Comment by yencabulator
3 days ago
So if I've understood correctly:
Google's S2 is all about performance and prefix-matching.
Uber's H3 makes the math a bit more complex to prioritize less variation in centerpoint-to-centerpoint distances (because they care most about driving times).
This makes the math even more complex to prioritize less variation in area covered by far away tiles (most applicable to e.g. analyzing density of something).
As a user, you generally don’t care about the math (and S2 is hardly simple either, as it warps the squares prior to projection). You just call the API and use the indices for spatial joins or computations.
The primary benefit is indeed the ability to treat cells as if they are equal areas. This is something people do currently with H3, but it introduces a bias. Contrary to popular belief, this is not only an issue near the poles or in the ocean.
The other difference is aesthetics, people generally find H3 more pleasing to look at than S2, which is why it gets used in visualization more. You can make the same argument for A5, although of course it is a matter of taste!
Finally, you are correct that H3 was originally developed at Uber for their specific use case, however it has since been used in many other contexts and I think it doesn’t hurt to have some alternatives as conceptually S2/H3/A5 are similar