Comment by jmuguy
15 hours ago
I came so close to getting our app off of Google Maps a few months ago, we'd be saving literally thousands a month. But the "look" of the map from open street map, map tiler, etc was deemed too different and the team was scared it would negatively impact our users. The Maps API is definitely getting worse, and the pricing setup seems like it was cooked up by someone from Microsoft. Also Maplibre and its various wrappers are so much nicer to work it.
I find that the OpenFreeMap[1] 'Liberty' style looks fairly close to Google Maps.
1: https://openfreemap.org/
Couldn't OpenFreeMap/someone else offer an identical style/theme to Google Maps, or would that be a "copyright" or some other type of infringement in the US?
Probably an issue of trademark if people confuse the product with Google Maps.
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Usually the 'look' is not the issue as much as the geocoder (which you are only allowed to use with a google basemap, no that clever idea you have isn't going to work), like clients are often excited to use a more customizable basemap but balk when it comes to other geocoders which are nice but are not the google one which people really really are used to.
Yeah this was a major problem for us as well. Luckily we can just replace the map, and we'll continue to use the Geocoder and address lookups elsewhere. Its kind of crazy how much better it is with "newer" US addresses vs everything else we've tried.
I feel like with custom vector based styles, you should be able to get pretty dang close to cloning the look of it? Also subjectively, I find the protomaps basemap themes to be much nicer.
Yeah I agree, I found dozens of options that look (subjectively!) a hell of a lot better.
Would it be possible to run an AB test?
Possibly but we don't have much to measure which is "better" - maybe could just ask people to give thumbs up or down.
not OP but the google maps API doesn't actually support other vector tiles (and other map libraries are not allowed to use the google map basemap) which means it's not easy to just have two versions of the site that differ only in basemap