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If you live in an area where Google Maps is lacking, you can take the initiative to improve them — no coding required! Most people think that Google Maps is ba

If you live in an area where Google Maps is lacking, you can take the initiative to improve them — no coding required! Most people think that Google Maps is based only on camera-equipped vehicles and satellite imagery. In fact, the service relies heavily on crowdsourcing. People who live in remote regions can use Google Maps' community tools to describe how roads, trails, etc., have changed. For example, when the post office in my small town moved, I edited Google Maps to reflect that change. You can also change the position of roads, trails and other geographic elements.

unfamiliar 13y ago
Why should I donate my time and effort to improving a proprietary service?
- hawkharris 13y ago
  For your own benefit. Millions of people regularly improve Google Maps because doing so makes it easier for them to commute and find local resources.
  - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
    Won't it make more sense to improve openstreetmap since it seems to be already better. It is also open.
    - GFischer 13y ago
      I usually add to both :) .
  - javajosh 13y ago
    Right. Now go back to 1994 and s/Google Maps/CDDB/g [1] The lesson was clear: you contribute to proprietary databases at your great peril. People access Google Maps at the whim of Google. They could decide tomorrow to deny access, and you'd have no say in the matter. So, contribute to Open Street Maps instead! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB
    - jws 13y ago
      Precisely. I remember when the track names for some of my CDs vanished because CDDB had taken the data I created for for them private and I was no longer able to see the information I typed in.
    - hawkharris 13y ago
      I enjoy HN and have lots of respect for this community, but there's a strong contradiction in the way we discuss I.P. On one hand, we're a community of people who found and contribute to software businesses. Most of these companies depend on selling intellectual property in the form of code and data. Yet, as makers or hackers, some of us despise the companies that attempt to profit from selling I.P. We expect that all components of software be free for us to tinker with and repurpose. "Well...wait a minute," one might say, "There doesn't have to be a dichotomy between totally closed and totally open." Exactly! That's precisely what Google is trying to achieve with its mapping initiative. The firm is investing heavily in community tools (not to mention SDKs for developers) that give us an opportunity to participate: posting, querying and modifying data. Being both entrepreneurs and makers, we should be a little more realistic about our relationship with IP. You can't always have your cake and eat it, too.
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        There isn't really anything contradictory about being cautious of doing free work for a huge for profit corporation. If Google shared the data you would be getting different responses, but they only use the data to improve their products. (I can totally see submitting a change to get rid of an annoyance; I don't get warm fuzzies from 'helping Google make maps a better product'.)
      - clarry 13y ago
        > Being both entrepreneurs and makers, we should be a little more realistic about our relationship with IP. You can't always have your cake and eat it, too. Why not? We can always demand more, and what is wrong with that? And if we set out to make and eat that cake, chances are we can do it. It is not unrealistic at all. So far crowdsourcing has worked really well for many projects, and I can only see it getting bigger as we as a community realize the potential of open data and our ability to collect & manage it in numbers that few companies can afford to challenge. The point made by GP is a perfectly valid one, and many of us have been screwed in some way or another by corporations that hold the keys. I do not see why playing along with such schemes has anything to do with being realistic.
- phillijw 13y ago
  I put my own address into GMaps so that people can find my house instead of just the street it's on.
felixvolny 13y ago
Just as a sidenote - this is not a remote area, this is Vienna, the second biggest city in the German-speaking world. That being said it is strange that Google doesn't have more data on it
- User8712 13y ago
  Austria had a ban on Google street view cars due to privacy. That's why you see no street view anywhere in Austria. I think they removed the ban, but since then, Google hasn't exactly been in a hurry to send any cars that way. It seems a little strange because I'd assume mapping Vienna, one of the world's more well known cities, would be of high importance. I wonder if they're now avoiding Austria on purpose, simply to send a message. Edit: It looks like the ban was lifted in 2011. Three years later, and there's still no street view in Austria. I'm scratching my head on this one.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    When governments pass asinine laws like "Nobody can take photos in public except us," there are consequences. Maybe the citizens of Austria will think about why they don't have Street View coverage during the next election.
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      I feel pretty secure in predicting that not one vote will be swayed by the absence of Google Street View in Austria. A little perspective is nice.
      - CamperBob2 13y ago
        It's a general principle, not a specific one.
        teddyh 13y ago
        So Google is taking a principled stand against states which pass laws designed to protect the privacy of their citizens?
bhousel 13y ago
I tried to edit Google Maps once and had someone ask me for supporting documentation to prove that the road across the street from where I live really was closed. Total nonsense. This heavy-handed moderation was what pushed me to Openstreetmap in the first place.
- RestlessMind 13y ago
  Don't you think that kind of caution is warranted for a popular service like Google Maps? If/When OSM gets really popular, I am sure there will be efforts to spam/vandalize the data. At that point, "heavy-handed moderation" is essential to maintain quality. (Another example - wikipedia articles are sometimes heavily moderated).
  - bhousel 13y ago
    No I don't think it's necessary. I think changing 200 ft of road across from where I live to "closed" while construction happens for the next year is a minor enough edit that it should be accepted no questions asked. I was tired of having navigation send me down a closed road.
    - ghshephard 13y ago
      So what would prevent vandalism? There is an enormous amount of effort in Wikipedia to repair the damage that vandals constantly do to it, and I'm sure that OSM/Google have run into the same issue.
    - hangonhn 13y ago
      You can imagine how this can easily be gamed to change how Google routes people right? If I was a shady business, you can imagine how I can mark all the roads in front of competitor as closed. Or I can mark the streets in such a way that traffic gets routed to go in front of my business.
      - br78 13y ago
        Hell, I'd seriously consider marking my commute route as closed if it thinned the traffic.
aidos 13y ago
Hmmm. Maybe it's better now, but there was once a local pub on the wrong street corner that I corrected. It took almost a year for the change to show on google maps. I don't know what the validation process is but I remember looking and feeling like I was totally ineffective. Google created something great with google maps. But I'll always feel like it's there to be consumed, not to be part of.
jchrisa 13y ago
Can you give a link to a getting started guide to someone who wants to add trails or routes to an area?
c0nsumer 13y ago
The problem I have with editing Google Maps is that the tools are so much harder to use than OSM's. I really, really enjoy using JOSM and can really improve things in a short time. Google's web-based tool is much slower, and the dependency-chain approval process can make what should be a quick edit into a multi-day process. [1] One example is a local park's hiking trails which are closed to cycling traffic. I'm do a lot of local biking and regularly use Google Maps to plot routes, so when I saw that the hiking trails had been somehow marked as cycling routes (which Google was directing people along!) I went to change them. Two hours later and I still wasn't done with simply unflagging two square miles of hiking trails. Had this been in a JOSM-like interface it'd be 15 minutes at most, including committing the change back. I understand that Google doesn't want to make changing things too easy, lest there be all manner of vandalism and personal-motive edits, but it's currently hard enough that those of us serious about making substantive changes have the tools getting in our way.

