One of the great bright lights of open-source software and user-driven community projects is OpenStreetMap, which offers an open-source mapping platform similar to, but also very philosophically different than, Google Maps.
It manages to duplicate most of Google Maps using primarily the contributions of enthusiastic users, too.
In my experience, OpenStreetMap is every bit as accurate as Google Maps and quite frequently surpasses it, particularly outside the US. That it is even anywhere close to Google Maps is a testament to massive amount of time and effort the OpenStreetMap community has invested in the project.
One place that Google Maps has always had OpenStreetMap beat, though, is Google Street View, for which – until relatively recently – there was no OSM equivalent.
Telenav, one of OSM's major supporters, has now launched a new project dubbed OpenStreetView with the goal of crowdsourcing street-level photography for OpenStreetMap across the globe.
Experience for yourself at https://www.openstreetmap.org.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:57AM
I've tried to like OSM, but it is so far behind Google maps and Google Earth that its just no competition.
It has this "Crazy Uncle" look to it, and it will have every tree in a park marked, but the footprint of houses next to the park are totally missing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday December 15 2016, @09:29AM
I find google far behind OSM, even just on roads (my own road doesn't exist in google for instance). Once you add the rest of the data, footpaths, trainlines, bus stops, etc it's far better. When travelling abroad OSM usually wins too. I see that google finally has some roads in Gaza.
Google wins with things like realtime traffic, and generally has a better gazetteer
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday December 15 2016, @11:06AM
The road that my house is on is a year old, yet still isn't on Google Maps. It's been on OSM for at least six months (not sure when it was added, that was when I first checked). I generally find OSM to be more accurate (and was amused that this was even true in the two blocks nearest the Google Maps HQ).
Complaining about the appearance of OSM completely misses the point: it is not a maps app, it is an open data set. The web site has four renderers built in, but there are a load of others. I use OSMAnd [osmand.net] on my phone, because I can download an entire country's maps (as vector data, so typically only a few hundred MBs) before I travel and not have to worry that I've gone outside of the range of the Google Maps cache or having to pay a lot for roaming data (if I even get a signal in some of the places I visit). Because it has vector maps locally, it can do offline navigation, so I don't need roaming data for navigation either. It has its own renderer, and a bunch of customisable options in the view. If you want to embed OSM in your own web page, there are a bunch of libraries and you can either cache their tiles, generate tiles yourself on the server, or use something like cartagen [cartagen.org] to send vector data to the client and render client-side.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @08:28AM
When they built a new motorway here, it was added to OpenStreetMap at least half a year before it was finished. The day the motorway was opened, the "construction" tag was removed, replacing the dotted line with the real motorway.
Google Maps did add it maybe a month after it opened, probably imported from OpenStreetMap, but only visually. It took months for them to enable routing, so even though you could see the new motorway, routing from one exit to the next, Google Maps would pick a route following country roads, in some cases crossing the motorway several times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @06:38PM
The OSM maps in the southern part of India are also much better than Google maps. The only real issues I've had with OSM is the street directions and U-turns are not always accurate, but I haven't used Google maps enough to compare them on this aspect.
(Score: 5, Informative) by nishi.b on Thursday December 15 2016, @09:35AM
It depends a lot on location.
For example in France, OSM got access to all the "cadastre", that is all public records of buildings, roads, rivers... So it is very accurate, and usually better updated than google maps.
In most cities, the mapping is much better than google maps (street numbers), I found this equally true in the moutains here (alps) to locate water sources or hiking paths.
As for the rendering, OSM is a database of geolocated data, and multiple map tiles can be rendered according to the kind of information you want to display.
There are maps for hikers, for bikes, for cars, for public transports that display the relevant informations from the database.
Some are listed here : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_tile_layers [openstreetmap.org]
It is also used in emergency situations (Haiti for example) to map undamaged roads for humanitarian aid for example.
As it depends on local people and/or the will of governments to share mapping information, it is very lacking in some places (for example small cities in Bangladesh), but it is getting better.
You can use OSMAnd on Android; it allows to download and use offline the map of the area you are going to visit.
And OSM API allows you to download anything you want from the database (I created a small software myself using part of it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @09:00PM
Google Maps had numbers and a lot of other info that later was removed. It also became slower as mentioned in other replies and they had the "courage" to run polls asking about that when you tried to use the previous interface, yet unsolved since the change became default. Removal of numbers and extra info could be blamed in wanting to extract the info from you (search for exact place or feature instead of pan around and check the numbers or bus stops or museums yourself), speed problems... going cheap and using less servers?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by segwonk on Sunday December 18 2016, @06:29AM
Yes, came here to say that I have discovered a lot of hiking trails that I would never have found on Google maps. Now I always check OSM before traveling to a new place to see if there's anywhere I want to hike.
.......go til ya know.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by letssee on Thursday December 15 2016, @10:37AM
While this is all true, it is still cool you can download everything and not have some third party know exactly where you plan to go.
