> An exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps.
Meanwhile, there is another program to build the world's best maps, which is quite the opposite of secretive, involves hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world, offers public dumps under a free license, and has already outperformed Google for some areas and use cases: http://www.openstreetmap.org/
After seeing tons of videos detailing the tools Google uses for their maps and using Google Map Maker, the OSM tools are much better at empowering the mapper to create map data.
OSM might not have the computer vision tools or the Street View imagery, but there's still plenty of work to do with the existing tools and data.
I'd anticipate that OSM will get machine vision in the future. Consider that that a typical phone/tablet now has a GPS, camera and decent computing resources. It's begging for a machine vision application, which records video and automatically extracts mapping information, ready for uploading to OSM. Begging to the point, where I think it's just a matter of time.
As an aside, are there any efforts afoot to decentralise OSM? It seems well suited to a geographically distributed database, with each country/area looking after it's own map, and the whole being drawn together by a common markup language. Assembling a global map would be a matter of crawling a network of servers, rather than downloading from a single source.
> It's begging for a machine vision application, which records video and...
A simpler use case for computer vision I could think of with Openstreetmap would be to automatically extract roads and building shapes from satellite imagery (though I hope that the license to use Bing would extend to something like this).
> As an aside, are there any efforts afoot to decentralise OSM?
Well, even Wikipedia's not decentralized yet and has no obvious plans to, so...
Speaking as someone that wrote some code that interfaces with the Magicshop API, it works nowhere near as good as described in the video. It's a simple color matching algorithm that gets easily fooled by trees and dry grass.
The project is a great start, but has basically been abandoned.
I think the more important point though, is that both the permission and imagery is there (and the imagery is very high quality) so there's various other projects that e.g. trace outlines of lakes from the imagery (again basic color matching) or identify tennis courts via computer vision etc.
I don't think there are any plans to decentralize OSM. There is no reason to decentralize it, it would solve no problems, and would cause a whole pile of new problems. From technical to political (what's a country?)
Google's map makers are full time experts. I haven't seen the videos you have, but it sounded from the article tht the tools are complicated but powerful. OSM needs to focus on easy to get contributions.
Or... Google could open source their software, leverage the thousands of volunteers and let a giant leap be made by both, their own projects and OSM-related ones.
Google could let OSM users trace from their aerial imagery or from their street view data. That would be a massive boost to OSM. Microsoft let OSM trace from aerial.
In certain cases the Bing data is better, and in most, I think it's on par for my region (Northern California). Half of the Sierra in the newest Google images is snow-covered... not so useful.
But you're right—more would be better. I'm a little surprised MS went for it, but I doubt Google will.
A lot of people under estimate the investment Google has made in their maps product. That we've got two companies doing that (Apple and Google) is a bit mind boggling.
It is funny how much effort google is putting into their maps and yet their interface to the maps (maps.google.com) could still use basic improvements like how 99 out of 100 times I want directions it is to or from my house and yet I have to type in almost my entire address before it appears in the drop down. Considering I am logged into google, have confirmed my address and type in the same address over and over you would think their would be a Home button or at least have recent destinations appear in the drop down initially or whatnot.
If I am looking at an address and want directions to it clicking on 'My places' only shows me "my places", it does not give me any obvious way to get directions from the current address to one of "my places". Clicking on any of "my places" will change the map to view that place, causing the user to lose the address of the place they want to go to/from.
Edit: I see that "my places" now has a "Home address" which isn't pre-populated with my google account confirmed home address for some reason.... But if I set it and then try to get directions and type in the first letter of my address my home address pops up in the auto complete. This is a big improvement, but of course auto setting the home address from your google account and remembering the last five in the auto complete would make a lot more users happy as that would work by default v.s. forcing the user to do something, most of which will not. The number of people that will set their home address is probably only a bit larger than the number that were using my grease monkey script to add a home button.
I absolutely agree that it needs a rethinking in terms of UI. Now that they are trying to consolidate google products, maps should be more aggressive in identifying useful destinations. I'm guessing they want to err on the side of not creeping people out, but I expect a popup introducing these features soon.
I just do it by entering the name of my town rather than my full address, on the basis that I already know how to get out of my own town, and only really need detailed directions once I get to the other end of the journey.
