As an online free mapping service, Google Maps is a great product. But it’s lacking in certain parts of the world. And rather than pay people to go get information about those places, Google has smartly been using a service called Map Maker, which lets locals and people knowledgeable about the area edit it themselves. And this week, Google has added a couple important areas to the list: Mexico and Eastern Europe.
“These two launches have doubled the number of users who can map their country on Map Maker,” Google notes today. That’s impressive, but even more impressive is the full list of countries that can now use Map Maker to improve local maps. And while Map Maker doesn’t work in places like the U.S. and other well mapped-out areas of the world, you can edit things on U.S. maps such as place locations. It seems clear that Google Maps is a wiki of sorts now, meaning the community is responsible for a lot of the data on it.
Now, Google still looks over this new country data, and then allows certain portions to “graduate” to actual Google Maps. But still, it’s a great idea to get more information in your system for free. I wonder how long it will be until Google lets users in the rest of the world in on the fun to edit roads and other features that are incorrect or not listed? Maybe you’ll be able to put in information when you know a road is under construction for a set period of time, for example. That data is out there for large projects, but it would be very useful on a day to day basis for small jobs when I’m trying to get somewhere on time.
Below find an impressive before and after picture of Lahore, Pakistan, after Google Map Maker did its thing.
Update: Google has reached out to me with another piece of information about the Map Maker initiative. Earlier this week, they announced that the Map Maker data set in Africa would be available for non-profits and NGOs to download to further promote mapping the areas. More information on that is here.
I like the direction google is going. Open source mapping.
I am just waiting to Google to open source their bank account!
Gigoloogle pimping your desire for information with google ad$!
how wonderful!
Will open source map-making be done in the right way? How far will the maps created by the local community be reliable and worthy? I doubt.
Best use of Google Maps for collaborative editing is Wikimapia.org.
i have sushi very good today for lunch
I always thought that Google Maps should suck up real time (anonymized) GPS data from phones and navigational gadgets. If enough people more along a particular line at 25 MPH, there’s probably a road there. Similarly, if everyone is moving at 10 MPH – traffic.
And how in the world would google acquire that data? Think about all of the current privacy concerns…
TomTom is already doing that with TomTom traffic in some European countries. About 5 years ago Google bought ZIpdash- a company collecting trace data. And Google today is allready collecting all the GPS traces thorugh your use of Google maps on any mobile phone
GPS mapping devices are usually only receivers. There is no way to get the data from the device without something like a GSM/CDMA connection.
The only problem with this is the single point of failure it can create. Case in point, my previous home, at some time in late 2008 Teleatlas updated the street we lived on, they remapped all the addresses on it backward. I filed a trouble ticket with Teleatlas on January 8th of this year. Its still open and never been addressed. Good thing nobody on that street has needed to depend on Google mapp as the addresses are up to 2 miles or more off.
Good on Google for beefing up their maps. I put together some travel info for friends visiting Romania recently and found Google’s coverage of Bucharest sorely lacking compared to the OpenStreetMap project -like night and day.
Why no mention of OpenStreetMap? It’s a much older project than Map Maker (it started in 2004) and, unlike Map Maker, the data you contribute to Open Street Map stays under an open (Creative Commons) license.
Google was (is?) actually a sponsor of OpenStreetMap. Maybe this is done on top of it…
Looks like they have actually contributed some code:
http://code.goo...2008-streetmap/
However, I doubt that the Google stuff on is actually built on OSM — OSM would be a much higher quality product then, imo.
MG Siegler is so Google focused it hurts. TomTom MapShare is doing what he is praising for a while now.
really? tomtom has detailed maps of remote villages in africa?
and no mention of wikimapia? Am I too old?
soon there will be no privacy, google will know everything about peaople and what they do=)
like on this picture http://kuerbis-...gel/goognyt.gif
I still believe that Wikimapia.org is the better service with google maps…
what about http://www.wikifieldtrip.org ?
I have a tomtom GPS and it is terrible for city navigation…I only take it out for long distance traveling. I prefer google maps for the city driving.
So you can contribute your map making skills to Google, and have Google own it in ways that doesn’t permit you free use, or you can spend the same amount of time contributing to OpenStreetMap.org, and the data is truly free for all uses, in ever increasing ways.
It’s like sending in corrections to the Encyclopedia Britannica, vs editing those same corrections into Wikipedia.
Your choice.
@Randal: 101% support to your position!
Why should people give their time and knowledge to a fake benevolent company while full open source projects are waiting for such sharing, and are already doing well.
Open sourse maps; only google can serve ads is not open.
Open sourse maps; only google can serve ads is not open.
BTW I love your blog!
Excellent post!
Thank u all the Pakistani internet users, bloggers & geeks for such a wonderful user-generated-content that Lahore is being quoted as an example!