If you love map editing and collaborating on better map data for the people, http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is available for editing. You can choose from a multitude of editors, your edits are live within minutes and everyone can benefit from your contributions. OSM is free and open, you can download it all, you can do whatever you want with it, you are not feeding a corporation that might or might not appreciate your sacrifice.
Also, in return for your contributions, all you get from Google is a single map rendering whereas Openstreetmap offers a multitude of them, the possibility of making your own and the whole source data that Google will never let you see but that you need for any sort of analytical processing or joining with other datasets !
Good point - OSM is not just this one map; I've now used it for offline (!) geocoding, online and offline (!) maps (shared tiles, customized tiles, own tiles, vectors), offline POI searches etc.
Most of this is not even possible with proprietary maps, let alone allowed (if you have nothing better to do, go take a look at Google Maps T&C, it forbids you many things - need a route on a device which can only display text? Sorry, no can do, either you must show a Google Map, or you can't use Google's routing).
For me, the big win in updating Google Maps is that it uses the updates when routing directions. So now walking directions use the walking paths in our complex, and our culdesac is properly shown as a one way loop rather than just ending in a point.
Yes but none of them have as powerful of a navigation system, nor do they usually account for traffic data which can be incredibly handy when deciding which route to take to head home from work or school during rush hour.
Certainly. But OSM allows you (or anyone else) to use their data, make a startup or non-profit to implement such functionality.
Google Maps, in contrast is a data silo. Even if you put data in by contributing it, it's Google's data. The possibilities to implement new ideas on top of it is very limited.
As others say, the stuff that people do with OSM is terrific. E.g. you have communities of mountainbikers who enter data about small paths, level of difficulty in the uphill/downhill direction, etc. You can extract a MTB-specific map out of it (which is exactly what openmtbmap does), which renders on your GPS such that all relevant information for mountainbiking is there, routing is adjusted such that you mainly use interesting paths, etc.
There are a gazillion other interesting applications that are not possible at all with proprietary maps such as Google maps.
Also, these days, the point of interest annotations are better than nearly any other map. Heck, in my area in Germany, even picnic tables, etc. are generally in there.
It really depends on how active your area is though. My area is very bare in OSM. While I've added some stuff to it, it is really too much for one person. It has gotten better I'll admit, but is still lacking.
I like OpenStreetMaps a lot, I just don't like the options for apps that are out there.
How do you mean powerful? Sure, traffic is hard to do, since you need real data. But if it's worse routing due to missing roads/paths, then you can improve the data.
As I'm driving somewhere Google can suggest me an alternate route if it sees that traffic is slow ahead and there is a faster route that opens up. Google takes into account construction that may be happening on streets and tries to avoid it if will slow my drive down.
Googles ETA's are more accurate and reliable. Googles directions seems to be a lot better taking me on more main streets rather than poorly maintained odd side roads.
I believe the traffic data has improved a lot when Google has acquired Waze - with such data collection network, of course they have great, realtime data (not complaining; just noting that building such thing takes more than just money).
My area does not have many people who use Waze. Not much of the data in my area would come from Waze. However they do take data from Android phones and apple phones with Google Maps and can use their locations to find roads that have a lot of people on them. This is great for giving everyone live traffic data. This is something that is hard to compete with.
See, most of the time when I am driving I know where I am going, but I want to know the fastest way there when it is busy. Sometimes an accident happens, or some event happened and it is just busy a specific way. I want to know that. OSM can't really help me there. Google maps does.
I like to Skydive as well; that is an almost 2 hour drive each way through busy Toronto, Ontario. It can get pretty busy around there. Google suggests me the fastest route there and reroutes if a faster route opens. My last drive there I saved 15 minutes just because Google maps directed me around a traffic jam. If I was using an OSM app I would have had to go right through that traffic jam and lost 15 minutes of time, and burned more gas.
I love OSM, and gladly contribute edits and gps traces to it, but I still can't use it as a primary navigation app until it can compete which it likely will never be able to.
I completely agree - there are some tasks (such as "collecting realtime, ephemeral data") for which volunteer efforts are less suited for than automated data collection (which requires significant upfront investment).
Yes that's what I figured. All of that is only possible if you have traffic (or can read the TMC for construction alerts). OSM is unable, now, to get that sort of traffic details, so can't route based on it.
This is exactly why I use Google Maps to edit. I've tried OSM apps on Android and while they are good, sometimes the directions given are not as smart as Google Maps and they don't account for traffic conditions which is rather unhelpful for me in most cases. Often times I don't even need the navigation directions home, I'm just essentially asking Google which way is the fastest route to take home given the current traffic conditions. Very useful when heading home from work or school during peak traffic hours.
The same as on Wikipedia or any other collaborative "wiki"-like tool. There are active mappers in each area that look at changes that are being done there, we also have access to the complete edit history so we can see what changed when, where and by whom.
People do vandalize the data occasionally, or accidentally screw something up. That gets dealt with relatively quickly.
Although like Wikipedia the likelyhood of someone spotting bad edits is inversely proportional to how "busy" the area is, if you're going to add a new street to the center of Paris that's likely to be spotted much sooner than adding some fake country rode to the middle of Siberia.
Mostly it just works though because good actors outnumber bad actors by many orders of magnitude.
Only in the sense "all cars have four wheels, so a Indy 500 car is just like a dump truck". Google has "this will go through Our Glorious Administration and we might decide to look at it." In OSM, it is possible (and encouraged) to first contact the original mapper for clarification in good faith - much faster and more efficient.
MapMaker was great for selfish reasons, though. My postcode had the wrong bounding box and some new roads were missing from it, MapMaker made it possible for me to get deliveries much more easily.
For the very same selfish reasons, I've made some OSM edits. Now I (and incidentally, everyone else) get better geocoding, better (foot+bike+car) routing, and a list of useful POIs :)
Is there a FAQ somewhere on how to get started with the project as an amateur and mostly consumer of the data (but who would be willing to donate hiking, biking, and driving tracks)?
I'm assuming there must be an easier way of uploading GPS tracks than manually.