The trouble with that is if like me you live on the edge of a city, the route you end up taking out of the city is very, very different than if you start in the centre where google will place you, and the time estimate etc. can vary by as much as 30 minutes.
That's when I break out the postal code. If your city has that much of a span, then tell Google to start at your postal code instead - the idea being that you can usually drive from one end of a postal code to the other in <5 minutes. I know there are postal codes that span long distances, but they tend not to be in cities that span long distances.
I guess I'm lucky - I'd never looked before, but I checked, and I live in a very small town, about 50 feet from where Google Maps places my town name.
I get your point - if you live in North London, then getting directions from "London" is probably not the way to go. Postcodes seem to be the quickest way, for me.
Indeed, being in the UK postcodes are great. A short unambiguous way of identifying a fairly specific location (usually down to part of one street). From my limited knowledge of postal/zip codes in the rest of the world though, they aren't always that precise, sometimes refering just to a whole town (or greater area).
Actually Apple does have a big part in it. They bring together all the data from Tom Tom, Waze, OSM etc as well as the two teams they purchased: C3 and Placebase into one coherent product.
It's amazing that Apple has nearly matched Google in some parts (maps, directions) and far exceeded them in others (3D).
Apple has not "nearly matched" google, not at all. Maybe in the US they have, but in New Zealand, where google is as good as any of the local street maps/directories, if not better normally, the new ios maps is atrocious. The places are now even worse too, because they're relying on Yelp, who don't have a presence here at all.
No, no, no. No problem with your opinion. You can love Apple if you want. I just struggle to understand how you and others can see Apple in the light that you do, and be blinded to all else. I mean, the value to me is the data and the fact it's online. The database itself. I have my own systems for manipulating the data the way I want it (I would think most HN nerds would have similar skills, but maybe not). That's just me. Others seem to love things because they are produced by some popular company. And for no other reason. I just can't really understand it. These are computers produced in Chinese factories. Getting cheaper everyday. Data can be visualised in myriad ways.
Actually Google should be the same as local street directories since that is where they get there data from. I live in Australia (hi, neighbour) and it is Sensis (Yellow/White Pages) who supply data to Google.
As for quality of maps it is about 80% as good as Google and has been getting noticeably better over time.
Actually Google and Apple have pretty similar systems for 3d maps. Apple are in beta with their new version for ios6, which will have slightly better resolution than (the current, been there for a while) Google Earth, but not hugely so. See for comparison http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-news/3d-maps-comparison-...
Nokia are producing similar 3d maps, although again slightly lower resolution than Google.
I think more importantly than resolution will be coverage. 3d maps of the centre of major cities are one thing, but the whole world is a very different challenge, and one we have no clear idea of a winner on.
I wonder if the iPhone 5 will have a bigger screen. The iPhone 4 screen seems very tiny compared to my Galaxy Nexus. What is the use of fancy 3d if the screen is tiny?
Their license used to be horrible for commercial use, but mostly because it was an extremely bad fit for a data collection, leading to lots of confusion over what was ok and not.
A better comparison for their current license would be the LGPL - as long as you keep your proprietary data separate from the OSM data, you don't need to release it but you still need to release any changes to the OSM data itself.
To be clear, the license has not changed yet. We're in the process of changing the license (and they recently announced [0]) that the next full-planet data dump will be under the new license, but it hasn't been switched yet.
Google maps is possibly my favorite app that currently ships with iOS. I think I might give up email and texting on the device before I'd give up maps. I'm disappointed that Google maps isn't shipping with iOS 6.
I've heard this too. However there's a huge difference between having a nice, working maps app on my phone and a promise from Google to make an iOS app. To be fair I'll have to try out the maps from Apple.
I freaking hate the Google maps app on iPhone - I don't have any need for a map app on a mobile device unless it has turn-by-turn voice navigation along with re-routing capabilities. It's only good for looking up locations/directions when I am stuck somewhere for traveling. If I'm home, my macbook's google map is good enough to serve that purpose. So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping app for a mobile device. Waze saved me.
> So I have no clue why on earth Apple created such a neutered mapping app for a mobile device.
