[OSM-talk] Google India vs OSM
Scott Dexter
scottdex at gmail.com
Tue Jul 24 15:50:10 BST 2007
I found this article on Google Earth Blog.
> (http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/07/india_maps_in_google.html#comments
> )
>
> India Maps - Local Knowledge Power
>
> Google's mission is to "*...organize the world's information and make it
> universally accessible and useful*". And the Google Earth/Maps team's
> mission is to add "* geospatially*" in front of the corporate mission.
> Google has the most complete global/international coverage in imagery,
> roads, directions, and many other points of interest data of any other 2D/3D
> mapping tools freely available on the Internet.
>
> The information now available for India in Google Earth and Maps is of
> particular interest. According to Googler Michael Jones, Chief Technologist
> of Google Earth, they had a challenge in India. There basically was only one
> government controlled mapping dataset, and it was not available to license
> for publication online. So, Google developed some tools and processes to
> enable people living in a city to map the city and share their local
> knowledge with an online database. They piloted a process in India where
> people would mark locations with a GPS and input other data such as
> directions, locations of shopping centers, parks, gas stations, restaurants
> etc. Google used input from many different people and correlated conflicts
> to try and arrive at the best data.
>
> If you go to India now in Google Earth (or Maps) the roads information for
> 50 of the cities in India came from local knowledge. You can turn on other
> points of interest layers in Google Earth such as these layers: *Shopping
> and Services, Transportation, Geographic Features, Travel and Tourism, Parks
> and Recreation, and Community Services*. For example, try searching for "*
> Hyderabad* ". You will see a variety of colorful icons all over the 50
> cities in India where the data was collected. This data could be remarkably
> beneficial if you were visiting a city for the first time - or possibly even
> if you've lived in the area for a long time.
>
> The process Google has been testing (which produced these results in
> India) is similar in many ways to efforts started in the UK by
> OpenStreetMap.org <http://www.openstreetmap.org/> which also uses GPS
> input from people on the streets. Google has been developing a special "care
> package" of software, databases, and GPSes to help citizens in other
> countries make maps like the ones in India.
>
> You can hear Michael Jones' talk about the maps for India in a podcast
> recording <http://philbridges.com/?p=89> of a speech he gave last week at
> Cambridge in the UK - thanks to Philbridges.com for the recording.
>
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