[OSM-talk] New Google Maps style - interesting cartographic innovation

[Maarten Deen]

On 2016-08-12 09:48, Oleksiy Muzalyev wrote:
> On 11.08.2016 20:37, Michał Brzozowski wrote:
> 
>> ...
>> 
>> The activity areas aren't merely about the usage itself, but, well,
>> the activity - i.e. concentration of interesting places and number
>> of
>> people visiting them (or other similar popularity metric).
>  I saw recently a documentary about the phenomenon of a Pokemon game.
> A retail shop owner said in this film that he pays money so that
> digital creatures appear more often at the entrance of his shop. And
> people (potential clients) are hanging around his shop because of it.

Pokemon Go. It is an online game where you see a map on your phone and 
have to capture Pokemon (the digital creatures). There are Pokestops at 
fixed locations where you can get items to help you catch Pokemon (once 
every 5 minutes). You can attache a "lure" to the Pokestop so that a lot 
of Pokemon will appear close to the Pokestop. So hanging around a 
Pokestop with a lure will give you lots of Pokemon and lots of items.

One suche lure will cost € 0,60 if you have to buy it using in-app 
purchases and the money probably goes to Nintendo.
So it is not an immediate "pay to get my shop on the map" but this can 
be a big income booster. Especially for bars and restaurants.

It has also already been used by the police to the effect to make a 
crowd in unsurveilled area's so burglars get disencouraged to go there.

> In principle the activity areas could be monetized in similar way by
> the commercial maps. For example, a new shopping center wants to be
> shown on the map as a high activity area, and it is ready to pay for
> it. Finally, it may end up as a sort of an additional tax for
> retailers. If one does not pay, the area will be shown on the map as
> abandoned, with no activity whatsoever.

Because of that, I am so happy that OSM is an open map. I do not assume 
any workgroup within OSM will ever try to impose a ban of mapping 
certain features because OSM is not receiving money from them.
In principle, this would be extortion (or some lesser case of it) and I 
certainly see Google capable of that "you give me money or otherwise I 
won't map your business".

Regards,
Maarten