The terms of the license agreement with Google for maps data likely didn't include the ability to perform turn-by-turn navigation. Another reason why they moved to their own maps backend for iOS 6.
What I read was that Google would allow Apple to do turn-by-turn in exchange for ads. Apple don't want to sully iOS with ads so they refused those terms, and Google wouldn't agree to anything else.
Does that mean by the time Google had decided to work on the iPhone-like Android interface, they had been planning to work on a turn-by-turn navigation system using Google Maps for Android as well?
Actually it depends on how you use GPSs. Its certainly possible to write a mapping/GPS app for a smart phone that is competitive with the more advanced features of handheld or dashmount GPSs, but I simply haven't seen one yet. None of the features I need are big ones, but rather a bunch features that add up to a much better user experience for a GPS geek. A couple of those hard to find features are: multi point routing (or some way to allow me to tell the GPS the route instead of the other way around), ability to build routes on PC/Mac and upload to the GPS, off-road routing, track to route conversion, etc..
> I freaking hate the Google maps app on iPhone - I don't have any need for a map app on a mobile device unless it has turn-by-turn voice navigation along with re-routing capabilities
Really now? As another anecdotal point, I freaking love it, and I'm saying this as a an almost-Apple-fanboy. I'm a pedestrian living in an Eastern European city of 2-million people, and I've used the maps app countless times.
Not that I wouldn't know my city (I've actually implemented 2 or 3 or map-related projects focused on the city I live in, just as a hobby), but because it is impossible to remember how exactly to locate the street bearing the name of an obscure 19-century music composer that just happens to be the address of a restaurant you're interested in. Or how when I got lost in the center of Athens, as a tourist, around Omonia Square ("I don't need a paper map, I can manage" I was saying to myself as I was leaving my hotel room), I heavily relied on the said map and on the kindness on strangers who had shared their home wifi networks to make my way around to Exarcheia.
I don't live in a big city and my main mode of transportation is driving and especially the one where directions matter. Walking around inside the mall/plaza or my university campus don't require me to look up directions. It has been handy a few times when I visited cities but those add up to at max a week in a year. So yeah, it is pretty useless for me and thank goodness something like Waze exists on iPhone.
I forgot about the lack of turn-by-turn driving instructions. It's strange but I've actually never had any desire to use that feature on any product. When I use maps I just look once, memorize the major pieces of the trip (freeways, exits etc) and then just go and try to find my way.
I came to iPhone from Android and have since severely missed turn-by-turn on the default map app. I depend on Waze and sometimes on Mapquest although the latter uses a stupidly outdated map.
This is just a silly sentiment. The iPhone maps app may not be perfect but having no clue why it was created makes it sound like you are dumb or just being difficult.
A mapping service with directions on a device that is supposed to be with you all the time is supposed to be mostly handy for driving purposes (at least from my perspective). That's a fundamental requirement. Lack of voice turn-by-turn makes it incomplete, not "may not be perfect".
I questioned why it was neutered the way it is now - not why it was created. I buy Apple products for wholesome user experience and the Google maps ain't one of them (neither is the mail app and so on). If you think this is a silly sentiment, then you must be pretty dumb about user experience issues in mobile situations.
Driving is not the only mode of transport. And SatNav is not the only type of useful map.
Paper maps are useful - an equivalent to a paper map that holds data for the entire world, can put a pin in my exact global location, and can tell me where the nearest Starbucks is? Yeah, I can't see any use for that at all.
Hmm, in the interest of full disclosure here I was working at Google when the Ground Truth project went from a 20% project to a more serious effort. My impressions of its impressiveness may be clouded :-).
Yes, NASA, Digital Globe, Et Alia, have built geographic information services (GIS), there are constraints, both on the data and on what you can do with the data. Google bought Keyhole [1] (the satellite imaging company) discovered that even if you had a satellite image you don't necessarily get to do what ever you want with it, and went out and funded their own satellite [2]. And of course you drive around cars and take pictures of everything, that seemed a little bit crazy at the time but folks like Trimble wouldn't let you use data about streets for doing directions, and then of course different data sets were all slightly 'off' from one another which is really illustrated in the article.
So various folks have invested in one part of the problem, but few have invested in solving the bigger problem, and assembling that solution for disjoint offerings is problematic and expensive at best, and impossible at worst.
