of use. The crowdsourced corrections part of it is huge, and not that different from us contributing our opinions here on HN (also a for-profit corporation), or reviewing things on Yelp/Metacritic/whatever, or providing our Android traffic data, etc. Yes, corporations profit from all of that, but they still provide valuable community services. I've seen local businesses gain customers after I updated their listing, delivery drivers find their way after I corrected misplaced pins, etc. It affects and improves my local communities, even as Google profits. Editing OSM doesn't do that, because nobody I know uses it. For me this isn't about "duty" or purity of ethics, just about having a useful & good app to find places and get to them. Again, it's a network effect... it is useful to edit Google Maps because everyone else uses it, and edits it, and in so doing we have a accurate global POI database unmatched by any other effort. Nobody obliges you to use Google Maps. But I'm a very happy user of it, and would gladly pay for it if it weren't free (in fact I wish they offered a paid plan to skip the ads). Do I wish it were a FOSS product run by a nonprofit? Sure. But OSM hasn't caught up in two decades, and it probably won't in my lifetime... if anything the gap between it and Google keeps getting bigger, as Maps gets more and more features and OSM falls further and further behind =/
solardev 3y ago
It's a network effect and most of the good data is on Google Maps. In every place I've lived, OSM has terrible POIs years out of date. Not sure about Apple. I edit OSM on occasion but it's just so bad it's not really usable for me day to day. On the other hand, it's super rare for a Google Maps listing to be totally wrong (vs the pin just being off by a bit), and their corrections UI is way way better than the OSM editor. It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps.
- habi 3y ago
  > It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps. You could use one of those two apps, editing a POI with them does not take half an hour. - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door
  - solardev 3y ago
    OK, on your suggestion, I just tried both of these apps. StreetComplete seems to be gamified and only wants to show me "quests". I couldn't figure out how to edit a specific business that wasn't a current quest. I poked around for a few min and then gave up. Every Door didn't show me anything at all until I manually downloaded the data, then had a pretty bad UI for editing the operating hours, not even localized to my time locales (12hr time). The time picker is horrendous too. I don't think I can stand this UI, sorry. And when I tried to edit actual vector features on the web-based OSM editor (both of them, or whatever the difference is) it was a much more annoying experience than doing the same thing (like editing a road) on Google Maps. The GMap editor is just much more polished and doesn't require me to go out of my way to make a trivial edit -- as you'd expect from a company with nearly infinite resources. I'm sorry, I get that OSM is a great project, but it's just not something worth my time to try to fix. I've checked in on it (and contributed here and there, once in a great while) since its founding nearly 20 years ago, but I've never found it to have good enough data for day-to-day use, nor easy enough editing features to be worth the hassle. I'm happy it exists, but it's just not something I care enough to regularly contribute to... with limited time, it's just more useful for me to use Google Maps. Sorry, it's selfish, and not idealistic at all, but just being pragmatic. Nobody else I know uses it, either. Everyone I know uses Google Maps, so fixing it there has a cascading effect of usefulness for my entire social circle, like when we want to go to a shared location, I can make sure the pin is where it's supposed to be.

solardev 3y ago

> With Google Maps, there's level system, where people with higher level can fix these issues easier... I'm level 6/10 in that system (several hundred contributions, a few million views) and it's totally hit or miss for me. Some edits go through instantly, others take a few minutes, some take a few weeks or months. Some are peer reviewed, others aren't. It's not a very transparent system and there's no way to track them once you submit it, you just eventually get an email (or not) if it goes through or is rejected.

stephenr 3y ago

On an article about a business incorrectly marked as "closed" you're suggesting that expecting some basic confirmation about a change, is unreasonable?

vitorgrs 3y ago
And it worked for the business? Doesn't seem so. In the end both had incorrect status.
- stephenr 3y ago
  We don't know why the business was marked as closed. Maybe they had a sign up during the pandemic saying "closed until further notice".
  - cudgy 3y ago
    Or a competitor used the handy correction feature to mark the business closed?
    - stephenr 3y ago
      Sounds like exactly the sort of scenario you'd want them to confirm with something like a photo... the exact thing the original comment is complaining about happening.