Another similar article appeared two years ago: How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog

Another similar article appeared two years ago: How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go... I think most interesting point is not covered in either of them: How much of this effort devoted towards human curation? The numbers are believed to be ~1100 full time employees and 6000 contract workers[1]. These are huge numbers compared to most competitors in the market. Assuming each correction to a map can take 15 mins on average, you can easily make 100,000 corrections a day. Again, assuming there are top 2000 cities in the world where most of the queries originates, this is about 100 corrections per city per day. This would guarantee Google maps best of the best freshness, precision and recall on most metrics. With about 10X-20X larger curation force plus algo engineering, likes of Apple or HERE have no chance. In a way this also shows Google's leadership wisdom. Maps are the most important thing on mobile and even on web. Most companies don't get this and provide minuscule budgets citing no potential revenues (for instance Ballmer cancelled Street View like effort at Microsoft). By the time they wake - if they wake up - it would be to only find that they have been outrun by such a huge gap that even a decade won't be enough to catch up. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-maps-apple-would-have-to-hire-7000-people-2012-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/to-do-what-google-does-in-map...