

Why (and how) we've switched away from Google Maps - freyfogle
http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/why-and-how-weve-switched-away-from-google-ma

======
untog
It's nice to promote open data, etc. but lets be honest- it's all about the
money. And Google charging for Google Maps usage is going to result in a lot
of people doing this.

I'd advise that everyone at least explores the possibilities out there,
though. I'm making a mobile app right now that uses roadmaps, and have ended
up generating my own map tiles using TileMill and open data. It's surprisingly
easy to do, and makes things like offline caching (not possible with the
Google Maps license) possible.

~~~
justincormack
Well it was more specifically that their service could not support the cost.
Sounds like they would have paid if it had been less or their business was
much more profitable. It is a big problem with this type of service where many
uses are not directly revenue generating. The traditional model has been to
try to get the sales team to price at what the customer will pay, rather than
have list prices, but Google by the sound of this has not got a good sales
team in place, they are not culturally a sales organization. They should
perhaps try some sort of auction based pricing that works for this type of
data service in the adwords model so it can become self service.

OSM is of course an excellent product for people who want to do more than the
off the shelf google functionality.

~~~
mjwalshe
brave of them to let it be know that there company's margins are so low - I
looked at the cost of Google maps for my employer and a company wide license
is not that much.

------
officemonkey
According to the article, the Google "sales force" seems to leave much to
desire. They don't keep appointments, they can't explain their product, they
don't understand their client, and they overprice their product.

It does not surprise me in the least that savvy users will find other
arrangements.

~~~
joshuahedlund
Interesting to read about this on the same day I read an article about
Google's infamously challenging interview process.
([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020455230457711...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204552304577112522982505222.html?mod=googlenews_wsj))

Clearly something doesn't add up (though it could be as simple as the non-
engineers don't get as much scrutiny. Shouldn't Google want the world's best
sales reps too?)

~~~
a1k0n
My Google interview wasn't anything like that. If anything, those could be
questions they ask _non_ -engineers, but I don't actually know.

~~~
jrockway
They also don't type on computers during interviews, which I doubt is
something specific to engineering. My interviewers took notes, copied down
what I wrote on the whiteboard, and then (apparently) later entered all of
this into the computer system.

As for the questions, they certainly don't ask any that are in the article.
Steve Yegge's article covers the exact category of questions they ask:

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-
goog...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html)

I don't remember the exact questions I was asked, and signed about 80 pieces
of paper saying I would Never Speak Of Them, but they are of the style where
you must know X and then use pieces of X to solve completely unrelated
problems. (X could be, for example, quicksort.) Graphs, algorithms, and data
structures are essential, but nobody is going to ask you "implement a binary
tree"; that is way too easy to study for. (I'm guessing that discrete math
questions are also common; but because of the position I was interviewing for,
they replaced those with testing and refactoring questsions. Which was good,
because I was never good at discrete math.) I had not seen any of the
questions they asked before, and two of them were interesting enough to keep
me thinking about them for several days. (I was disappointed to discover,
while implementing my solution to one, how easy it is to brute-force problems
involving English words. There just aren't very many words. But the idea is
what counts, and brute-force is not going to get you hired :)

Since I've been hired by Google, people have pointed me at a lot of "popular
media" articles or videos about Google, and not many have matched my
experience, but then again, I haven't actually started work yet.

(The linked article also talks about Bank of America intervewing, which
doesn't have a standardized process. I know because I worked there and asked
different questions, 100% chosen by me, every time I interviewed someone. So
while one person at Bank of America may have asked "What animal are you?",
that's not some sort of company policy. So it's a bit disingenuous of the
article to name-drop Bank of America there.)

~~~
esrauch
> They also don't type on computers during interviews

One of my engineering interviewers took notes on a computer instead of on
paper. Clearly your mileage may vary.

------
hazov
There's much to be done in the web mapping yet, Google Maps initially brought
a renaissance to the field but the problem is that now everyone try to beat
Google by emulating Google Maps (just like some companies loves to emulate
Apple products). For example, Google buys the majority of surveying data that
it uses in building it's maps, everyone can buys and use the same data.

OpenStreetMaps has its own data but it is provided by a community that does
not have as much momentum as Wikipedia, even New York City data is pretty much
incomplete[1]

Part of the problem is that people really do not know anything about
cartography or how a dynamic maps must behave, even worse the majority of
people do not even know how a web mapping service is implemented.