unfamiliar 13y ago

Why should I donate my time and effort to improving a proprietary service?

hawkharris 13y ago
For your own benefit. Millions of people regularly improve Google Maps because doing so makes it easier for them to commute and find local resources.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  Won't it make more sense to improve openstreetmap since it seems to be already better. It is also open.
  - GFischer 13y ago
    I usually add to both :) .
- javajosh 13y ago
  Right. Now go back to 1994 and s/Google Maps/CDDB/g [1] The lesson was clear: you contribute to proprietary databases at your great peril. People access Google Maps at the whim of Google. They could decide tomorrow to deny access, and you'd have no say in the matter. So, contribute to Open Street Maps instead! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB
  - jws 13y ago
    Precisely. I remember when the track names for some of my CDs vanished because CDDB had taken the data I created for for them private and I was no longer able to see the information I typed in.
  - hawkharris 13y ago
    I enjoy HN and have lots of respect for this community, but there's a strong contradiction in the way we discuss I.P. On one hand, we're a community of people who found and contribute to software businesses. Most of these companies depend on selling intellectual property in the form of code and data. Yet, as makers or hackers, some of us despise the companies that attempt to profit from selling I.P. We expect that all components of software be free for us to tinker with and repurpose. "Well...wait a minute," one might say, "There doesn't have to be a dichotomy between totally closed and totally open." Exactly! That's precisely what Google is trying to achieve with its mapping initiative. The firm is investing heavily in community tools (not to mention SDKs for developers) that give us an opportunity to participate: posting, querying and modifying data. Being both entrepreneurs and makers, we should be a little more realistic about our relationship with IP. You can't always have your cake and eat it, too.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      There isn't really anything contradictory about being cautious of doing free work for a huge for profit corporation. If Google shared the data you would be getting different responses, but they only use the data to improve their products. (I can totally see submitting a change to get rid of an annoyance; I don't get warm fuzzies from 'helping Google make maps a better product'.)
    - clarry 13y ago
      > Being both entrepreneurs and makers, we should be a little more realistic about our relationship with IP. You can't always have your cake and eat it, too. Why not? We can always demand more, and what is wrong with that? And if we set out to make and eat that cake, chances are we can do it. It is not unrealistic at all. So far crowdsourcing has worked really well for many projects, and I can only see it getting bigger as we as a community realize the potential of open data and our ability to collect & manage it in numbers that few companies can afford to challenge. The point made by GP is a perfectly valid one, and many of us have been screwed in some way or another by corporations that hold the keys. I do not see why playing along with such schemes has anything to do with being realistic.
phillijw 13y ago
I put my own address into GMaps so that people can find my house instead of just the street it's on.

