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Grab is messing up the world's largest mapping community's data in Southeast Asia
Grab, Southeast Asia's top ride-hailing company, has hit a roadblock in its efforts to improve its mapping and routing service after running into trouble with OpenStreetMap, the world's largest collaborative mapping community, through a series of blundering edits in Thailand.
Grab, which gobbled up Uber's local business in exchange for an equity swap earlier this year, has busily added details and upgraded the maps it uses across its eight markets in Southeast Asia.
[...] Grab's effort to improve the never-ending quest of more accurate maps involves a multi-input approach that uses Google Maps as the base with Grab adding in its own information — "points of interest" cultivated through customer feedback and groundwork — and other public or licensed information.
However, what appears to be a focus on speed has seen it suspend all activities in Thailand — Southeast Asia's second-largest economy — after it was found to have overwritten data developed by OpenStreetMap (OSM) with inaccurate edits that were created by a remote team based in India.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @12:47PM (12 children)
Another outsourcing success story. Fast, Cheap, Good ... pick none.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by SparkyGSX on Wednesday December 26 2018, @01:23PM (2 children)
That would imply they are actually capable of producing good results if you either pay more or wait longer.
If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
(Score: 2) by SparkyGSX on Wednesday December 26 2018, @01:25PM
Crap, cognitive expectations got in the way of properly reading apparently. Guess it was outsourced.
If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:28PM
No, I'd say that "pick none" implies that no matter how long you wait, or how much you pay, it still won't be good.
In reality if you're wanting to cut costs on your workers you should always expect the result to be crappier work, no matter where you hire from.
India tech workers are cheap because they suck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @01:37PM (6 children)
"uses Google Maps as the base"
Stealing from Google. Imagine if Google 'stole' from anyone else, how much legal trouble they would get into. But everyone steals from Google and it's perfectly fine.
Imagine if these companies had to actually produce their own maps without stealing from Google first, what would the quality of their product look like. They couldn't do it, the result would be much worse than what Google offers, so they have to steal first and then 'improve' on what they stole without giving back. Google thieves.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @02:06PM
1. You can't copyright facts
2. Tracing over an image is not itself copyright infringement
3. Copyright infringement isn't stealing
4. Most of Google's content was provided by third parties in the first place
5. Grab had a much better map at their disposal, but ruined it by using "what Google offers"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:24PM (4 children)
So what? People steal from Pachelbel's Canon in D Major all the time. Do we start caring about that too? Google Maps is working as intended and we're getting better services as a result.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Pino P on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:48PM (3 children)
Google Maps happens to be a bit newer than any of Johann Pachelbel's compositions. I know Disney bribed the U.S. Congress to hide this fact for 39 years, but copyrights do expire after about a century.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday December 26 2018, @04:13PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @09:59AM (1 child)
Google maps certainly does not advocate reusing their materials. Because if they did, they would give users a license to do so.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 31 2018, @07:36AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:43PM (1 child)
Are you implying that paying people 1/5 of the going rate in the US is not going to result in quality work?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:57PM
Is that 1/5 on an exchange rate basis (relative to how many U.S. Dollars a particular local currency can buy) or 1/5 on a purchasing power parity basis [wikipedia.org] (relative to the local price of rent and food)? Theoretically, exchange rate discrepancies are temporary, and they tend to diminish as a country's export sector enlarges. (See Balassa-Samuelson effect [wikipedia.org].)