[Talk-GB] Google "Plus Code" Locators

[Mark Goodge]

On 28/02/2022 14:06, David Woolley wrote:
> I've just noticed Google using a new locator system, which works on 
> similar principles to the Maidenhead system, except that each resolution 
> step is 20 x 20, rather than alternating letter and number codes, so the 
> algorithm is public, and they don't seem to be imposing any licensing on 
> it.  I don't remember seeing any mention of it here.
> 
> Below 0.45 second resolution, 4 x 5 subgrids, coded by one letter are used.
> 
> The full codes are 8 characters, a "+" and, normally at least two more. 
> If you know the approximate location, the 8 can be truncated to 4, and 
> the approximate location can be given with a locality name, which is the 
> bit that could end up depending a bit on Google Maps for reliable 
> reproducibility.

The algorithm for the full code is open (licensed under the the Apache 
License), but the short form remains proprietary to Google - there's no 
way to reliably get the locality name without using their API. The whole 
thing was, originally, proprietary to Google (under the name "Plus 
Code"), but the full-length code has since been released as open source 
as Open Location Code.

> It seems that they have existed since 2014, although this is the first 
> time I've noticed them in a Google business listing.
> 
> I did an OSM search on some examples, and it does not look as though the 
> search currently recognizes them.

If you mean the search facility on openstreetmap.org, that's third-party 
software from Nominatim and GeoNames. Both of those look for the search 
string in their database, so unless any particular OLC is in one or both 
of them then it won't show up. And there's no reason why an OLC should 
be part of the tagging of any OSM object, any more than there's any 
reason to tag an object with latitude and longitude - the geospatial 
data is part of the substructure, and doesn't need to be included in the 
textual tag data.

Doing a conversion of OLC to latitude/longitude and then displaying the 
map with a marker at the appropriate point would be a relatively simple 
programming task, but whether enough people would use it to make it 
worthwhile is a different question. And it's also not really a search 
issue. It's a programming feature for possible consideration in the code 
which runs openstreetmap.org. I'm not sure where you'd make that 
suggestion, I suspect there may be a mailing list for it but I don't, 
offhand, know where!

Mark