felixvolny 13y ago

Just as a sidenote - this is not a remote area, this is Vienna, the second biggest city in the German-speaking world. That being said it is strange that Google doesn't have more data on it

User8712 13y ago
Austria had a ban on Google street view cars due to privacy. That's why you see no street view anywhere in Austria. I think they removed the ban, but since then, Google hasn't exactly been in a hurry to send any cars that way. It seems a little strange because I'd assume mapping Vienna, one of the world's more well known cities, would be of high importance. I wonder if they're now avoiding Austria on purpose, simply to send a message. Edit: It looks like the ban was lifted in 2011. Three years later, and there's still no street view in Austria. I'm scratching my head on this one.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  When governments pass asinine laws like "Nobody can take photos in public except us," there are consequences. Maybe the citizens of Austria will think about why they don't have Street View coverage during the next election.
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    I feel pretty secure in predicting that not one vote will be swayed by the absence of Google Street View in Austria. A little perspective is nice.
    - CamperBob2 13y ago
      It's a general principle, not a specific one.
      - teddyh 13y ago
        So Google is taking a principled stand against states which pass laws designed to protect the privacy of their citizens?

bhousel 13y ago

I tried to edit Google Maps once and had someone ask me for supporting documentation to prove that the road across the street from where I live really was closed. Total nonsense. This heavy-handed moderation was what pushed me to Openstreetmap in the first place.

RestlessMind 13y ago
Don't you think that kind of caution is warranted for a popular service like Google Maps? If/When OSM gets really popular, I am sure there will be efforts to spam/vandalize the data. At that point, "heavy-handed moderation" is essential to maintain quality. (Another example - wikipedia articles are sometimes heavily moderated).
- bhousel 13y ago
  No I don't think it's necessary. I think changing 200 ft of road across from where I live to "closed" while construction happens for the next year is a minor enough edit that it should be accepted no questions asked. I was tired of having navigation send me down a closed road.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    So what would prevent vandalism? There is an enormous amount of effort in Wikipedia to repair the damage that vandals constantly do to it, and I'm sure that OSM/Google have run into the same issue.
  - hangonhn 13y ago
    You can imagine how this can easily be gamed to change how Google routes people right? If I was a shady business, you can imagine how I can mark all the roads in front of competitor as closed. Or I can mark the streets in such a way that traffic gets routed to go in front of my business.
    - br78 13y ago
      Hell, I'd seriously consider marking my commute route as closed if it thinned the traffic.

aidos 13y ago

Hmmm. Maybe it's better now, but there was once a local pub on the wrong street corner that I corrected. It took almost a year for the change to show on google maps. I don't know what the validation process is but I remember looking and feeling like I was totally ineffective. Google created something great with google maps. But I'll always feel like it's there to be consumed, not to be part of.

jchrisa 13y ago

Can you give a link to a getting started guide to someone who wants to add trails or routes to an area?

c0nsumer 13y ago

The problem I have with editing Google Maps is that the tools are so much harder to use than OSM's. I really, really enjoy using JOSM and can really improve things in a short time. Google's web-based tool is much slower, and the dependency-chain approval process can make what should be a quick edit into a multi-day process. [1] One example is a local park's hiking trails which are closed to cycling traffic. I'm do a lot of local biking and regularly use Google Maps to plot routes, so when I saw that the hiking trails had been somehow marked as cycling routes (which Google was directing people along!) I went to change them. Two hours later and I still wasn't done with simply unflagging two square miles of hiking trails. Had this been in a JOSM-like interface it'd be 15 minutes at most, including committing the change back. I understand that Google doesn't want to make changing things too easy, lest there be all manner of vandalism and personal-motive edits, but it's currently hard enough that those of us serious about making substantive changes have the tools getting in our way.