Why people don't talk about Google Maps' privacy issues
Why people don't talk about Google Maps' privacy issues
Title is editorialized because the original is, frankly, clickbait garbage
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I am pretty over these videos of people whining about the amount of data big tech collects while refusing to move to alternatives because "muh convenience".
For those unaware, Organic Maps (uses OSM) is really good! It's good for 90% of all ur navigation needs. For the rest 10%, there's no good alternative to google maps unfortunately.
Let me suggest Magic Earth.
Has live traffic updates, uses OSM database, amazing UI with tons of features, can work offline by downloading maps, and very privacy respecting (feel free to look through their privacy policy it is very short and simple). Only downside is it is not FOSS, but I tried using Organic Maps and then OsmAND for almost the past year and gave up because they just are too much of a downgrade from Google Maps both in terms of UI and traffic updates, whereas Magic Earth feels like the perfect compromise.
Some further clarification on the closed source thing from their FAQ:
Why is Magic Earth free? What is the business model?
Magic Earth is free for all our end-users but we also have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners. For instance Selectric.de (a supplier for navigation solutions for ambulances and fire trucks), Smarter AI (developing ADAS systems) or Absolute Cycling (using the platform on bicycles). For more info on the SDK, you can check magiclane.com.
Will Magic Earth be Open Source?
No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.
Like there's no open source project with commercial paid licence ?
Or a source-available model.
Nothing competes with osmand for hiking or cycling.
Traffic updates aren't exactly a problem for me as I travel everywhere using my bicycle/public transit.
The only problem I face is that I can't get public transit information on OSM. Now ideally the city should be the one making this information accessible. Unfortunately for me, I currently live in a shitty city (although not for long). Therefore, within a matter of months, Organic would meet almost 100% of my navigation needs.
Magic Earth has public transit data. https://www.magicearth.com/feature-availablity/ Scroll down under transit to see if yout city is on the list
pretty sure organic is working on that, I remember there being docs on building with PT data.
My issue with these is that my use case is public transport, for that it seems like GMaps is still unbeatable, i hope to find an alternative as good or better based on OSM soon because it's the one tool i still have no alternative to
Where are you from? Where I live (in the Netherlands) there's an official tool from the public transport services which works just as well as gmaps to plan your train/tram/metro/bus journey.
Same same. This is a problem in shithole cities. Good cities have their own transit apps (which are like Uber for public transit).
Out of curiosity, any examples? I know for NYC people use Citymapper, but that's available for most big cities.
Calgary, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, etc.
If you're American, some of them support transit now. I have Magic Earth and it supports it in most major metro areas (and even my dinky little city I believe lol)
I think 5 out of that 10% is supplemented by OsmAnd. But it does not have public transport schedules and traffic data.
There are often individual apps for various cities and transport organizations.
Traffic has always been a mixed bag. Yeah it's nice to be able to see that street A is more busy than street B. But so can everybody else, and they're all going to use street B now.
Meh, I find most people don't even bother.
I use secondary routes 90% of the time by default, because they're just as fast with less mental effort and less risk.
Why go with all the lemmings?
But so can everybody else, and they're all going to use street B now.
In my experience that's not how it works out. It's about balancing the load, while making the driver take the least amount of detour needed.
Street B only has to handle the remaining traffic, and street A has a chance to unclog or at least be a faster route as some of its traffic does not exist anymore.The app doesn't control what people do, it just makes recommendations based on busy segments, based on data which is already obsolete by the time it's being used. Ultimately the lemmings will do whatever their lemming brain tells them to.
(That is, assuming the app doesn't actually try to spread people around the various routes. But I doubt that any app maker wants to assume responsibility for that.)
Ultimately traffic apps are mostly useless. You can't "solve" traffic congestion with apps any more than you can make water flow faster through a pipe. Congestion is constrained by available road space and choke points. Google Maps is mostly an excuse for Google to collect location data, with a thin layer of features on top to make it seem worthwhile.
Water does not think, it flows where it can.
People while driving cannot know which route isn't clogged, because cars are not flowing like water. If that would be the case all the small streets around main roads would be full too. If a street is clogged, and the driver sees it, they can decide to go on a different route, but in waze if they are using it to plan a route, it'll try actively to avoid roads that are too busy.If that would be the case all the small streets around main roads would be full too.
They are. If they aren't then your city is not really that busy. It's actually a major problem in some cities for the residents of small residential streets that suddenly start getting lots of traffic because their street gets recommended on Waze or Maps.
Traffic data?
If a grandmother had a penis, she would be a grandfatherTo implement this function, Osmand should gather location data from every user.Not necessarily. The data is out there. I don't think they could make it a part of the core app for legal reasons, but OsmAnd has a plugin system. Basically anyone could make it other than OsmAnd devs. Distribution could happen over an F-droid repo.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=k5eL_al_m7Q
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
the data is out there
Where? GMaps sources this data from each of its users.
And Google also trusts that data because it's collected at OS level.
If an open project tried to collect location data they could not trust it. There's no way to prevent malicious users from sending bogus data.
That's where. But also I wouldn't be surprised if there are also other sources.
Wow, organic maps is really nice, seems like a much cleaner user interface than OsmAnd, whereas OsmAnd has more options.
What are the rest 10%?
Reviews most definitely. Hard to beat that
I'm glad I came back to this thread. Would never have heard of this!
Will give this a try later, tysm! Apparently it also works with Android Auto?
Yes, it does. I have used it successfully for months. My main issue is I need traffic data due to a new job and figuring which route to take. AFAIK, no other nav app has traffic data. That's the only real bummer.
HERE WeGo has traffic data but of course, as in Google Maps, it sources from other users of the same app.
If not many people use HERE, then the data is also not reliable.
