[spaethnl]

I develop an application at a university that allows users to share and lookup accessibility information on public places that uses Google Maps and the Google Places API. We have run in to exactly the same issues as described in this post and we have had a few meetings on what to do about it. I would like to switch to OSM but I haven't been able to find a quality replacement for the Google Places API, which is critical to our application.

We could switch to using OSM + Places, to at least partially alleviate our problem, except that Google requires any Google Places API results that are displayed on a map to be displayed on a Google Map, which really locks us in.

Is anyone aware of a good Google Places API alternative, including any paid self-hosted databases?

[nathancahill]

What type of accessibility information are you getting back from the Places API? OSM seems like a great fit for this since information is tagged in a structured way: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Disabilities

Feel free to email me, this is my area of expertise. For projects like that I can often help pro-bono.

[spaethnl]

We actually aren't using the accessibility data from the Places API, we are collecting and displaying custom data that is provided by users (detailed ratings, reviews and pictures from regular users, and highly detailed building assessments from trained users).

We only need the places API for having a comprehensive list of nearby places. Other services had too few places in general, but didn't necessarily lack information about the places that were available.

[rmc]

> OSM seems like a great fit for this since information is tagged in a structured way:

OSM both is, and isn't, structured. It's free form tagging system, where anyone can start adding new tags whenever they want, without any gatekeepers.

[spaethnl]

I just spent some more time looking at OSM's place data, and I'm not sure if more has been added since last looking at it, or if I wasn't using it correctly, but it seems to have more than I remember.

I see that a couple of popular restaurants that have been around for at least a decade are still not shown, but maybe that is anomalous? I'll have to re-consider OSM.

[nathancahill]

If you're collecting accessibility data consider adding it to OSM or making it available publicly for others to add :)

[rmc]

> I would like to switch to OSM but I haven't been able to find a quality replacement for the Google Places API, which is critical to our application.

I know a lot about OSM, but next to nothing about Google APIs like this. Can you explain what you're looking for, what your requirements are? Maybe OSM can help you...

[ailideex]

> Is anyone aware of a good Google Places API alternative, including any paid self-hosted databases?

I think you can achieve this with wikidata / wikibase : https://addshore.com/2016/05/geospatial-search-for-wikidata-...

You will have to populate it yourself though.

[Demiurge]

Check out https://www.pitneybowes.com/us/data/poi-database.html