Comment by danelski
6 hours ago
In my experience, the congestion data is not the issue: even with the split across Google / TomTom / Here / Apple / some hyperlocal alternatives, everyone seems to have reasonably good idea where the traffic jams are. Having up to date POIs is a different can of worms only solved by Google, not by some clever algo, but through the sheer brand recognition. They're the only ones that have this data fed to them by POI owners.
Traffic jams are highly "volatile" in my area.
I commute using one of the several paths and there's only a coarse relationship between the times and paths congestion, but there's absolutely no certainty regarding the actual congestion. Single broken down vehicle on the single lane road can cause backpressure to the key places and make non-obvious variants MUCH better.
As a result I always drive/ride with Waze (I know! ) and I'd love some alternative. Google maps is too slow.
Idea: an open website/app that updates POI information on every known platform simultaneously. To POI owners it would be a win because it means their info is reaching more people but there's not much extra work. The hard part is spreading the word, but I don't see why an open project's donations can't go towards marketing. The marketing material can also be used to promote the existing open platforms like OSM and some of the open review websites(mangrove.reviews and lib.reviews for example), such as sending free window stickers to POI owners that say "Review us on **!".
Well, Google has the most popular OS. Tomtom is not far from being the OS of lots of cars. Here, too. It's owned by Daimler/BMW/Audi (sold for 3 billions). Apple has the second most used mobile OS.
So yes, for these huge actors, it's quite easy to create congestion data.
The vast majority of POI churn information comes from streetview + machine learning object detection + automatic change detection + human verification. There are many clever algorithms in play through the entire pipeline. As moats go, its probably bigger than search.
You forgot the massive user base of Google. Users through comments are the first to tell Google that the POI changed. And shop owners are often the first users to worry.