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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: 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.