That is what I considered the mind boggling investment. And of course the recent tit for tat maps announcements by Apple and Google just reminded me that both companies are pouring in a lot of resources. And yes, Microsoft is right up there as well.
Its quite the barrier to entry if you want to a map based startup. (or at least a huge dependency on an external parties continued pricing model)
Giving people access to that data was a monumentally important step I agree. I just don't know where we go from here, and I find it hard to believe that Google has the answer given the quality of some of their data (no offence intended). They have some capability themselves, but will it be enough? There is so much more to mapping than road lines and point clouds.
And Navteq, Tele Atlas, TomTom, and a few more... They don't have the marketing skills of Apple and Google, but they don't need it because they are not consumer-focused companies.
Yes, you are right. I knew that, but I listed them because they were kept as independent subsidiaries, but thanks for making it clear.
I remember when that happened, and was pretty sure that a bidding war would start involving Garmin and Google, first for Navteq, and then for Tele Atlas, when they both were acquired (Google Maps used data from them, and it seems like they still do for some countries according to their Terms of Service: [1] and [2] as as examples).
You might not like it but Google Maps has become synonymous with online mapping/directions the way Google is with searching, at least in the US and elsewhere (I have seen Bing maps used a lot on Europeans websites like france24.com). From that perspective, I think it is fair to put more focus on Google's efforts.
Google also has aerial view/45 degree imagery for many metro areas. Just keep zooming in the Satellite view. For my neighborhood at least, the Google imagery surpasses Bing's.
And Bing? Also Nokia Maps - not sure what they use on the new Windows 8 phones? For a while Nokia Maps at least were available offline for free, but perhaps that advantage has gone now that there is map caching on Android.
Android has map caching, but not for search or turn by turn nav Also, you can't map cache entire continents/countries like on Nokia devices (OK, you can, if you do it tediously in small sections)
So Nokia (symbian/windows phone) still holds the edge when it comes to navigation. When it comes to local search/places, the Nokia offering is nowhere near as good as the (online) Google Maps
Nokia has indeed the best _free_ navigation of all. I am keeping in my car an old E72 just for it, loaded with all the maps of EU. However, even if updates are quite often, sometimes the map is outdated. But anyhow, the navigation is only for orientation and trip data, I mostly drive by signs and, of course, common sense.
Definitely true to a point. I think it's fair to give them some credit though. Despite their obvious motive of reducing their own costs, they've really established an amazing infrastructure, not to mention a rich API.
Yup, Navteq is truly a pioneer and has lots of experience doing this, even when they are not a well know company for people outside this sector. But they deserve some credit.
Phew! I worked in one of Google's data-entry offices for the GT team. I've left, but now I can shoot this article to people to actually describe what I did.
I work for a company in the telecommunications space. We've talked to several car companies about integrating 4g into their on board computers. I'm really excited for this update. I suppose I haven't really noticed how much better navigation has improved until a few weeks ago. Recently I purchased an 09 infiniti with full tech package. The thing that took me back, was how terrible the navigation system has been inside of Boston (a very complex area). I can't remember the last time Google maps has told me something wrong, but this stale nav system consistently get's confused about 1 way streets etc.
What i'd LOVE to see is for Nissan to throw away its custom OS, and replace it with Android... along with that I want google maps (instead of whatever Nissan is licensing). Plus it would be nice to download apps for my car such as a better mileage tracker etc.
What I'd love to see is for car manufacturers to throw away integrated navigation systems and replace them with standardized mounting points for smartphones / tablets. I'd like to be able to upgrade my car electronics every 2 years without having to rip apart the dashboard.
Of all Google's products, Maps is the one I appreciate the most. It got lots of smart features, it's fast, it's got great coverage, and it's easy to use. Truly great work.
After reading this article, I realize now that Watson was this cute thing IBM was working on that they thought was novel, while Google was building machines that think, collaborate and formulate, period. They don't just answer questions: they take data and turn it into something we know how to breeze through.
I am truly astounded by how quickly we are accelerating through this information era.
I didn't get that impression at all, I got the impression Google is using humans to do the thinking to make it easier for the computers to crank through the algorithms.
Watson is a research product that aims to create artificial intelligence from the ground up, i.e., true artificial intelligence.
