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by londons_explore 1017 days ago
Google telephones most businesses in the world multiple times per year to confirm opening hours and ask what their hours will be at Christmas/other holidays.

Let that sink in. They have an actual human put actual minutes into speaking with every single business in their database. Think how much that alone must cost.

And they put all that money in simply so users can be a little more certain that the opening hours shown are correct.
3 comments
blendergeek 1017 days ago
> They have an actual human put actual minutes into speaking with every single business in their database. Think how much that alone must cost.

They may have done this in years past. I have worked in fast food for the last decades and I get Google's calls. They are all automated and the robot on the other end never understands me because the hours of the places I manage aren't simple enough to explain to Google's AI.

Of course OSM can't be updated with up-to-the-minute opening hours at all.

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lode 1017 days ago
> Of course OSM can't be updated with up-to-the-minute opening hours at all.

Of course it can. I regularly add opening hours of businesses I frequent on OSM, including special cases like public holidays.

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blendergeek 1016 days ago
But nothing on OSM is "up-to-the-minute". Many OSM data consumers are months behind OSM discourages putting anything temporary on the map. While I do add OSM business hours including public holidays a lot, this isn't always possible when businesses don't have pre-planned holiday schedules.
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franga2000 1017 days ago
> Of course OSM can't be updated with up-to-the-minute opening hours at all.

What do you mean by this? The spec seems to allow it https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:opening_hours/specif...

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blendergeek 1016 days ago
The spec is very detailed and allows a lot of granularity. Unfortunately, real businesses often don't have set holiday schedules but rather play it by ear each year. OSM has no way to add "this business will be closed on these holidays this year, next year might be different". When lots of businesses introduced modified hours during the Covid lockdowns, there was no concept of temporary opening hours so a "opening_hours:covid19" was introduced. Older data consumers simply ignored that tag. More generally OSM is only for data that is (mostly) permanent. Adding "this business will be closed for Christmas this year" is not OSM data. "This business is closed on Christmas" can be added on OSM. But many businesses don't plan that far ahead as to have set announced holiday hours that can be written in the OSM opening_hours syntax.
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beebeepka 1017 days ago
Most businesses in the world? I'd like some proof.

Unless, of course, you and I have different ideas of what "the world" is

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spyke112 1017 days ago
I own a business in Denmark, I never received a call as described. I received lots of email reminders though, because this is something you can update yourself.
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retSava 1017 days ago
Snarky, but I expect that to be a kind-of circle with a small radius, around their offices and the favorite places their employees in SF visit.

Never heard of this happening, and not something I'd expect google to do. I'd expect them to send emails at most, with a link to some page that is broken for anyone not using Chrome, then no support available.

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londons_explore 1017 days ago
Maybe my business is a corner case which avoids the automation - I am open usually 9-5ish, but can be open anytime if a customer rings the well and waits for someone to get out of bed.

Google has an actual human call every 2-3 months, who usually just asks the opening hours, confirms one other detail (usually the website) and then says goodbye.

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TheDong 1016 days ago
> Google has an actual human call

I guess congrats to google on passing the turing test

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Loocid 1017 days ago
A local restaurant near me in Australia said they had a Google employee ring asking to confirm their opening times.
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NaiveBayesian 1017 days ago
These calls should be automated in most cases [1]. Still an impressive feat, but there is no way they are paying a large number of people to phone through all businesses in the world.

[1] https://support.google.com/business/answer/7690269?hl=en

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