[twothamendment]

You are correct. The reverse is true too, why should contribute data to their maps service for free? I've done lot of work to add and correct roads, update business info and addresses in my area. If they want to fill the map with ads they have that right - but when they drive me (and people like me) away, their product will suffer.

[alasdair_]

I’d strongly recommended putting future efforts into Open Streetmap instead - they have a fantastic set of data and tools and are usually (in my experience) more accurate and updated more quickly than Google.

[CharlesColeman]

I wish more people would do this, but sometimes it's a tough sell. I once tried to encourage a bunch of people who were banging their heads bloody trying to contribute to Facebook's places database to switch to editing OpenStreetMap instead. Most didn't want to switch -- they were convinced that their miserable experience improving Facebook was more impactful because it was a more popular product that they knew they used.

I with OSM would come out with a consumer-focused map product. I think that would go a long way towards attracting more contributors, since most people get started to scratch an itch in a product they use.

[londons_explore]

OSM is used underlying a lot of commercial apps and services.

Most people don't realise that though, so they think their edits correcting roads will only get seen by a handful of open source geeks.

[alasdair_]

Agreed. For example Pokemon GO uses it - which is why there was a large influx of new users, prompting the following guidelines page: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/12/30/tips-pokemon-go/

[trystero]

MAPS.ME (https://maps.me/) is the closest we have to a "consumer-focused map product" in the OpenStretMap ecosystem.

Try it!

[darkpuma]

The StreetComplete app makes it fun and easy to contribute to OSM when walking around, by asking you simple questions about your immediate surroundings (how many stories does this building have, is this street one-way at this location, etc.) I highly recommend it.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete

[mailslot]

Open Streetmap doesn’t build laser scanning drones, or fleets of connected 360 camera vehicles, or the tech and infrastructure to do the mapping. SOMEONE has to build all of that. It can’t be free. If it’s govt funded, then there WILL be corruption, scams, and it’ll be run as well as the DMV.

[orf]

Because the private sector is free of corruption and scams?

The UK ordnance survey[1] is government run and is generally fantastic. They cover every inch of the UK in excruciating detail, provide centimeter precise GPS coordinates for everything and publish invaluable, cheap maps of it all. Why do you assume that the seemingly inept and corrupt US standard is the baseline that everything else will be?

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey

[londons_explore]

Their maps were probably world-leading in the 90's.

Now though, I feel like the tech giants have overtaken them.

Where is the street view or 3d models? Where are the opening times of every shop? Where is the traffic congestion info? Where is the ability to look up a house number and find where on the street it is?

These are all things I regularly want to know and are location based, so really ought to be part of a mapping service.

[SahAssar]

> street view

That will probably never get done in a OSS manner at the scale of google, and even if it was serving it would probably be enormously expensive.

> 3d models

A lot of 3d models are in OSM, although not as detailed as in proprietary solutions.

> opening times of every shop

This is not something I want in the same database as the location data. The hope is that more sites/services use discovarable technologies lite microdata to make sure that it can be added to the map via separate databases.

> traffic congestion info

Again, real-time info is not really something I want in the same db as the actual street. traffic congestion info is a very different service than location or mapping info.

> look up a house number

This is part of the OSM offering, look into nominatim

[Aeolun]

UK agencies are recently doing pretty good. UK government however...

[meko]

Many Americans have a baseless distrust of government. Our schools teach us from a very young age that "government bad, founding fathers came here from Britain to escape the evil government".

[lucb1e]

Osm is donation funded. For all your scepticism you could have found that in seconds. People contribute for fun, not because they boss told them to fly this later drone around so their expensive software can process it. That saves a lot of cost. The hardware is nearly free, look at Wikipedia: they beg for your money every few months but of the millions collected, a fraction actually goes to the hosting they imply it's for.

Osm also takes data from governments and other organisations that publish it, but only if it's already available under a compatible free license. Not sure where you see that tie in with corruption (which additionally is much more frequent in the private sector but maybe that depends on your country, but since there are no big bucks flowing in and all financial records are public and are plausible for what they do (I looked through it), the point is moot anyway).

[kiike]

I don't know about laser-scanning drones but for street-level imagery Mapillary and OpenStreetCam do the job. That is, if they have users around the area you're interested in.

[Apaec]

A discussion about Mapillary vs OSC https://github.com/openstreetcam/openstreetcam.org/issues/60

I'll go for OSC for future projects. Thanks for sharing.

[CuriouslyC]

The government is mostly likely to be inefficient if it starts a company by committee and competition is prohibited. If it's just a financial backer for an independent entity, with a lot of strings attached to its support, I don't see why that would be any less efficient than any other business. Perhaps we just need to reexamine how the government gets things done...

