[OSM-talk] Countering Google's propaganda

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 03:50, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) OSM is better than Google
> 2) [...]
>
> [..] No one around here will disagree with you on 1).

Oh really? :)

Contributing data to Google Maps probably gives most people bigger
short-term benefits than contributing to OpenStreetMap ever would.

You get your data into Google which everyone uses for searches, you'll
see it on your iPhone, Android or thousands of other well known
applications that integrate Google Maps' data.

If you search the archives for messages related to some OpenStreetMap
users who thought it would be a good idea to go over to Google Map
Maker and perform some missionary work on its contributors you'll see
more arguments like this.

A lot of people know what OSM is about but choose to contribute to GMM
anyway because they can use it *now* on the popular map services they
already use instead of just on those that use data from the
still-obscure OpenStreetMap project.

And that's just fine, GMM getting more users doesn't make OSM worse.