[eigenvector]

Entire countries and continents are far more detailed on OSM than Google. There's a feedback cycle where having lots of active users to passively harvest data or receive user-submitted corrections from improves your map quality. Well, Google Maps is a really bloated app that can barely open on the budget Android phones people use in most developing countries (hell, GMaps pegs the CPU on a 2-year old flagship for several seconds just starting the app).

When nobody uses Google Maps, Google Maps will never have good street/address data. In developing countries there's no official government office to get this data from, just user data.

[sho_hn]

It strikes me as obvious that what Google should do is support OSM upstream and use OSM data in their product, just as what they do with Wikipedia.

[brewrwe]

Google feels it has a superior product, which is true for certain types of data in large cities. Why contribute to Wikipedia when your the publisher of Encyclopedia Britannica, you'd eat your own product alive for no notable benefit.

[rmc]

> use OSM data in their product

OSM has a share-alike clause, which would require G to share all their own data with everyone.