Comment by gorfian_robot

10 months ago

same same. and I often find Organic Maps has hiking trails etc fairly well indicated where Google does not (even if I have cell service)

I think this is less Organic vs Google than OpenStreetMap's data set vs Google's. I don't know why Google does so much worse with trails than OSM, but it really does.

  • > I don't know why Google does so much worse with trails than OSM, but it really does.

    I expect that Google never saw a market in trail mapping. I also assume no Google employee took an interest in trails as a 10% project. Google Maps doesn't really do much for topography either.

    Google Earth can be good for trail mapping, but that has basically atrophied since it was acquired from Keyhole.

    • Yeah, but the thing is that I don't think any of this data is "self-collected". I suspect that OSM gets most of its US trail data (or at least western state trail data) from the National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. I also suspect that incorporating such a data source into Google Maps is relatively trivial, but they just seemed to have done so.

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