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Comment by bprasanna | Hacker News Reader

They should avoid using the word community, if side product of these contributions are going to empower their sales. I had been contributing to Google Maps for more than 8 years now, but in return all i get is stars and maximum an invite to a meetup. But, when i saw the other side of Google Maps with respect to consuming it through API usage point of view, the prices are not affordable in long term. Also, there is a clear monopolization of maps data, but the data is enriched by human volunteers who never get the share of API revenue. In this age of web3 all these crowdsourcing and community keywords from companies like Google will earn more backlash than a warm welcome.

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They are not forcing anybody to contribute, it's free and at will, just like community garden. Even walking in garden is not free, cause somebody's tax money is at use. If you are not paying taxes.

They do provide many free services. Google Maps being one of them, you liked their product and used it and it was very useful hence you contributed back to improve it.

If you had paid for their services then you could complain but if you are using it for free then don't use it for free and then complain. You could always use other products or paid products like GPS from garmin.

I don't understand why so much hate towards companies which are supporting free products and enriching lives of billions of people.

If these free products were not there can you imagine how so many poor people across globe could afford free internet technologies?

// Not google employee, opinions are mine.

You should put your efforts into open street map instead

Yes, im looking for an alternative app for StreetComplete, which is not available in App Store.

I'm curious why you'd put so much free effort into a paid-for product by a trillion dollar company.

To be honest, until i saw the API side of Google Maps i was under the assumption that Google is doing great service with Google Maps. Even now Google Maps gives the accurate result thanks to all the contributors.

But the Google Maps API isn't free so I don't think your point applies here.

I think you are saying the same thing? Without the API it sounds like a great community service that is kept accurate by its users. But the paid-for (and pricey?) API that profits from this is what gives a bit of a sour taste to the 'community' feeling.

you're getting the use of the service..... for free...Yeesh!

Consider before Google Maps. You'd either (a) buy a local map every few years (b) pay for a car navigation system. Now Google comes along and offers you a free maps and navigation service and you're complaining that if you try to make it better you're being screwed over? IT'S FREE!

Yes, it's free and good. Im not complaining about the Google Maps as a product, but i'm complaining about the system built around Google Maps. 1. I don't know how many contributors of Google Maps know the API side of the story. If they knew that will they be ready to contribute for free? 2. Though Google might have touched about selling user data in Terms & Conditions, the Terms & Conditions themselves are big trap worded with complex sentences having many pages. Yes, i may be lazy/dumb not to go through pages of T&C, and i accept that part of my mistake. 3. For a Google Maps contributor, when they contribute apart from giving them the points and appreciation, Google never tells them their contributed data is going to be sold in the form of API (in a visible manner). Whereas in YouTube the contributors do know, they may get compensated upon N number of views.

In overall the point is similar to everyone's complaint on Google, "User data is being used to their favour" but my expectation is for Google to openly and visibly tell that so all the competitors have level playing ground.

Google is making a lot of money on Maps. The consumer app is free only so you feed them free data from your rides. They also kicked out of business all competition (hard to compete with free). And as usual with monopolies, when there’s no competition, you can do what you want. Wait for it. In few years it will be shut down or will cost a lot if they no longer can sell your data to someone else.

Google Maps has lots of competition. Bing, OSM, Apple, CityMapper, HERE, Yahoo Japan, TomTom, Garmin, Waze even though they own it… I could keep going.

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