I once selected a part of london for offline use in google maps and immediately I started getting ads for hotels in london. I don't really like that sort of spying.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday December 15 2016, @11:36AM
You might want to try HERE maps [google.com] as well. (As disclosed in another comment, I work for them. But they are nevertheless good.) Offline navigation works IMO better than any OSM routing apps I saw. For countryside pedestrian-navigation, OSM might be better.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 15 2016, @03:58PM
It was indeed a good map dataset, in particular for car drivers, and I still use the Nokia incarnation on one of my phones when I'm travelling abroad (I use that phone *only* for maps, in fact, it's basically a shitty out-of-date GPS. I use the previous model phone as my phone.)
Day-to-day, being in Europe, I'm an OSM person - street-wise it's very accurate and up-to-date. I find town venues can be out-of-date (some bars/restaurants stay only open for a matter of months in the part of town where I live), and I'd like to update them but don't know how. I simply drop markers where I see there's an inconsistency. That's my only contribution to the "open" service, but I'd happily do more, as it is one I make a lot of use of.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 15 2016, @06:33PM
My favorite part about OSM is that it is still as fast as GMaps used to be. Every "improvement" Google makes seems to slow their basic map down. And don't get me started on defaulting to "3D on" in the sat view.
I still use GMaps more than OSM, because I get better search results. But missing buildings isn't exactly a deal-killer...
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday December 15 2016, @09:40AM
You are No Longer Hostage to Google's Car-Driven Vision
I didn't realise I was. I think my family would've mentioned if they'd had a ransom demand.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Touché) by jelizondo on Thursday December 15 2016, @07:03PM
So you see how much they care ... :->
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday December 15 2016, @11:09AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Thursday December 15 2016, @11:31AM
Full disclosure: I work for HERE [here.com], in a technical role, not marketing. I speak my mind, but might be biased. Part of us is Navteq (some of you might remember the name), map provider for - as far as I know - 80% of all built in car navigation systems and Garmin navigation systems. We also have a couple of other customers that might not want to work with Google for various reasons, or indeed consider our map-data or services superior, or our licensing-options advantageous. Therefore I'd say the perception to be hostage to Google Maps does not match reality.
With regards to OSM, I think it is a really nice project, and for pedestrian navigation, especially in rural areas, I often found it superior to Google Maps or HERE [here.com].
However, it relies heavily on GPS data casually collected on the way (via smartphones etc.), later merged into the map by volunteers. Therefore, it lacks a lot of supplemental information, like speed limits etc. Road classification seems to be off quite often.
Also, HERE and Google provide traffic-information (notify for traffic jams), historical travel times to predict arrival time, sophisticated route calculation, an iOS- and Android Apps for voice guidance, etc. HERE navigation allows for offline-navigation with reasonably-sized maps to download (OSM maps are afaik bigger in memory consumption and in some areas less complete), making it an ideal companion for travelling (because you can avoid roaming-fees), while Google - due to their search-business - might have more point of interests (I wouldn't know, I'm using HERE maps exclusively and not missing anything).
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @02:00PM
> and for pedestrian navigation, especially in rural areas, I often found it superior to Google Maps or HERE.
Huh? Am I missing something? Because in my experience in rural areas Google Maps and HERE are 100% USELESS for pedestrian navigation, I don't see them even TRYING?!
(Score: 3, Informative) by q.kontinuum on Thursday December 15 2016, @02:49PM
"In rural areas", I have to disagree. Streets are still quite accurate, I think.
"pedestrian" && "In rural areas" might be a different story. I did see some paths not suitable for anything else but pedestrian. But yes, it's only very few. That's why I wrote I found OSM superior for those use-cases. In cities-centers HERE pedestrian navigation seems quite ok.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday December 15 2016, @04:43PM
I've tried HERE on a number of occasions, and I like the UI a lot. However it is lacking in the data gathering of Google Maps: I've hit road closures with HERE maps that Google Maps navigates around. Read into that as you will - I am paranoid and dislike Google watching my every move, but I do see the convince of better traffic and business locations.
The biggest feature that Google provides is the business search. Their library of local businesses is the best I've seen between any of the mapping software: Open Street Maps, Bing Maps, Map Quest, Here Maps (I've never used Apple Maps) all have comparable features but just don't have the vast library and often struggle associating locations with queries. Currently have OSMAnd and Google Maps on my phone as they cover the two extremes: Google Maps will help with busy traffic and locating businesses, while OSMAnd allows me to use my phone without mobile data and has some good hiking features.
And I just remembered my biggest complaint of HERE Maps: it beeps when you are speeding. Probably user error there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @05:16PM
Speed-alerts can nowadays be adjusted (beep when exceeding by x km/h) or even switched off.
For the traffic information, they are shown in the app, but for some reason not considered when calculating the route. The backend is afaik capable but the apps don't use the feature... don't ask...
(Score: 2) by quixote on Friday December 16 2016, @06:45PM
I stopped using OpenStreetMaps a few years ago because it was so hard to make it stop using the local alphabet. You had to use a different URL and IIRC the map data was sometimes less up to date. And when I was traveling, that was a real showstopper. I don't read kanji and Hindi and Arabic and Thai.
If they've fixed that, OsmAND would be of real interest.