Can you search for street addresses?
I genuinely don't understand how anyone can believe this, I keep trying it over and over and over and it fails on the absolute most basic of business searches. And some of the directions it gives are just completely nonsensical, and it's voice guidance is absolutely terrible making it fairly easy to miss a Direction if you're not able to be looking at the screen
I hate giving my location to Google but at the end of the day they are still the only GPS navigation that doesn't suck at basic navigation
Do u live in some place less humans live? Like a village or something? OSM is mapped by volunteers, which means that less OSM enthusiasts around you = worse mapping. Perhaps you could start a little bit of mapping?
As for the voice navigation, well Organic doesn't have its own voice. It uses ur phone's native text to speech engine. If u have completely degoogled ur phone, then u probably would be using some other tts engine (which most probably sucks ass).
As for the searches, yeah, they need a better local search engine.
I don't just mean the voice, even just HOW it gives directions. Google maps gives you multiple warnings for a turn , one way before, one approaching, one right at. It also will often tell you which lane to take a turn in if multiple exist (use the second from the left lane to turn left) if your next turn is right after with little warning.
It's been a hot minute so i can try again to see if it's changed but directions were terrible with little extra warning and no taking the next direction into account.
The map was also just... Messy, little outlines for buildings everywhere a bunch of random green squares all over the map that I couldn't figure out how to turn off and wasn't even sure what they were meant to represent other than they seemed to roughly correspond with grassy or treed areas but for using it as a navigation app that is extremely annoying because it just makes the whole map of cluttered mess and makes it difficult to really tell what I'm looking at when I'm trying to drive and need to see my next Direction quickly and easily at a glance
also a lot of open maps alternatives rely on YOUR contribution to be good instead of a hired team at some corpo.
use it and help out with it and you will have your open mapping app!
Well change can only be done through voicing disapproval first, although Google will most definitely won't stop the data gathering in Maps.
Well It's understandable if a lot of people wouldn't switch over to OSM-based apps. I've tried OSMAnd, and I observe 3 drawbacks. Lengthy public transport calculation (fair since it's computing on the phone), no reviews in POI areas (really hard to catch up on), weird results in transportations
Well change can only be done through voicing disapproval first
Yes, but if you as the consumer never actually stop giving the company your money and/or data then there is little incentive for them to change. Just complaining by itself does absolutely nothing to a company the size of Google. You need to actually follow it up by using your limited power as a consumer to support an alternative. Only then, and if enough people do the same, will the first company consider making changes. If they don't, at least you are supporting an alternative project and helping it to improve so that it may one day feel like less of compromise.
Absolutely agreed.
Most people (public and private) never go beyond disapproval, though.
You'll hear people complain about this and that, but never even looking for an alternative.
I always try to keep in mind there are a lot of people that are simply unable to transition to alternative apps because they lack knowledge and time to do research on such things. What we see through videos isn't the majority of the people, it is people that make content for the majority.
People have hard times getting into more technical stuff already. Expecting people that are struggling to survive in capitalism to spend their free time learning about underground alternatives or to turn into sys admins and host their own stuff is out of touch if reality in my opinion.
Edit: just wanted to add, I wouldn't say the problem is on the people, but on big tech that predates on them
Those people aren't complaining. The guy in the video specifically mentioned Open Street Maps as an alternative, but only in the context of "well maybe one day Google will go in this direction". He has zero interest in actually switching and ends up making a bunch or excuses justifying his Google Maps usage. He is not trying to be part of a solution here, he is just whining.
Which GoogleMaps alternative has user reviews? I downloaded organic maps suggested here and there are no reviews. When I'm in a new town I need to know where I can and where I shouldn't eat, shop or stay. At least there are some icons on organic maps, but that's it.
The "user" reviews on Google Maps (and similar platforms like Yelp) can be fake. Go to the Fake Review Watch channel on YouTube or visit their website if you want to see real examples of this. This is a service that businesses of all sizes, all over the world are paying for - sometimes on a massive scale.
However if you still really want to rely on Google reviews, use GMaps WV.
GoogleMaps reviews are fake in favor of corporations, it's useless data
Not when you're new in an unknown city. In my local city the ratings still make sense, I compared it with my own experience, so why would that change drastically elsewhere? It's often the only option you have, visiting every website individually is too time consuming and doesn't tell you anything about the service either. I bet even you look at reviews. It's easy to say their are faked but there is no non faked alternative.
what the f are you doing that you need to vet this many businesses in such a short time span?
I seriously don't look at the reviews; I don't even use google maps because it's useless to me as a pedestrian.
Visit a new city and spontaneously finding a good restaurant matching your criteria. I heavily rely on reviews for this usecase as well as being able to search e.g. for „vegan restaurants“ in a certain area, which also matches reviews with the word in it.
The problem for me is when someone sends me a location pin it is almost always a Google map link. I have the same issue with people in my community using whatsapp.
Can't you just open that in a web browser? Take the address, put it in an alternative map app. Problem solved.
I guess you are right, for me I just try to avoid all Google links and products in the first place. I understand that you can tweak privacy controls and settings that allow you to manage how your data with Google is collected, I could also use a privacy browser or incognito, but my main issue is not giving any of these juggernaut corporations a chance to swing and cash in on my personal data.
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Is your problem that you feel forced to use Google Maps? Or that you feel forced to ignore your friends because they use Google Maps? I assumed the former with my initial reply, but now it sounds like your have the latter problem.
I'm not ignoring my friends; I'm just pointing out that due to the convenience of these apps, the people around me use them without seeming to care about their privacy implications.
Is that actually a problem for you? It's their life, they are free to do whatever they want. I'm trying to understand how this actually affects you since your original reply started with "the problem for me is...".