Somebody (presumably from the USA) complained about “Open Street Maps just not being as updated as Google.”
That got me thinking. I’m from Europe.
First of all I haven’t had a Google account or regularly used any of their products for over a decade. So I need to ask.
And by Openstreetmap (OSM) I mean the maps themselves that are used by many apps, routing services, and even secondary map providers.
OSM is community-driven. It requires people to actively participate, or at least deliberately install apps that do that I guess, to create maps and keep them up-to-date.
Google Maps is an app. Where do the maps come from? The data they get automatically (from their users; one might claim it’s community driven too, lol) and those cars with those weird cameras on top and probably something else. Maybe they even take from OSM.
OSM probably won’t ever be able to “see” traffic jams, but apart from that it works very well, gives me a satisfying mapping and navigation experience by car, bike or foot.
And many big professional/official sites rely on OSM.
So, is that not the case in other places in the world, e.g. the USA? How often do you see these Google cars? I haven’t seen one in ages. Let’s say once a year.
I hope you get the main drive of my question. It’s about how crtain “alternatives” to Big tech work, and are perceived, in different places around the world, although the Europe-USA comparison is bugging me the most.
Canadian here from southern Ontario. I find OSM’s maps to be great, no complaints there. But during summer there’s basically constantly roads somewhere under construction, and there’s very often lots of traffic congestion.
So I use Google Maps to route me to places I already know how to get to a lot of the time, like my dad’s house in another town or even a place on the other side of the city I live in, not because I need the directions, but because I benefit from the live updates telling me not to go the way I normally would due to construction, accidents, congestion, etc. It’ll sometimes save 20 minutes on a 60 minute trip!
I think if our car infrastructure was more stable, and if our car culture was more sustainable, I wouldn’t need those features as much.
Using it for transit is virtually useless in my town because while it has bus stops and routes, it doesn’t have schedules. The bus outside my house comes once every hour during some times of day, and still only every half hour during peak times, so it really matters if this hypothetical route is actually a viable route. I’m not going to wait 50 minutes when I could have walked to the connection in 20 just because the bus stop is close.
I think if our public transit system was healthier I wouldn’t have to worry about frequency of service so much, and I wouldn’t need to rely on Google’s transit schedules as much.
Looking up businesses sometimes works, but usually if I’m looking up a business I want to know its hours, and at least in my town Google is basically always right, and everything else is no. So even if I was planning on using OSM to route there, I’d probably look it up on Google first to make sure it’ll be open when I arrive, and that they’re still in business at all!
It would be nice if businesses kept their own store up to date on OSM, but I get that they don’t. And there are things like Street Complete trying to get community members to do it, but there’s still just enough uncertainty that I’d rather check Google as a source of confidence.
I must be living in paradise. The only time I can experience a traffic jam is when I go abroad.
I never use routing on routes I’ve taken before.
I rarely rely on this; I’m way too used to doing web searches.
But I did rely on it (via OSMAnd) on my last trip abroad (Estonia) and found it to be 100% reliable.