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by crazygringo 1359 days ago
This is definitely one of the trickiest ethical questions for me -- and it applies not only to Maps updates, but also writing Amazon reviews, and so forth.

On the one hand it's free work benefiting the corporation... but on the other hand it's genuinely helping sometimes thousands of other people. I benefit massively from reading Amazon reviews, and it feels good to give back. But it is also a contribution that further entrenches Amazon (or Google Maps), it's not like Wikipedia where contributions can be used by anyone.

What do we do when we can help other users, but doing so also supports corporations for free? Although then again, I've never paid a dime for Google Maps and use it daily, it's literally a major part of my life -- so does getting the product for free also play a role?
2 comments
alt227 1359 days ago
I appreciate your viewpoint, and in some ways I agree. However I see it mostly from a competitors point of view. If you were to start up a new directory/mapping service, you would need to set up a team of people paid to gather this information for you.

For example if you wanted to put in your new directory whether company A has a car park at their premesis or has disabled access etc, you would need to pay somebody to either go there and perform a survey or call them up and ask them. Googles monopoly enables them to just ask the question to everybody that has ever been there and get the data returned back into the system automatically and free.

I see this as anticompetitive and so I choose not to participate.

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crazygringo 1359 days ago
Yeah, this makes me think further and it feels like one solution could be legislation that declares companies never own user-supplied content -- that when users submit data like Amazon reviews or Craigslist posts they become public domain. Competitors are free to scrape them however they can.

It's harder for map corrections though, as the user-presented data mixes commercial and user-supplied data. Maybe legislation should require regular data dumps of all user-supplied content much like Wikipedia makes available in XML form? Then no scraping is even required.

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stevage 1359 days ago
Agreed. Overall I see it as a net negative to society if Amazon succeeds so I don't help.

Contributing to Stackoverflow is my one exception.

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