By the way, you can use OpenLayers with many tiles, including Google:
<http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/google.html>

[1]: <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/New_York_City>

~~~
yellowbkpk
> For example, Google buys the majority of surveying data that it uses in
> building it's maps, everyone can buys and use the same data.

This is no longer true. Google spent millions of dollars paying people to
drive cars around collecting data for them. The majority of their data
nowadays is their own (in most of Europe, Canada, and the US at least).
Recently, they've even convinced their users to work on their data for them
with the Map Maker product (all while holding the data behind a non-
commercial, non-compete license and charging 10's of thousands of dollars for
the right to use it).

~~~
hazov
Yes, found about this in a old blog post. Thanks for the information.

------
mmwako
I read the post and it's mentioned many times that OSM is as good as Google
Maps. Others argue "its just about the money". Why would someone want to pay
for a service that you have to pay for and its just as good as the
alternatives?

I think the key factor here is something Google does very, very well: UI.
There is just something about google maps that makes it more appealing to the
eye. And that's crucial to create a great service. I saw a post long ago (i
couldn't find :/) that compared the graphic style of Maps, Bing and others.
Google just nails layout, ease of understanding and other factors. I believe
it is this key factor that makes the difference.

~~~
Semiapies
"I read the post and it's mentioned many times that OSM is as good as Google
Maps."

And it's also mentioned repeatedly that they were perfectly willing to
continue with Google Maps until they had a bad sales experience and were
estimated a figure that they couldn't pay.

When you say that and you put the charging issue third, it makes everything
else look like a rationalization.

ETA: And as I go to OpenStreetMaps and see it struggle to serve me a page
showing my house (and showing exactly the same wrong place for my house that
Google Maps does, because it's using the exact same data), it doesn't much
make a case for anything but "well, at least it's free".

~~~
yellowbkpk
What do you mean "struggle"? The page loads slowly? It's showing data but it's
wrong? Google Maps and OSM don't use the exact same data. What's wrong with
OSM? How can I help you fix it?

OSM is very, very good in some areas and not so good in others (especially in
the US).

~~~
Semiapies
Yes, it loaded glacially when I tried it, and there was a link begging me to
donate for a hardware upgrade. It showed precisely the same wrong location,
given a search address, that Google Maps shows - which is pretty impressive if
they're somehow _not_ using the same data, there. As for fixing it, _fix it
yourself_. I'm not a cartographer, and I'm not actually interested in this
project or in being hectored by someone to pitch in on a project I don't give
a damn about.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Can you give an example of the exactly matching wrong data? I'd love to _fix
it myself_ but can only fix it if I know where the problem is.

~~~
Semiapies
I'm sorry, but the search address is my home address, and I'm not going to
give that out to you.

------
Vvector
I just checked my home address on OSM. My whole subdivision and the major 4
lane road that goes past it was all build 6+ years ago. None of it exists in
OSM. This is a well populated suburb of Atlanta.

~~~
jan_g
Yep, 80% of my town is unmapped. The same goes for some other towns in
neighboring areas that I've checked. Compared to Google maps it's just no
good. I have no idea how or on what basis the blog author concluded that OSM
is just as good or better then Google maps. Also, I didn't see the option for
satellite view.

~~~
theon144
Well, and my town is mapped perfectly. The difference is that with
openstreetmaps, you can simply go and improve what could be better. Of course
it doesn't change anything about the quality of the maps, just that you have a
choice, as opposed to google maps with which you could possibly be stuck with
an incorrect map.

And regarding satellite view, how would you even imagine volunteers making
satellite images? Basically anyone can get a GPS receiver and make maps, but I
have yet to see an amateur hobby satellite in orbit. (I guess you could use
R/C planes with GPS and cameras, but that would be incredibly time-consuming
and not ideal at large scales.) However, even if you could do that, it's just
not goal of OpenStreetMap. You can't use satellite images for routing, there
is no legend, etc.

