

How Google Builds Its Maps - bcrawl
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/

======
a3_nm
> An exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the
> world's best accurate maps.

Meanwhile, there is another program to build the world's best maps, which is
quite the opposite of secretive, involves hundreds of thousands of volunteers
around the world, offers public dumps under a free license, and has already
outperformed Google for some areas and use cases:
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/>

~~~
tonfa
If they built the same kind of tools as what GT uses, maybe they could make
better use of the thousand of volunteers?

~~~
yellowbkpk
After seeing tons of videos detailing the tools Google uses for their maps and
using Google Map Maker, the OSM tools are much better at empowering the mapper
to create map data.

OSM might not have the computer vision tools or the Street View imagery, but
there's still plenty of work to do with the existing tools and data.

~~~
femto
I'd anticipate that OSM will get machine vision in the future. Consider that
that a typical phone/tablet now has a GPS, camera and decent computing
resources. It's begging for a machine vision application, which records video
and automatically extracts mapping information, ready for uploading to OSM.
Begging to the point, where I think it's just a matter of time.

As an aside, are there any efforts afoot to decentralise OSM? It seems well
suited to a geographically distributed database, with each country/area
looking after it's own map, and the whole being drawn together by a common
markup language. Assembling a global map would be a matter of crawling a
network of servers, rather than downloading from a single source.

~~~
a3_nm
> It's begging for a machine vision application, which records video and...

A simpler use case for computer vision I could think of with Openstreetmap
would be to automatically extract roads and building shapes from satellite
imagery (though I hope that the license to use Bing would extend to something
like this).

> As an aside, are there any efforts afoot to decentralise OSM?

Well, even Wikipedia's not decentralized yet and has no obvious plans to,
so...

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Automatic tracing of roads from Bing provided aerial photos, with code
provided by MSFT, 18 months ago:

<http://youtu.be/LR0WV2dGIRc>

<http://magicshop.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx>

~~~
yellowbkpk
Speaking as someone that wrote some code that interfaces with the Magicshop
API, it works nowhere near as good as described in the video. It's a simple
color matching algorithm that gets easily fooled by trees and dry grass.

The project is a great start, but has basically been abandoned.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I think the more important point though, is that both the permission and
imagery is there (and the imagery is very high quality) so there's various
other projects that e.g. trace outlines of lakes from the imagery (again basic
color matching) or identify tennis courts via computer vision etc.

------
ChuckMcM
A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps
product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit
mind boggling.

~~~
icefox
It is funny how much effort google is putting into their maps and yet their
interface to the maps (maps.google.com) could still use basic improvements
like how 99 out of 100 times I want directions it is to or from my house and
yet I have to type in almost my entire address before it appears in the drop
down. Considering I am logged into google, have confirmed my address and type
in the same address over and over you would think their would be a Home button
or at least have recent destinations appear in the drop down initially or
whatnot.

~~~
milkbikis
You can do that by clicking on "My Places".

~~~
icefox
If I am looking at an address and want directions to it clicking on 'My
places' only shows me "my places", it does not give me any obvious way to get
directions from the current address to one of "my places". Clicking on any of
"my places" will change the map to view that place, causing the user to lose
the address of the place they want to go to/from.

Edit: I see that "my places" now has a "Home address" which isn't pre-
populated with my google account confirmed home address for some reason....
But if I set it and then try to get directions and type in the first letter of
my address my home address pops up in the auto complete. This is a big
improvement, but of course auto setting the home address from your google
account and remembering the last five in the auto complete would make a lot
more users happy as that would work by default v.s. forcing the user to do
something, most of which will not. The number of people that will set their
home address is probably only a bit larger than the number that were using my
grease monkey script to add a home button.

~~~
milkbikis
I absolutely agree that it needs a rethinking in terms of UI. Now that they
are trying to consolidate google products, maps should be more aggressive in
identifying useful destinations. I'm guessing they want to err on the side of
not creeping people out, but I expect a popup introducing these features soon.

------
n0rb3rt
NAVTEQ has been doing this for 15 years. Google learned it from being their
customer for much of that time. But of course they get the credit.

~~~
bradddd
Definitely true to a point. I think it's fair to give them some credit though.
Despite their obvious motive of reducing their own costs, they've really
established an amazing infrastructure, not to mention a rich API.

------
civilian
Phew! I worked in one of Google's data-entry offices for the GT team. I've
left, but now I can shoot this article to people to actually describe what I
did.

------
swalsh
I work for a company in the telecommunications space. We've talked to several
car companies about integrating 4g into their on board computers. I'm really
excited for this update. I suppose I haven't really noticed how much better
navigation has improved until a few weeks ago. Recently I purchased an 09
infiniti with full tech package. The thing that took me back, was how terrible
the navigation system has been inside of Boston (a very complex area). I can't
remember the last time Google maps has told me something wrong, but this stale
nav system consistently get's confused about 1 way streets etc.

What i'd LOVE to see is for Nissan to throw away its custom OS, and replace it
with Android... along with that I want google maps (instead of whatever Nissan
is licensing). Plus it would be nice to download apps for my car such as a
better mileage tracker etc.

~~~
nradov
What I'd love to see is for car manufacturers to throw away integrated
navigation systems and replace them with standardized mounting points for
smartphones / tablets. I'd like to be able to upgrade my car electronics every
2 years without having to rip apart the dashboard.

~~~
jzawodn
Yes. That a thousand times.

