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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

> The most successful and ambitious mapping project of all time, Google Maps

Google map is indeed a commercial success, but it's far from “the most successful and ambitious” when it comes to mapping itself, quite the opposite. State projects (even those developed before satellites where a thing[1]) are way better, and even openstreetmap achieves a better coverage and higher maps quality.

It's the “most successful and ambitious” commercial project, which is coherent with the rest of the thread.

[1]: for instance: https://www.sovietmaps.com/

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Do you have a citation for OSM? My experience in first world countries especially where Google had ground truth project are still much better in Google than osm.

Casually browsing OSM in my area, I see individual park benches, garbage cans including type, road surface material, doorways to buildings, power lines, location of springs. And that's just what Osmand is rendering, I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface.

Google doesn't even attempt to map most or all of these things here, much less expose this information. OSM attempts to build a much better map, and for my region, easily succeeds.

That's not to discredit Google Maps. Almost all of the time, I don't need the best map, I need the kind of yellow pages, yelp, sightseeing guide, live traffic and transport, navigation mashup Google is projecting onto their map with great skill. I think it's their best product.

Maybe if you limit your definition of “first world countries” to urban areas, but I live in a somewhat rural place (not the middle of nowhere, I have 4G network and 200Mbs internet) and my street, built in 2011, doesn't appear on Google Maps. In fact it looks like everything built after 2010 in my region is missing from Google Maps.

And never ever use Google maps if you're planning a bike trip, unless you really want to get into troubles. As a host on warmshowers.org for the past four years, I've heard tons of horror stories…

Depends what value you place on street view, traffic data and business listings.

If I want to ask "What exactly are the traffic restrictions for roads through Hyde Park" only street view has the data.

Agree Google Maps can't compete with OS if you want building outlines.

As far as I know Google also used third party data for their maps.

That's why the data can be different if you view Google Maps in the US or Europe. Some licenses are only allowed in Europe for example.

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