And I think that they don't allow external satellite images because of their
philosophy on freedom - similarly to you having to explicitly allow installing
non-free packages in Debian.

~~~
defrost
> And regarding satellite view, how would you even imagine volunteers making
> satellite images?

Across the world, I can't answer. Here in Western Australia, one of the
largest single states in the world, there's been digital mapping for two
decades now, predating the rise of Google maps.

Data from MODIS satellites is downloaded direct from the sats as they pass
overhead and streamed to those with an interest. The better quality data comes
from the aerial surveys performed each and every summer over populated areas
which produce several thousand digital scans of wet negatives (they may have
recently moved to high res digital in the planes, I've been out of the details
for a few years).

Google didn't develop their mapping tech initially, they purchased the
starting technology from Keyhole, a US based company (iirc), it's worth noting
that several international companies had equal or better offerings that were
considered including our locally developed technology from ermapper which is
now owned by Lecia.

[http://www.erdas.com/company/news/newsreleases/07-05-21/Leic...](http://www.erdas.com/company/news/newsreleases/07-05-21/Leica_Geosystems_Geospatial_Imaging_Acquires_ER_Mapper.aspx)

As for volunteer contributions it's been our experience that if you provide
data access and annotation tools then many competent people that care about
ground accuracy (forestry services, land owners, search & rescue, exploration
crews, etc) will happily add value.

------
mixmastamyk
Another warning about mapstraction... I use it on my site and am not that
happy with it. It doesn't support (seemingly) exotic features like z-index for
markers and other things I ran into which I can't remember off the top of my
head. When asked on the mailing list, devs stated they want to keep the
library small. Sounds great but I've got an application to write that needs
more than lowest common denom. So you end up hacking the google objects
underneath directly to access many features (which you'll think are standard
in 2011).

So now I have two libraries to support and users to download, much less
documentation to rely on, and am not completely abstracted.

~~~
zem
If the ability to switch map providers is critical, would it not be worth the
time and effort to cleanly extend your abstraction layer to cover the missing
pieces rather than give up and call the specific backend directly?

~~~
mixmastamyk
It could make sense for some.

~~~
zem
fair enough; there are definitely things to do at a higher priority than
maintaining an abstraction layer that you might never need.

------
mythz
I suspect #3 Google introduced charging for map usage - was the catalyst over
noble points 1 & 2.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Why, because you don't believe there are businesses with values that trump
profit?

~~~
pgeorgi
The article states that they did the switch because Google asked for too much
money - a very good reason to move items to the top of the TODO list.

So while the "noble" reasons were there, they probably had enough other things
to do (those that make money directly). And thus the new Google Maps pricing
actually was the catalyst.

~~~
freyfogle
You hit the nail on the head, pgeorgi

------
dmitrykoval
In addition to the map tiles, OSM has an unbeatable advantage over any
proprietery solution - you can take advantage of raw data and do whatever you
can think of. For example, you can write your own route finding solution,
tweak it whatever you like and potentially find new unexplored ways to
existing problems (which I did for social based routing project in Eastern
Europe). Needles to say - none of that is possible with the proprietary
providers like Google.

------
mbeswetherick
Other than the Google logo in the bottom left hand corner, Google has done a
great job of taking the back seat on development. You can pretty much make a
map that looks like it's completely void of the Google family.

When creating a mapping application, it's extremely important to stay away
from that. There's no point to creating an application that's just a styled
Google map. There has to be a point to having your application centered around
a map. I think a drawback of using Google maps (or any of the mapping
services) is that it's so familiar to people. A lot of people might assume
that the application your building is just a Google growth. Fortunately,
Google has a good deal of features built into the API to keep that from
happening. You can pretty much design what your map will look like down to the
most seemingly superfluous of details.

Mapping applications are so awesome because of how interactive and driven by
visual exploration they are. I think there will be a lot more of them doing
things that we don't expect to see in the future.

One last note: Any TileMill developers out there? What would your advice be
for someone who is making a mapping application/considering moving over from
gmap?

------
PaulHoule
I wouldn't use "Mapstraction" the amount of Javascript to see OSM through
Mapstraction is about 20 greater than Google Maps. Visitors to your site will
definitely experience longer loading times.

~~~
ffffruit
Surely one can a) minify b) remove 'unwanted' services from the file in order
to speed things up?

~~~
freyfogle
Actually with mapstraction v2 you load only the libraries you need by default.

