Comment by ThrowawayTestr
16 hours ago
The amount of value Google Maps has given me is far beyond what I'd be willing to pay in actual dollars.
16 hours ago
The amount of value Google Maps has given me is far beyond what I'd be willing to pay in actual dollars.
Agreed: the opportunity to be taken to a rocky dirt road through swamp grounds on the outskirts of a small town in Greece is something I'd never get if not for Google Maps :)
(and many similar stories)
I only use Google Maps for their live traffic info, which they so nicely collect out of majority of Android users driving around. I'd love it if OSM apps could leverage that information for navigation too.
I'm guessing that happened 8 years ago and you're still mad at it. I also have an experience where their map data was sightly wrong and I got into an argument with my mother.
Exactly, 8 years ago last summer. Today it still happily recommends me take the "fastest" route through a street that's under construction for 2 months now in the biggest city in Serbia. A week ago it happily tried to take me through a closed off tunnel that is actually marked as "no traffic due to road construction" on the map (at least graphically, the metadata is likely not correct).
I am not holding a grudge at all: any map data is going to be out of date due to things happening live. Keeping it up to date in the entire world is a hard problem.
But they are not a panacea, and I frequently nudge it to better routes instead of the ones it recommends (I only watch out for live updates from them like a crash or new roadworks somewhere).