[rhn_mk1]

That is all true, but what will solve the problem is making something that's suitable and free, either as part of OSM or in addition to it.

[conception]

Because there's not corruption, scams or poorly run businesses in the private sector?

[tokyodude]

I get the use of an amazing map service for which I pay them with my data. I even contribute fixes, reviews, and photos. I'm pretty happy with that price. I don't give them anything for free. They pay me in service.

I actually want the ads too although I want them 100x better than they are and I'm sure Google like Amazon will fail for a while at curating the fake stuff. In an ideal world they'd have inventory and menus of every store so I could search for "pizza with avocados open now" or "1/4inch wrench" and it could tell me exactly where I can get them right now.

[londons_explore]

>. "pizza with avocados open now" or "1/4inch wrench" and it could tell me exactly where I can get them right now.

Answering queries like that has so much revenue potential. Possibly even more than the rest of Google put together. You bet they're trying to get there and have been for years. The reality is it's super hard to collect that data.

They've tried getting shops to upload info about what they sell (the Google Shopping manifest files). They've tried putting Bluetooth trackers in every store (they mailed them out to all big businesses in 2014 and said 'stick one of these in every department of your shop') to track who goes there to know what store might have what products. They've tried putting their own staff in the stores (Google Shopping Express, and the Chromebox staff in electronics stores).

None of it has worked, but they'll keep trying.

[openbasic]

Why didn't you contribute to OpenStreetMap?

[twothamendment]

It has been years since I gave them a try. Their interface was horrible, but this is a good reason to try them again.

[Vinnl]

Regardless of what the sibling comment says, the editing UX is really good now. Their editor has a beautiful walkthrough and easy-to-use tools, at least on desktop: https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit

[londons_explore]

But is lacking pretty badly on mobile... Exactly the device people have with them when out in the real world...

[Vinnl]

True, I think one of the things Google Maps does very cleverly is making it really easy for users to suggest corrections, often just a single tap away. That said, OSMand has been making great strides usability-wise, and though it's still pretty lacking, hopefully it'll get there some day too.

[mikekchar]

I'll be honest, I actually prefer OSMand to some other navigation apps. It may be that I'm used to it, but I find it works really well. I think my only complaint is that they use an arrow to show where they think you should go and a kind of weird, hard to see shading to show where the phone is pointing. It confuses me each time until I remember how it works.

[purple_turtle]

There is StreetComplete (application asking simple questions and making possible to edit without any OpenStreetMap specific knowledge)

[openbasic]

Almost all free and open-source alternative have terrible UIs and crappy UX. And some have shitty content too.

However, that content is done by volunteers just like you, and if you refuse to contribute because something puts you off, then the project dies. Imagine people with the same mindset as you: Oh, I don't bother contributing my design skills because the content sucks. And you don't contribute because design sucks. In the end, no one contributes and the project, as a whole, suffers.

But if the project suffers, you and everyone else, lose to corporate offerings like Google. And that is fine, if you like that. But don't expect them to respect you. I hate to say this, but change has to come from within, not from laws, market forces or anything else.

So, if you want LIBRE maps, and you really care about that, just go on and do it. Gather people, make noise and work hard. There's thousands of highly successful projects to get inspired by.

[londons_explore]

OpenStreetMap's leadership isn't bold enough to ever become the leading map provider. I don't want to contribute (for free) unless I think one day my work will impact millions of people.

In what way aren't they bold enough? Their license is too restrictive for many commercial uses, driving big businesses (apple, Google, Microsoft) and their users away.

They don't use crowdsourced data. You're never going to be able to build real-time traffic maps by manual means.. They need to make a platform to anonymously share user data so other volunteers can write automated code to turn it into real-time map features.

Likewise, they might not have the resources for street view, but I bet a few million people submitting their photo library would get a photograph of a substantial number of buildings... Then it's just about code to sort, classify, tag, and arrange the images to be useful.

[Doctor_Fegg]

Apple and Microsoft use OSM data. So do Facebook and Garmin and countless others.

OSM already impacts the lives of millions of people. Indeed, it genuinely saves lives through its humanitarian work, and has been doing so since the Haiti earthquake.

What you appear to be saying is that it doesn’t provide motorist-centric features like “real-time traffic maps”. As someone who thinks the world would be a whole bunch better if there were fewer cars, I’m good with that.

[purple_turtle]

> You're never going to be able to build real-time traffic maps by manual means

OpenStreetMap is not trying to make this specific product.