------
a_a_r_o_n
My US address can't be found. I live on a major metropolitan regional grid
system.

~~~
yellowbkpk
Which city do you live in? Can I help you put your house and address into OSM
so you can find it the next time you look?

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
Ah, I didn't realize you had to put yourself in first.

------
cullenking
I just recently assembled a tile server using mapnik, OSM data and modtile.
Data is importing on our new geocoding server, against using OSM data and
Nominatim. We will be switching our routing service over to pgrouting, but I
have to wait for a massive hardware budget to make sure it can equal gmaps in
routing performance.

Going completely over to OSM takes alot of work when building your own
hardware stack, but our alternative (with relatively low traffic), is paying
google maps $40k next year, and who know what the following...

------
valuegram
I definitely agree about the Google deficiency in sales/customer service.
Their technical products and expertise are excellent, but have you ever tried
to get anyone from google on the phone?

As they deploy more enterprise solutions, they will certainly need to provide
better sales/support systems around those, or they risk losing market share
like this.

------
GFKjunior
OpenStreetMap does not work in my city and I live in a very large US
metropolis.

~~~
rmc
Hi there. How do you mean "does not work"? OSM is a map. Do you mean your area
is not well mapped? That happens some times. You can always improve the area
and data yourself.

~~~
potatolicious
This seems rather disingenuous. A _map_ that is missing major areas is not
only not well mapped, it clearly "does not work".

This sounds to me like the age-old argument us techies make to laymen. Use
open source! If there are problems you can fix them yourself! Except these
people are not programmers, nor do they have any interest in being one.

I'm not a cartographer, I have no interest in being one. I certainly am not
signing up to integrate OSM into what I'm building and be on the hook for user
complaints about missing map data, and have to do _that_ myself.

Not to mention, contributing to OSM in the strictly legal way is not at all
trivial - for legal reasons you simply cannot consult any other map, so
basically you'd have to go out, walk/drive/bike around your area with paper
and pen in hand and "map" it yourself. That or trust you have perfect memory
w.r.t. your city. The bar for contributing back is high, can we blame people
when they'd rather just have a map that worked?

~~~
yellowbkpk
> This seems rather disingenuous. A map that is missing major areas is not
> only not well mapped, it clearly "does not work".

It is very rare for OSM to be completely bare in a major metropolitan area
(especially in the US). It could be that the addresses are gone, but at the
very least the road network will be there from the TIGER import.

> I'm not a cartographer, I have no interest in being one. I certainly am not
> signing up to integrate OSM into what I'm building and be on the hook for
> user complaints about missing map data, and have to do that myself.

You don't have to be a cartographer to add data to OSM. You sign up, point and
click or drag and drop. It takes minutes and you don't have to have any
particular knowledge before hand (especially cartography). Having said that, I
completely understand not wanting to be on the hook for user complaints.
That's why Google charges thousands of dollars. Some people (the writer of the
blog post in particular) aren't interested in paying that.

> Not to mention, contributing to OSM in the strictly legal way is not at all
> trivial - for legal reasons you simply cannot consult any other map, so
> basically you'd have to go out, walk/drive/bike around your area with paper
> and pen in hand and "map" it yourself. That or trust you have perfect memory
> w.r.t. your city. The bar for contributing back is high, can we blame people
> when they'd rather just have a map that worked?

This is not true. Mapping with paper and pencil on foot or bike or car is a
great way to get outdoors and thousands of people use this technique to add to
OSM every day, but you can also use any one of the dozens of aerial imagery
backgrounds available to help you create data from memory.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"It is very rare for OSM to be completely bare in a major metropolitan
> area"_

I don't think anyone claims OSM is simply missing entire cities - but entire
developments in cities are definitely missing in many cases.

> _"You don't have to be a cartographer to add data to OSM. You sign up, point
> and click or drag and drop."_

Not true. OSM gives you a handy satellite image reference, so you can
certainly fill in streets - but unless you're _from_ the area, you are poorly
qualified to decide what type of street it is, and you certainly don't know
the street names. In other words, the common contributor is empowered with
little more ability than to trace satellite imagery, with no knowledge of
place names, street names, or landmarks that are necessary to build a real
map. In fact, the _only_ places that the average contributor is qualified to
map is the area directly around themselves.

This may work for a casual contributor who wants to see their neighborhood on
OSM, but it's entirely unrealistic for a developer who wants to support
his/her users.

Consult another map? That violates the terms for contributing to OSM - for
good reason, they want to steer absolutely clear of any allegations of
plagiarism or copyright infringement.

