The competitor google Maps is here :-)

because if you are somewhere new and don’t know about it in the first place how would you add it? That is what makes google maps better at this point. You can go somewhere you have never been before and find a bunch of places with reviews and everything.

If you’re sitting in your hotel room in a new city looking for restaurants, sure. If you’re at the restaurant though, it’s not a big deal to pull out your phone and add a node with the restaurant name. More detailed information can be added later. If I need to navigate somewhere I haven’t been before, that doesn’t exist on Openstreetmap, I’ll usually find the location using Google, then find the corresponding location in OsmAnd using nearby streets as a reference, then drop a pin in OsmAnd and navigate to that.

In areas with active Openstreetmap contributors, new roads and businesses are usually added before they show up on Google maps (if they ever do). I know of several roads where I live that have existed for decades but don’t show up on Google maps, and I know of at least one “road” on Google maps that is actually someone’s driveway.

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Hi, isn’t this already the Google way of thinking? When I am looking for a good Restaurant on my holiday location, I either check relevant websites like trip advisor or I just walk out on the street and look for a chat with a native looking walk-by and that’s it. And for the rest, hey you geeks out there, open street maps is the answer. If open street maps shall integrate the data from the (public) providers, one will have to help Open Street maps to pick the files from the public transport/traffic information providers.
I agree with your remarks that Google alternatives are hard to find (see remark on fish swarms). But in many countries public authorities provide these data without restriction. It is just that Google is one step ahead. But we can catch up and I believe that can happen as long as the providers remain “open data” and do not prostitute themselves to Google.

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PureMaps has great potential, me thinks.

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Also the most appropriate name :slight_smile:

I’ve seen the developer active on the Matrix chat rooms, too, so he’s definitely aware of the Librem 5/Purism in general.

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I don’t think that catching up is realistic. Why? Google has unlimited budget to throw on anything needed at a given moment.

Of course. But if you see, that there is anything missing, why don’t you add it. You and others will have advantages from that. At home I always look for changes and add them to openstreetmap.

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I don’t need something better than Google maps or even something on parity. something that is simply good enough would be fine by me.

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I seem to be the only one in the world who just wants a moving map that can zoom way out…and if I can see where there’s bad traffic fifty miles away, because I am planning to leave on a trip through that area, or how far ahead the jam I’m in now ends, that’s a bonus.

Even working with giggle maps, it’s constantly trying to shrink my field of view down to a 500 meter (or less) radius, which is utterly pointless when I’m on a freeway between two cities, stuck in a traffic jam. (I certainly don’t need it to tell me to stay on the freeway when my exit is 10 or more miles/kilometers ahead.) I need to find an alternate route and/or find out how far ahead is whatever is causing the blockage.

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Forgive my ignorance, but does it have to be an app? https://maps.google.com does everything in-browser except for turn-by-turn guidance. Finding things, and routing, seems to be just as good as the app.

Except of course, that it’s Google. That’s the whole point of this thread :wink:

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Sorry if I mistook the direction of the thread… just wanted to contribute that the platform isn’t explicitly excluding Google Maps. :smiley:

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That is for me the most important fact. I do not wont to give google my data. If that has disadvantages, I will accept than. for me this is the only way, to make free services better, so they will become better then unfree services.

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I am a little surprised no one has mentioned that GNOME Maps has a substantial subset of the mobile mapping app features, using GraphHopper for routing.

I am looking forward to seeing it on the Librem 5.

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I’ve noticed that if you try to go to maps.google.com on my android, it simply fires up the app anyway. I don’t know how they implemented that, but depending on the mechanism, it may be that the librem would not be able to avoid it.

Probably a root level access to the device ( since it’s Google to Google). If true open app.
Let me clarify since the connection itself wouldn’t be root level.

I think it asks for the browser’s user agent and if it returns “Android” as the OS you’re running it will probably get some kind of device identifier and send a root command to that device to launch GMaps on it’s own. (would be nice if someone with an Android device without all G’s bloatware can test this and feedback on what happens)

Well if my theory is good it should send “Linux ARM” as a user agent just like if you were on a RPi and then won’t send the command and just show GMaps like if you were on desktop Linux.

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iOS has the ability to use “universal links”. If you have the app installed, instead of going to the website, it launches the app.

Android has a similar technology, called app links I believe.

Or you can implement this by including the Firebase SDK. It uses the term Dynamic Linking.

I’ve done this on iOS, and my counterparts on Android have implemented their version.

Bottom line is these are iOS and Android features. The apps can tell the OS “If you see this URL, send me the URL instead.”

There are controls to stop an unrelated app from hijacking content.

I hope this helps :slight_smile:

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That would imply I could actually DISABLE this behavior, somehow…

The google app covers too much of the small screen with bullshit so the visible map is only about 5 x 7 cm or so.

Ehh, never been a Qwant person.

Too proprietary for my liking. OpenStreetMaps is better:

Plenty of navigation apps on F-Droid: https://search.f-droid.org/?q=maps&lang=en

As for search try JiveSearch:
https://jivesearch.com/

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