------
johanbrook
Of all Google's products, Maps is the one I appreciate the most. It got lots
of smart features, it's fast, it's got great coverage, and it's easy to use.
Truly great work.

~~~
brianfryer
Totally agree. Would also add Chrome to the list of "most appreciated Google
products".

------
dclowd9901
After reading this article, I realize now that Watson was this cute thing IBM
was working on that they thought was novel, while Google was building machines
that think, collaborate and formulate, period. They don't just answer
questions: they take data and turn it into something we know how to breeze
through.

I am truly astounded by how quickly we are accelerating through this
information era.

~~~
rprasad
Watson is a research product that aims to create artificial intelligence from
the ground up, i.e., true artificial intelligence.

Google is merely processing massive data sets using manually crafted
algorithims. This is a complete different project, which has little or nothing
to do with artificial intelligence.

~~~
magicalist
> Google is merely processing massive data sets using manually crafted
> algorithims

That _is_ what Watson is. There's not really any "true" artificial
intelligence since the term is so poorly defined, but you could make a good
argument that your description above fits humans pretty well, too.

------
cpeterso
If you are a cartographile, I recommend watching _The Beauty of Maps_ and
_Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession_ , two four-part BBC documentaries:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s2w83>

~~~
ajtaylor
Thanks for the link. I've added it to my watch list. IMHO, you can't get much
better than BBC documentaries. Especially when it comes to my favorite - Sir
David Attenborough.

------
7952
Google are only a small part of the spatial data capture world. They provide
amazing access to a few datasets and completely ignore others. Location
searches are laughably bad unless you are looking for a hotel. They do not
even come close to providing comprehensive topographic mapping.

~~~
guimarin
I think that traditional topographic mapping is not very useful from a
business standpoint. When there are more, or a critical number of the
autonomous vehicles from Google deployed in the wild, I fully expect very high
resolution 3D maps from all the LIDAR and other data. That will be incredibly
cool.

~~~
7952
Traditional topographic mapping is still hugely useful in many niches. Try
laying a 100 mile pipeline, or building a factory, or organising search and
rescue without traditional topo mapping. I would agree that it can be obtusely
formatted and wildly expensive.

High resolution 3D modelling is already available in much of Norther Europe.
It is very cool, but surprisingly difficult to actually make useful. In most
applications comic book style generalisations actually work better.

------
guimarin
I've always thought that the real money in mobile comes from very accurate map
data, and very accurate personal position data. that way when you're walking
around town, you can 'ask' your phone for directions to eat/shop/whatever, and
it can give you a great recommendation ( for a price to local restaurants ). I
asked Eric Schmidt if this was a powerful motivator behind the android
acquisition, as at the time it seemed like a natural fit, and surprisingly he
did not say no. And yes I know that Android was bought 'on a whim, gut
instinct' but this is the perfect use case for it.

~~~
7952
This idea is just picking at low hanging fruit. It is like saying that the
killer app of the web is retail shopping. Sure Amazon is cool, but the web is
so much more than that. Perhaps "location" will be like the web and have
millions of little niches. IMHO it won't really take off until you have higher
smart phone penetration in the developing world. These kind of apps need a
market with lots of pedestrians, not car bound America.

~~~
Ineffable
America is not the only country in the developed world. Plenty of smartphone
wielding pedestrians here in Europe.

------
jilt
Don't miss this part:

'Not to detour too much, but what you see above is just the beginning of how
Google is going to use Street View imagery. Think of them as the early web
crawlers (remember those?) going out in the world, looking for the words on
pages. That's what Street View is doing. One of its first uses is finding
street signs (and addresses) so that Google's maps can better understand the
logic of human transportation systems. But as computer vision and OCR improve,
any word that is visible from a road will become a part of Google's index of
the physical world. Later in the day, Google Maps VP Brian McClendon put it
like this: "We can actually organize the world's physical written information
if we can OCR it and place it," McClendon said. "We use that to create our
maps right now by extracting street names and addresses, but there is a lot
more there." More like what? "We already have what we call 'view codes' for 6
million businesses and 20 million addresses, where we know exactly what we're
looking at," McClendon continued. "We're able to use logo matching and find
out where are the Kentucky Fried Chicken signs... We're able to identify and
make a semantic understanding of all the pixels we've acquired. That's
fundamental to what we do."'

That is scary. They could read license plates and tie them to addresses. They
could read bumper stickers and determine your politics, whether your kid was
an honor student at what school, etc.

~~~
andyking
Only if you're already public enough with your political views, the name of
your kids' school and so on to stick that data on the back of your car anyway.

If you really wanted to keep your politics secret, you wouldn't put a
political sticker on your car.

All anyone sees on my car is what radio station I listen to.

------
rburhum
Live edits of OpenStreetMap <http://live.openstreetmap.fr/>

~~~
sjwright
That is the most awesome thing ever invented anywhere. Though it would be nice
if it showed a clearer diff, perhaps having the before and after renderings
displayed intermittently in a tick-tock manner.

------
sebastianavina
basically, they don't care to show their technology, because there is no way
another company can develop their technology in the short time, and if some
company adventures on it, when they reach google technology, google will be
far, far beyond them.

now, that's what i call competitive advantage.

------
lkbm
> Google is locked in a battle with the world's largest company, Apple

Wait, what? By what measure?

~~~
defen
Market capitalization. Saudi Aramco is worth more, but they're 100% owned by
the Saudi Arabian government and not for sale.

------
kalleboo
You really don't appreciate how much great data Google have in their maps
until you try to use anything else. Apple have a lot of work to do to get iOS
6 maps on-par (for instance, I still haven't managed to do a successful search
here in Japan - I have to carry around an Android phone for maps and train
directions)