Google is merely processing massive data sets using manually crafted algorithims. This is a complete different project, which has little or nothing to do with artificial intelligence.
> Google is merely processing massive data sets using manually crafted algorithims
That is what Watson is. There's not really any "true" artificial intelligence since the term is so poorly defined, but you could make a good argument that your description above fits humans pretty well, too.
Thanks for the link. I've added it to my watch list. IMHO, you can't get much better than BBC documentaries. Especially when it comes to my favorite - Sir David Attenborough.
Google are only a small part of the spatial data capture world. They provide amazing access to a few datasets and completely ignore others. Location searches are laughably bad unless you are looking for a hotel. They do not even come close to providing comprehensive topographic mapping.
I think that traditional topographic mapping is not very useful from a business standpoint. When there are more, or a critical number of the autonomous vehicles from Google deployed in the wild, I fully expect very high resolution 3D maps from all the LIDAR and other data. That will be incredibly cool.
Traditional topographic mapping is still hugely useful in many niches. Try laying a 100 mile pipeline, or building a factory, or organising search and rescue without traditional topo mapping. I would agree that it can be obtusely formatted and wildly expensive.
High resolution 3D modelling is already available in much of Norther Europe. It is very cool, but surprisingly difficult to actually make useful. In most applications comic book style generalisations actually work better.
I've always thought that the real money in mobile comes from very accurate map data, and very accurate personal position data. that way when you're walking around town, you can 'ask' your phone for directions to eat/shop/whatever, and it can give you a great recommendation ( for a price to local restaurants ). I asked Eric Schmidt if this was a powerful motivator behind the android acquisition, as at the time it seemed like a natural fit, and surprisingly he did not say no. And yes I know that Android was bought 'on a whim, gut instinct' but this is the perfect use case for it.
This idea is just picking at low hanging fruit. It is like saying that the killer app of the web is retail shopping. Sure Amazon is cool, but the web is so much more than that. Perhaps "location" will be like the web and have millions of little niches. IMHO it won't really take off until you have higher smart phone penetration in the developing world. These kind of apps need a market with lots of pedestrians, not car bound America.
'Not to detour too much, but what you see above is just the beginning of how Google is going to use Street View imagery. Think of them as the early web crawlers (remember those?) going out in the world, looking for the words on pages. That's what Street View is doing. One of its first uses is finding street signs (and addresses) so that Google's maps can better understand the logic of human transportation systems. But as computer vision and OCR improve, any word that is visible from a road will become a part of Google's index of the physical world. Later in the day, Google Maps VP Brian McClendon put it like this: "We can actually organize the world's physical written information if we can OCR it and place it," McClendon said. "We use that to create our maps right now by extracting street names and addresses, but there is a lot more there."
More like what? "We already have what we call 'view codes' for 6 million businesses and 20 million addresses, where we know exactly what we're looking at," McClendon continued. "We're able to use logo matching and find out where are the Kentucky Fried Chicken signs... We're able to identify and make a semantic understanding of all the pixels we've acquired. That's fundamental to what we do."'
That is scary. They could read license plates and tie them to addresses. They could read bumper stickers and determine your politics, whether your kid was an honor student at what school, etc.
Only if you're already public enough with your political views, the name of your kids' school and so on to stick that data on the back of your car anyway.
If you really wanted to keep your politics secret, you wouldn't put a political sticker on your car.
All anyone sees on my car is what radio station I listen to.
That is the most awesome thing ever invented anywhere. Though it would be nice if it showed a clearer diff, perhaps having the before and after renderings displayed intermittently in a tick-tock manner.
basically, they don't care to show their technology, because there is no way another company can develop their technology in the short time, and if some company adventures on it, when they reach google technology, google will be far, far beyond them.
You really don't appreciate how much great data Google have in their maps until you try to use anything else. Apple have a lot of work to do to get iOS 6 maps on-par (for instance, I still haven't managed to do a successful search here in Japan - I have to carry around an Android phone for maps and train directions)
Meanwhile, there is another program to build the world's best maps, which is quite the opposite of secretive, involves hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world, offers public dumps under a free license, and has already outperformed Google for some areas and use cases: http://www.openstreetmap.org/