As mapping professionals have observed, it isn't as simple as just having more and better data sources. Putting together a solid mapping solution from many disparate data sources can be harder than gathering more data yourself (i.e. there's a reason all those Google Street View cars are out there).
It's also worth noting that Apple's local POI search has been a particular pain point. Thinking it will be easy to match or outdo Google here (when Google Maps often pops up the right POI as a suggestion when I've typed as few as three characters) is foolhardy.
Again. Google Street View cars are NOT going around continuously updating data. It is their existing data providers that are doing this for them. I know this for a fact. And sorry but Google doesn't own any POI data either. They license it from third party providers. For example in Australia it ALL comes from Yellow Pages.
If you do a POI search e.g. Sydney restaurants in Google Maps you can scroll down to see the attribution e.g. "Business listings distributed by Yellow Pages". Likewise for most other countries.
But hey I will grant you that Google Maps has a better autocomplete.
I didn't say Google did everything themselves. That would be ludicrous and, AFAIK, no one does that. I said that gathering more data yourself can be easier than integrating disparate data sources. In other words, direct data gathering is an important part of the story and fixings things isn't as simple as "MOAR DATA"!
> And sorry but Google doesn't own any POI data either.
Some of Google's recent acquisitions would beg to differ:
Oh, by the way, I wouldn't trivialize what Google's doing with autocomplete. The way Google works on reliably guessing user intent from limited, often noisy input makes a huge difference on mobile. To take one example, search interfaces that can't tolerate misspellings are irritating on the desktop and downright painful to use on a phone or tablet.
There are lots of data sources other than Street View, satellite and aerial imagery being big ones obviously, but also user provided data, Business Photos, phone calls, etc.
The Yellow Pages attribution you see doesn't necessarily mean all data came from Yellow Pages, just that some may have.
See the frequently referenced: http://blog.telemapics.com/?p=399
It's also worth noting that Apple's local POI search has been a particular pain point. Thinking it will be easy to match or outdo Google here (when Google Maps often pops up the right POI as a suggestion when I've typed as few as three characters) is foolhardy.