So if someone complains that my app has missing map data, unless the user is
located near me or one of the areas I'm intimately familiar with, they're SOL
until _someone else_ fixes it.

> _"Mapping with paper and pencil on foot or bike or car is a great way to get
> outdoors and thousands of people use this technique to add to OSM every
> day"_

This makes no sense at all. I get the spirit of the project, and I fully
support it. In fact, I _have_ contributed to OSM. But expecting this out of
most developers, or even a significant portion, is lunacy.

This is like telling your IT manager "we should use this very incomplete
library. The code is open, so any missing functionality or bugs we can fix
ourselves! This will be a great benefit to our coders, so they can crack their
knuckles on some problems they don't usually get to work on."

Which is entirely true, but misses the point by a mile - developers may be
interested in contributing to OSM (I know I am), but how many are willing to
ship this in a production environment, where the goal is to build a great
product, not baby-sit an incomplete data provider?

~~~
yellowbkpk
> _This is like telling your IT manager "we should use this very incomplete
> library. The code is open, so any missing functionality or bugs we can fix
> ourselves! This will be a great benefit to our coders, so they can crack
> their knuckles on some problems they don't usually get to work on."_

There are plenty of organizations that do this. Google spends thousands of
developer hours and millions of dollars contributing to open source projects.
And it's not just for the developers: they recognize a better resource and use
it. When their needs outgrow the library's capabilities they add to it.

There are at least a few companies doing this exact same thing for OSM data,
too. For example, MapQuest and Bing both use OSM data in some of their
products and contribute data and tools/source back to OSM.

> ... _developers may be interested in contributing to OSM (I know I am), but
> how many are willing to ship this in a production environment, where the
> goal is to build a great product, not baby-sit an incomplete data provider?_

As I've previously mentioned, OSM is certainly inadequate in many places (and
the community is working really hard to fix that -- thanks for contributing!),
but in some places it's _MUCH_ better than Google. It's certainly a business
decision: do you want to pay Google $10k+/month (where it was $0/month not 2
months ago) to run your site or do you want to use OSM? If your business's
primary area of interest is Europe (especially Germany), then you probably
want to use OSM. If you want to cover the entire world or don't want to deal
with the lack-luster-but-improving data in the US, then use Google.

------
FigBug
Other than open street maps, Map Quest and CloudMade (pay) are there any map
Apis that let you download the tiles in a desktop application?

------
aubergene
I really like the Open Street Map project. I think it's shameful of Google to
create Map Maker, which essentially copies the functionality of Open Street
Map, however Google don't release the user contributed data under a reusable
license, although I believe they do in some poorer countries.

------
JS_startup
The article has a very ingratiating tone towards Google. The summarized
version is: Google started charging for Maps usage, their sales team sucks and
their pricing is too high. All of that could have been said without the
unctuous praise of Google's work on geo technology.

------
JacobIrwin
This is an interesting discussion..

I was watching a YouTube demo made by the 3d mapping company Apple recently
bought. During, I caught on to some new developments that are quite
astonishing (e.g. social embedding).

You can read the HN post here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393011>

------
politician
Should a startup which uses so much of Google Maps that it needs to pay be
complaining that about poor salesmanship when it can't afford to pay? It
sounds to me that _both_ companies have monetization issues.

~~~
JS_startup
What does the inability to pay for the data have to do with their take on the
sales team? Their experience with the sales team is invalid because they can't
afford to pay for the data?

~~~
ffffruit
Read the post again, you are missing the point. The price itself was the last
drop. The overall experience they got, for a company that has been featured on
Google Maps promotional publications, was abysmal.

~~~
JS_startup
I totally agree that the sales process was bad. My post was responding to
politician's insinuation that because they couldn't afford to buy the data
they had no right to complain about the embarrassing salesmanship.

~~~
politician
It's simply interesting that their use of the service was such that they were
asked to pay, yet when they couldn't afford it, they complained about the way
in which they were asked.

Suppose your government provides electricity for free below a certain
threshold. Suppose you exceed that threshold. Suppose a rude person calls you
up and asks you to pay. Suppose you can't afford it.

Should you then complain that they were rude and how it was their rudeness
that caused you to switch providers? Or do you simply explain that you found a
cheaper provider that aligned with your long-term goals? Was the point of the
post to try to give Google customer service a black eye? Because, to me, all
it did was betray pettiness.

