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by cube00 24 days ago
As evil as they are, it's hearting to see the delivery platforms are embracing OSM when they could probably afford to just pay for Google's Maps API.

It gives hope that Google/ESRI won't always be the dominant mapping platform, however OSM is still missing a lot of local businesses which the delivery platforms don't need as urgently as house numbers so there's less focus there.
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Aachen 24 days ago
> It gives hope that Google/ESRI won't always be the dominant mapping platform

Are they? I get the impression that only consumer-facing stuff is Google, to give people a familiar color scheme¹ as well as allow terribly formatted search queries to still work (if google can do one thing it's search). However, anything using geo data in a back-end fashion seems about evenly split between government base maps, OpenStreetMap, and a collection of misc providers that Google is one of

¹ conversely, I struggle to find my home town on Google Maps. It's all about vague, washed-out shapes, besides the bright shop icons and, nowadays, advertising pins. It's a matter of what you're used to so I can very much understand that the average consumer, who's less familiar with maps than me, is totally lost when getting Carto as a map

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patmorgan23 24 days ago
Lyft even pays people to contribute to OSM
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Aachen 24 days ago
Many companies do. Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, TomTom, Über, Komoot, VKontakte; I see German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish local governments mentioned; Austrian emergency dispatch; USA school bus operator...

Full list: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activi...

It's more surprising at this point that Google isn't getting in on the fun, at least taking the good bits and calling their own data a 'separate layer' so they don't have to contribute anything back. (And of course no Chinese companies, since accurate maps are illegal there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...)

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Acrobatic_Road 24 days ago
How do I get a job like this? Should I just email the team leads or is it the kind of job that's done in-person in another country?
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Aachen 24 days ago
I'd say government is your best bet unless you live in a low-income country and can get into one of these teams
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